Just picture it: A country divided. A rabid and rabble rousing right-wing leader who incites chaos. Racist slurs. Birther n’importe quoi. Scheming, power hungry politicians at all levels, intent upon kneecapping a democracy with their personal and corrupt interests. Idealistic and naive do-gooders, who do each other in with power grabs and bitchy in-fighting. Food that costs too much. Standards of living at risk. A forgotten working class that’s been co-opted by the extreme right. The word ‘hope’ bandied about when everything seems, honestly, hopeless. A teeming mob outside an important political institution led by a rioter dressed in horns and fur. Thug-like rioters dressed like barbarians breaking past police barriers to enter, and then defile, an institution that defines the Republic. Recriminations and chaos in the aftermath.
If this all sounds pretty familiar, you might be surprised to learn that it’s playing out in current-day France, not the U.S. And it’s on Netflix, not Fox News.
Netflix’s French Comedy En Place is in its Second Season
The writers of Season 2 of the Netflix political comedy Represent (En Place, in French) have written a dystopian French nightmare that borrows heavily from the actual events of the last few political years in the United Sates. And, boy, did they have a good time doing it! The joy in this skewering of America is palpable. So palpable that, as I watched, I wondered if Season 2 should come with a warning for pre-election panicking American audiences. Here’s s a possible option, just in case anyone at Netflix or the creators are reading this: “What You Are about to See is Based on Real Events in America. Individuals With Any Kind of American Political PTSD (from 2016, on) Should Consider Finding Reruns of Seinfeld Instead. Voter Discretion Advised.”
But let’s back up: Season 1 of Represent aired in January of 2023, starring the actor, director, rapper, and comedian, Jean-Pascal Zadi. Zadi plays a youth counselor, named Stéphane Blé, who works in a housing project in Paris’s périphérique. Blé, thanks to a viral video, skyrockets overnight from local do-gooder to presidential candidate. He’s unprepared for this journey in every real sense, except that he knows, in his heart, that what the changing demographic of France wants, is someone who empathizes and prioritizes actual human needs above political motivations.
The first season was funny and richly written, which is no surprise when you learn that it’s co-written by Zadi and François Uzan, co-creator and writer of the popular Netflix series, Lupin. (Uzan is extremely prolific and, at the age of 46, already has numerous shows and movies to his credit.) For that season, Uzan and Zadi wove together a tapestry of references that mercilessly borrowed from across the zeitgeist, in order to create a show that is hilarious, far-fetched, absurd, and brilliant. You can’t avert your gaze from the ongoing train wreck, as well as a few soaring, hopeful moments, of the political lives on the screen in front of you.
Season 2, just out a few weeks ago, takes a darker turn, as it siphons from the deep wells of bubbling turmoil which America has been boiling in since 2016, when Donald Trump first took office. Some of our more deplorable moments in recent history, like the January 6th Insurrection, are reinterpreted on screen. Here, the looters break and enter into the Élysée Palace, knife France’s famous Delacroix painting, “Liberty Leading the People,” and sit in the President’s chair, feet up on top of the desk, all the while drinking wine from golden chalices, on to get reinvigorated to perpetrate more violence and destruction. Not to leave France free from blame, Season 2 also plucks from the ripe orchards of the French political scene, tapping into hot topic issues like France’s hijab ban and anti-Muslim rhetoric from, not only the right wing, but those across the political spectrum.
Though this second season is a bit flat-footed at first, it picks up by episode four, when the President and his entourage of cons (idiots) debark in Guadeloupe. They have come, as their cover, to solve the disconnect between the colonies and the motherland. But really, they are there to look for Blé’s wife, who has gone off with her bodyguard. While in Guadeloupe, they get almost everything wrong, even confusing Guadeloupe with Martinique. Despite the fact that Blé is Black, and most of his entourage is BPOC, a man says to him: “White people always do this to us. It’s a pain in the ass.” Which leaves Blé unsure of what to say or do next. (This is often his problem, but it’s done in such a charming way, you empathize with the confusion he feels when confronted with such angry antipathy and political chaos.)
Indeed, there are familiar themes here, especially as it pertains to racial identities, which seem uncannily selected for this upcoming American election season: Questions of Blackness, the hyperbolic and divisive language of the far right, a secret service that appears to blunder more than it protects, the insipid narcissism of the self-proclaimed do-gooders, the infighting of the left, and more—honesty, you may find yourself squirming in your seat instead of laughing.
But it’s the writing that really makes the show sing, and will make you want more. For instance, take this conversation where Stéphane Blé, his new presidential administration in crisis, gets TV appearance coaching from the former disgraced President of the Republic. He is role-playing that he’s talking to the interviewer on TV:
Blé: I hear the French people.
Colignon: Very good.
Blé: I hear their fears as well.
Colignon: Good
Blé: But I think there was a misunderstanding with the French people.
Colignon: No, no, no.
Blé: What?
Colignon: Never tell the French people they didn’t understand something. That’s basic. They’re very touchy on top of being morons.
This kind of writing, with its complicated, ruthless, and multi-faceted attack on everyone’s assumptions about themselves, may touch a nerve. But if you break out in hives as you watch, it’s the writing throughout that will keep you coming back to Represent, and leave you feeling that six episodes are far too few. The jokes are a welcome respite from the pet-eating insanity of American politics. So we march on, grimly, toward Nov 5th.
Caitlin Shetterly is Frenchly’s Editor-at-Large. She is the author of the novel, Pete and Alice in Maine, (published by Harper Books in 2023).
