Yesterday, Jean-Paul Sartre reveled in serial novels: as a child, the future theoretician of existentialism would not have missed for anything in the world an adventure of Pardaillan, his swashbuckling hero. Our intellectuals of today, who live with the times, have a crush on television series. As Christmas approaches, they talk about their preferences for L’Express.
Raphael Enthoven – The Walking Dead
This is the story of Plague of Camus, spread over eleven seasons. Brave people are engaged against a scourge, and none of them hopes to win the final victory. They see in the fact that the end of the world has come, and the bleak future, no reason to be discouraged. There’s no beginning, no end, no end, no meaning to it. Camus’ book can be read at two levels: the war on a virus, the parody of the war on fascism. In The Walking Dead, the living dead are not metaphors, they really are the living dead. The word “hope” comes up quite rarely: it’s a series about survival. The first thing children are taught there is to fight. This series gives me no comfort, but arouses in me anxiety, doubt, sometimes enthusiasm. I watched all eleven seasons, curious how the story would end.
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Jacques Attali- TheWire
It is a series that is both extremely entertaining and extremely instructive. It takes place in an American city that includes dockers, journalists, magistrates, drug addicts. TheWire shows American sociology in a very educational way, social category by social category. I liked the intelligence of the dialogue and the scenario. I have seen all the seasons. This year, I also really enjoyed The Fightersan educational and very well done series on women during the 1914-1918 war.
Pascal Bruckner – The Walking Dead
The Walking Dead, it is a fable on the social contract. After an ecological disaster, different formulas are available to start the world over from scratch: ultraviolence, dictatorship, elimination of communities… But you have to love zombies. I love horror movies, so I enjoy it, even if the series is a bit long.
Jean Garrigues- The Crown
This series on the history of the British royal family makes my fiber as a historian vibrate. There is the curiosity of midinette for the disputes of the royal family. But we also learn a lot of things, even if the vision is not necessarily objective: in the disputes between Diana and Charles, it is rather the first who is highlighted. The fundamental element is the double body of the king, the way in which, from a certain point in time, the queen no longer belonged to herself, escaped her humanity to be only a national symbol. . All the adventures are linked to this idea of dilemma, of duality between private life and public life. And we have in the background the political and social evolution of British society. We see the particularity of a monarchy emblematic of a whole history, millennial, the permanence of the past in the present. The acting of the actors is magnificent.
Marilyn Maeso – Lucifer
I like series that make me think and entertain me at the same time. Lucifer is based on the famous story of the Bible but gives a humorous version while raising essential philosophical problems, starting with moral conscience. Lucifer, son of the Devil who arrives in Los Angeles, has big problems with his father, of whom he does not stop complaining. In the series, we go to hell or to heaven not according to what God decides, but according to our own conscience. Hell is yourself, not others… And giving the devil a British accent is very funny!
Abnousse Shalmani – Battlestar Galactica
It’s the most metaphysical series in history. In a futuristic world, progress has freed Man from hard work, but in doing so has created an urban underclass of robots, the Cylons, who eventually revolt and destroy the Earth. But a handful of humans manage to escape and set off through space in search of this legendary planet. Behind closed doors, they try to survive. They remain desperately human: betrayals, lies, low blows. Can we accept abortion? Does love still have meaning? You have to be a fan of science fiction, but to understand something about human nature, about finitude, there is nothing more exciting than this series.
Michel Wieviorka – Borgen, a woman in power
The main character [Birgitte Nybord, femme politique danoise, NDLR] is a very complex woman, who has real human depth. I do not at all make factual or empirical comparisons with current events, but this story of a woman who becomes Prime Minister describes valid modes of operation for French political life: the way in which the characters are formed, the games of power, the reversals, the calculations of each other… It is very well seen. Sometimes the series touch me because they evoke worlds that are not mine at all, like Narcos. Borgenshe reminds me of events that we saw in France.
Monique Canto-Sperber – Heimat
Heimat is a series that marked me, and that I see regularly. It takes place over four seasons. The first, released in 1984, tells the story of a German family from a small village in the Rhineland from 1919 to 1985: defeat, rise of Nazism, World War II, then the presence of former Nazis in social life… The second reconstructs the lives of young musicians, including one of the sons of this family, at the Munich Conservatory between 1960 and 1970. The third, reunification. The fourth, a long film, about the same village in 1830. The series brings together personal stories and political and economic history.
“Heimat”, in German, is the homeland, a term claimed by nationalism, but also the place where one is oneself, the object of a quest. The series is about what it means to belong to a country, a region, a culture. She had a huge impact in Germany. Beyond its major historical interest and its artistic beauty, it bears witness to what is painful about German identity.