SERIELAND COULISSE - In the late 1990s, viewers watched with relish the wedding of their favorite "nanny".
In the last episode of season 5 of "A Nanny from Hell", Fran Fine married Maxwell Sheffield.
But this marriage was not wanted by the creators of the series.
It was the American channel CBS which imposed it.
PODCAST
An eccentric and endearing nanny, a widower and recorded laughs ... This week, in SERIELAND, Clémence Olivier takes you behind the scenes of the sitcom "Une Nounou d'Enfer".
Pacey and Joey in
Dawson
, Ross and Rachel in
Friends
, Piper and Alex in
Orange is the New Black
or even Marge and Homer Simpson….
The series are full of mythical couples!
They love each other passionately, sometimes tear each other apart, make us laugh and move us too.
One of the series couples that marked my childhood is the one formed by Fran and Maxwell in
Une Nounou d'Enfer.
This American comic series, broadcast in the 1990s on the American channel CBS and on M6 in France, is a kind of remake of
La Mélodie du Bonheur,
minus the Nazis and the nuns.
The pitch is simple: by a combination of circumstances, Fran Fine, a young saleswoman with a character as eccentric as her outfits, becomes a nanny.
She takes care of the three children of Maxwell Sheffield, a widowed and overwhelmed wealthy musical producer.
During 5 seasons, the young Jewish woman from a working-class neighborhood and her bourgeois employer turn around.
We can see that there is a strong attraction between them, they are constantly looking for each other.
And beware I spoile: at the end of season 5, the passion between these two characters who are opposed to each other materializes ... with a marriage.
On screen, Fran says yes to Maxwell in a frilly, overly flowery white dress.
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An arranged marriage
Yet Fran Drescher, the co-creator of the series, who also plays the nanny, had not at all planned that his character and that of the widower millionaire get married.
This union in season 5, it was not his idea.
It was in fact the American channel CBS which imposed it!
The marriage was arranged!
It was Fran Drescher herself who revealed it recently in an interview with Australian site News.com.
Not that the two protagonists didn't like each other, no.
But Fran and Maxwell had to continue their banter, their game of seduction.
In other words, it was not at all intended for them to nab each other, if I may use the expression.
But at the time CBS disagreed.
The chain sees the audiences of the series drop since season 4 and it says to itself that a romantic "bamboo" that can only make them go up.
So she doesn't leave many options for the creators of
Une Nounou d'Enfer.
It's simple: Fran and Maxwell must get married or the series will be stopped.
Goodbye season 6!
Fran Drescher is up against the wall.
And she cares about her baby.
So she gives in to the chain's demands.
And on May 13, 1998, Americans attended the wedding of their favorite nanny!
Bye bye Super Nanny
The following season, the lovers continue to coo.
Fran becomes pregnant and the family is growing.
But viewers no longer subscribe.
Audiences are falling again.
And the sentence falls.
The sixth season will be the last.
For Fran Drescher, it is of course a disappointment.
But not much of a surprise.
After all, ending the sexual tension between Fran and Maxwell, when that made all the salt of the series, was a risky bet.
Why would viewers want to keep watching? That's the whole point of fairy tales, isn't it?
It ends after, "they got married and had a lot of children"
A Nanny from Hell
It's a series in 6 seasons, 146 episodes
It is broadcast every day on TFX