THE NOTICE
Fans of "true crime", stories based on real facts that have challenged the news in their time, often find their happiness on Netflix. Whether as a documentary series ( Making a murderer, Ted Bundy: self-portrait of a killer ) or fiction ( Extremely wicked, shockingly evil and vile ), the format is very popular platform. Who, with Gregory , presents for the first time a "true crime" in the French.
The story is that of "little Grégory" Villemin, a four-year-old boy found tied up in the Vologne in 1984. A case that has challenged the chronicle, never found its end point, and therefore offered an ideal material for a documentary series in five one-hour episodes. At the controls, we find Gilles Marchand, screenwriter addicted to thriller adaptations ( Harry a friend who wants you good , and the excellent Only the Beasts on the bill this Wednesday).
A dive into the 1980s and his lawless journalism
The result has nothing to envy to the big American productions. Marchand undeniably has this sense of narration essential to keep his viewer in suspense. Archives, sometimes unpublished, including recordings of certain conversations by journalists, as well as those of the (or) famous raven (x), rarely heard, are punctuated by interviews of the protagonists of the time. Lawyers, investigators and especially journalists succeed to tell the story and its side.
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Because it is actually what makes the interest of the series: the side. Admittedly, Netflix addresses, chronologically tracing the whole story, to those who have not followed anything. The international audience of course, but also the young, those who were not hanging on their television or radio in 1984 and now play detective apprentices on social networks. But even the incollables of the twists will find their account. Grégory is above all a dive in the 1980s, a decade of ugly ties and dubious cuts, but also news journalism without faith or law.
A staged a little pomp, compensated by the mastery of narrative construction
The uncovered testimonials are cold on the back. Jean Ker, reporter at Paris-Match, who assumes to "racket" by collecting family photos of Villemin, to Sylvain Hebbat, proud to tell how he has placed a micro-transmitter family Bolle (facts for which he has been condemned in court), the bankruptcies of the profession are edifying.
Neither lawyers nor investigators are spared. Between the advice of the Villemin who sold the photos of their customers to the press to make money and the police commissioner sexist, the series is a vertiginous dissection of what remains one of the biggest media-legal failures of French history.
We may regret a staging sometimes a little pomp, including the reconstruction of Gregory useless room, too much music and references to the Crow of Henri-George Clouzot as subtle as a pack of reporters in hideout. But the absence of voice-over, the formidable control of the narrative construction and the fascination still exercised "the Grégory affair" make the series devour with pleasure.