OWe have noticed it for years now: television no longer has any imagination. Innovation is a risky bet and channels no longer have the time or means to experiment with new formats and new concepts. So they recycle, more and more.
Or two sure values of the moment: on the one hand, thrillers, a typically French passion which makes it easy to pin the viewer in front of their screen by playing on the classic mechanisms of the mystery to be solved; on the other, board games, a sector which has seen constant growth since the Covid-19 pandemic. It is an understatement to say that the first is already overexploited: no less than twenty-seven French detective series are being produced and broadcast on the first three channels (ten on TF1, nine on France 2, eight on France 3) .
The second vein is more difficult to dig, as not all board games support the transition from an evening with friends where everyone is active to a small screen with passive observers. But, for TF1, M6 and Canal+, the martingale would be found in the combination of the two, by mixing game and thriller.
This is how the figure of the “traitor” arrived in our cathodic evenings. It’s already been two years since M6 adopted it, with the aptly named program “Les Traitors”, which takes up the operation of Thiercelieux’s Werewolves. This game, which only requires a pack of cards and a group of friends, and which has been a hit since its launch in 2001, itself takes up an older concept that some know under the name “Mafia”. The rules vary, but the basic principle is the same: a few bad guys (the werewolves) are infiltrated into a group mostly made up of good guys (the villagers) whom they try to eliminate one after the other without being unmasked. . Required talents: eloquence, art of lying and love of manipulation.
Read also (archive 2018) | Article reserved for our subscribers In thirty years, the board game has reinvented itself
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In the game of Six, around fifteen relatively famous participants are locked in a castle and must flush out the three traitors hiding among them. Here, the viewer is omniscient and, as before Columbo, is more interested in the how than the who. And to delight in seeing the innocent sometimes defend themselves to the point of tears while the traitors do not shy away from any lie.
An effective concept
Given the success of this program, TF1 and Canal+ in turn launched their variant on Friday October 11, simultaneously. La Quatre kept it simple: “Les Loups-Garous de Thiercelieux” transposes the game of the same name into reality by banking on little-known participants, but with interesting profiles (a former DGSE spy, a mentalist, a poker player professional, a language specialist, a mathematician, a journalist, etc.). Presented by comedians Fary and Panayotis Pascot, the show focuses more on the second degree and cooperation between the participants (viewers do not know the identity of all the werewolves). It also illustrates the increasing porosity between television and YouTube formats, another way of circumventing the risks of innovation.
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