Summer is coming on, and travels are ensuing. Some for vacation, some searching new locales where to take residence.
Me, until further notice, I’m spending my time just as I did the pandemic and the Palisades Fire: At home, watching foreign series on my TV.
Although I am always down for a damaged detective solving cases in an arctic landscape, in Finnish, Swedish, or Danish, lately I’ve found myself compelled by TV series offerings from France, most of which are available in the French original with English subtitles, and some also offered subtitled. So join me on my TV Vacation adventure! Bon Voyage!
“Carême on Apple TV+
This historical drama based on real characters tells the story of the machinations of Talleyrand during the rise and reign of Napoleon, as seen through the eyes of Carême, one of Frances most famous pastry chefs, who, of course, is a sensualist making love opportunistically to a series of equally opportunistic lovers including none other than Josephine – it is all very French and very enjoyable.
Reformed on Max
In French, the title is “Le Sens des Choses” which translates as ‘The sense of things,’ which comes from the Passover Haggadah, and speaks to the spiritual, emotional, and overall impact of the ritual and its significance.
Reformed is the story of Lea, (played with great warmth and charm by Elsa Guedj) a young French woman, unmarried, who moves back in with her father (played by Eric Elmosnino), in his apartment. The father is a widower, and a psychoanalyst whose own mother is a Holocaust survivor and is losing her memory. Lea has dropped out of medical school to become a reformed Rabbi – which to her father is a sacrilege.
Each episode involves a problem that has been brought to her, for which she is often unsure of the proper response. Yet by the close, she has come up with a solution that is wise and expressive of Jewish values.
It is not a show that moves at an American pace. It is at moments funny, awkward, and occasionally, sad. It is definitely the kind of show where you feel good after every episode. The first season has eight episode. A second season has been ordered.
Try it. You may like it.
Asterix and Obelix: The Big Fight on Netflix
Asterix and Obelix are beloved French comic book characters known all over the French speaking world, who live before the Common Era in a small village of Gaulois, in what today is Brittany, resisting the Roman Empire of Julius Caesar. Their druid has a magic potion that grants them superhuman strength, whose powers Obelix has permanently having fallen in the tub as a child; while Asterix, the brains of the two, has only when he quaffs the potion. Their many, many adventures have taken place in a series of books, and then a series of movies (often with the roles played by France’s greatest actors), and finally, now, in a five part animated series that is currently streaming on Netflix, in French original with subtitles, or in a dubbed version.
One sign of the deep affection for Asterix and Obelix, is that the project has attracted incredible animators, and the series is written and directed by Alain Chabat one of France’s most successful and beloved comedy writers.
The five episodes are filled with delightful word play, gags, and a certain French pride and chauvinism particularly when compared to the puffed up pompous Romans.
The Art of Crime on Mhz
The Art of Crime is multi-year series (there are four seasons currently available) in which an art historian and a detective to solve art-related crimes. As is standard for this sort of pairing, she’s upper class, he lower. She sees a psychiatrist, he should.
Eleonore Bernheim stars as the art expert, and she is both charming and enthusiastic. There few murders in this series, and if so they are rarely gruesome, but the art is wonderful as is the scenes of Paris as they pass by. A pleasure for which I am not guilty at all.