TOPS/FLOPS – English prisoners on Canal +, an unwilling spy or a shady hotel owner in Miami. Which heroes to follow or not on television this week?
16/20
“Time: Prisoners”, 4 × 52 minutes, Canal+, Thursday October 10, 9:10 p.m.
This uncompromising British anthology explores the reality of the prison system in the United Kingdom. After a men’s penitentiary center in season 1, it’s time for a women’s prison. This second season interweaves the fate of three fellow prisoners incarcerated on the same day in a remand center near Liverpool. Single mother of three children with no criminal record, Orla (Jodie Whittaker, Doctor Who) is stunned when his electricity meter fraud lands him behind bars. Abi (Tamara Lawrance) is serving a life sentence for a charge she doesn’t want to reveal. A repeat offender, young Kelsey, barely out of adolescence, gets involved in drug trafficking again. The brawling young girl (Bella Ramsey, as extraordinary as in The Last of Us) not only has to face rehab and withdrawal but she discovers herself pregnant by her drug dealer boyfriend. Through this triple portrait, screenwriters Jimmy McGovern and Helen Black are less interested, this time, in guilt to denounce the social weight of incarceration which breaks up families. Reintegration is even more difficult when the home has been shattered. The series, which does not fall into pathos thanks to its fabulous performers, also shows the specificities of women’s prisons. More community and supportive. More harmful too.
15/20
“Those who blush”, 8 × 10 minutes, Arte.TV
A gymnasium. Around ten high school theater students rehearsing A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare. A replacement teacher (Julien Gaspar-Oliveri, co-author and director of this series, a former More beautiful lifecurrently in the credits of the series Zorro et The world does not exist) which will shake up the conventions of the course and much more. The actor’s work as a revealer of personality is an inexhaustible source of stories and emotions, of The Dodge to Almond trees. How to play love? Madness? Madness in love? Swing “I don’t love you” to the other, straight in the eye, with confidence, even ferocity. What does it do physically to be rejected despite pleas? And when acceptance finally comes, translated into an embrace? “ Draw strength from it», recommends the professor. In this quasi-documentary fiction, the young performers, aspiring actors in the city as well as on screen, filmed up close to their faces, reveal themselves. They also learn to become one. Best short series at the Séries Mania 2024 festival.
15/20
“Hotel Cocaine”, 6 × 60 minutes, MyCanal
After Narcos , Cartelet Godfathers of Harlemthe essential Chris Brancato delivers this gripping series, an unfiltered painting of the glamorous Miami of the seventies, against a backdrop of thriller and family drama. At the Mutiny Hotel, a mecca for Florida nightlife, Roman Compte (Danny Pino) takes care to quench his clients’ thirst with dancing, sex and drugs. A golden business that comes to disturb an FBI agent (Michael Chiklis) determined to force him to interfere in the affairs of his own brother whom he has not seen for twenty years. Or when blood ties mingle with drug trafficking. The Mutiny Hotel really existed. This series is not inspired by any real fact in particular but it takes up, in broad terms, certain passages fromHotel Scarface : Where Cocaïne Cowboys Partied and Plotted to Control Miamian edifying investigation published in 2017 into the rich hours of the establishment, long considered the nerve center of the juicy criminal cases.
14/10
«The Machine», 6 × 45 minutes, Disney+
Childhood friends Diego Luna ( Andor ) and Gael Garcia Bernal (Babel) have established themselves as the best ambassadors of the Mexican seventh art. They join forces in this tragicomedy which exposes the corruption plaguing the boxing world in their country. At the end of his career with his extra pounds and repeated concussions, Esteban (Garcia Bernal) won one match too many, irritating the thugs who manage the ring. The next one he will have to lose. Otherwise, he and his loved ones will die. Including his journalist ex-wife (Eiza Gonzalez) and his flamboyant Botox-addicted manager (Luna). A touching story of two playful adults who cannot grow up and see themselves aging, The Machineexalts the spectacular dimension of boxing, where ego and the spirit of revenge are overplayed. Under the influence of mescal and other drugs, fiction sometimes ventures into magical realism and reminds us that no one can fight against the passing of time.
13/20
“The undercover agent”, 6 × 47 minutes, from Thursday October 10, Arte, 8:55 p.m.
“A nervous investigation behind the scenes of German counterterrorism” says the synopsis. The story takes place in Hamburg. Its starting point is the forceful recruitment of a young Afghan to infiltrate a terrorist network. Raza China had not asked for anything. Nor the passport blackmail exercised on his girlfriend by the police. Nor the anguish of insecurity, so deep, that he had thought he was fleeing years earlier. Nor fear. Nor the threats… As described in this series adapted from the British format Informerby German director Matthias Glasner, whose six episodes constructed in flashbacks look back on the nine days preceding the supposed attack. The story, which explores behind the scenes of police services with questionable methods, is quite classic. It is worth for its realization. Silver Bear for Best Screenplay at the 2024 Berlinale for the film DieGlasner, born in Hamburg, masters his art as much as the topography, the dark alleys, the industrial and port wastelands of his city. The framing, the lights, the colors are affected. The climax increases. The viewer gets caught up in it.
12,5/20
“Nightsleeper”, 6 × 55 minutes, from Wednesday October 9, TF1, 9:10 p.m.
Panic on board the Glasgow-London night train, controlled remotely by computer hackers. Following an incomplete evacuation, a few unfortunate travelers find themselves trapped on board, including the Minister of Transport, a journalist, a weakened patriarch, the barmaid, a passenger in a wheelchair, a kid separated from his mother and a fugitive police officer (Joe Cole , A glimmer of hope), who will become the point of contact with the director of cybersecurity, Abby Aysgarth (Alexandra Roach). Chance does things rather well for this high-speed railway thriller, which is not frightened by the inconsistencies of its scenario and makes up for it with the effectiveness of its closed-door setting. With a terrifying leap into the unknown. How to regain control of the locomotive? How to avoid collision with other trains? Too bad this panache is flattened by the scenes taking place in the administration premises. Abby and her teammates suffer from these dialogue sequences that are too jargony and technical. And they forget the progress of their investigation, the outcome of which is a bit cavalier.
05/20
“Monsieur Parizot”, 2 × 45 minutes, Monday October 7, TF1, 9:10 p.m.
Mr Parizot spin-off « gargamelien » fromCamping Paradisof which TF1 is testing a first double episode this week, poses several questions. What target can this type of program aim for in 2024? Which producer could implement a project of such indigence in a French serial landscape whose deployment and demands we never cease to praise? And who still believes that the individual viewer is reducible to available brain time? The audience figures for this family and detective comedy may perhaps come as a surprise. But certainly not what it says about the world and relationships with others. Its staging, the acting, the plot, if there is one, the ugliness of the image and this way of bamboozling the world with nothing, worse, with vulgarity, on the grounds of kindness and entertainment, leave us speechless.
