"A guy, a girl" is back: for the worse or for the laughter?

• The humorous patch broadcast from 1999 to 2003 should return in the coming months in prime time on TF1.

• If Alexandra Lamy and Jean Dujardin will not resume their role, new duos should replay the best sketches of the series.

• Almost 20 years after the end of the broadcast, some jokes with sexist or homophobic overtones have aged badly... Will TF1 take this into account?

A wind of nostalgia will blow through your television: in the coming months, TF1 will broadcast in prime time the best sketches of

, France 2's flagship program in the 2000s. During its back-to-school conference, the director of the antennas of the TF1 group, Xavier Gandon, spoke of the humorous tablet as a “French heritage of television”.

If Jean Dujardin and Alexandra Lamy will not resume their role, Xavier Gandon spoke of “unexpected and unpublished” duets which will reinterpret certain emblematic scenes.

Something to bring back memories.

Nearly 500 episodes, broadcast between 1999 and 2003, introduced the general public to the Jean Dujardin/Alexandra Lamy duo in the roles of Chouchou and Loulou.

Through these humorous pastilles, the daily life of an average couple: their holidays, their friends, their joys, but also their dramas... A program to which the public remains attached, as evidenced by the success of their rebroadcast on social networks: the channel Official YouTube has over 686,000 subscribers, and snippets are regularly shared on Twitter.

No wonder then that TF1 is capitalizing on the concept.

However, when we watch

en 2022, we can sometimes feel… unease.

#Marriage, #exchange, #breakup ... the #discussions are lively 😂 😂#chouchouetloulou #ungarsunefille pic.twitter.com/xKK5It8Z1u

— A guy a girl (@ugufofficiel) November 9, 2019

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Sexism, homophobia: a program that smells of the 2000s

Some sequences have aged somewhat poorly, and we're not just talking about the old flip phone or the crocheted outfits.

By presenting Chouchou and Loulou,

gives us to see a caricature of men, women, and more broadly of the heterosexual couple of the early 2000s. On the program, an unbearable mother-in-law who constantly interferes in the life of the couple, friends more or less well-intentioned, and a regular humorous gimmick: Jean complains about Alex's attitude… And vice versa.

Jean is described as a macho, with borderline thoughts, who flirts with lots of other women, passionate about football and incompetent for any household chore.

Alexandra is presented as hysterical, jealous as can be, who absolutely cares about marriage and children, and is a good hostess.

A “normal” couple, ultimately, caricatured to the extreme.

Problem: isn't the second degree sometimes used for complacency with a certain form of sexism or ordinary homophobia?

"Cleaning makes you cry" ... yes or no ???

👍👎 ... 😉😉😉#chouchouetloulou #ungarsunefille pic.twitter.com/kwFlF6SfQO

— A guy a girl (@ugufofficiel) October 22, 2019

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As Valentin Garnier explained in L'Obs in 2021, the program "played with sexist and macho codes, but without escaping it itself".

"While the series plays with clichés, it also capitalizes on the image of the 'redneck' perfectly embodied by the character of Jean.

Can you imagine today the main character of a sitcom ranting, like Jean, about women who are good for nothing except cleaning?

“, added the journalist.

Symptom of an era perhaps, several sketches address the issue of homosexuality through disgust, rejection, fear.

For example, at the hairdresser's, where Jean asks his hairdresser not to touch him any more when the latter flirts with him, or at the restaurant, where he explodes in anger at the announcement of the homosexuality of the psychologist who deals with him. their couples therapy.

And this killer sentence:

“You don't know what it's like to live with a woman!

"But he knows what it's like to live with a man," Alexandra replies.

“No, he knows what it's like to live with a gay man, it's not the same.

" Vibe.

Yes, it's second degree, and we can see in it a criticism of homophobic people… But the fact remains that it is difficult to imagine such a line being broadcast in prime time on TF1.

imagine this scene in 2022, back then it was normal 😭 https://t.co/aCtmZj4dt6 pic.twitter.com/ck9b6bbyix

— |

(@renesmey_) July 3, 2022

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Keep the best and laugh

To say that all the episodes of

at the Stake should be thrown out would be exaggerated, and wrong.

If the series remains as watched (and rebroadcast on NRJ12, YouTube, Twitter…) as a madeleine of Proust on television, it is because it has a lot of humorous elements that work, couple bickering that can speak to everyone to day-to-day issues.

These dynamics continue to be reproduced in many short programs broadcast before the 8:00 p.m. news, and in particular

, if only one had to be mentioned.

We like to see in it an imperfect love (which couple is perfect all the time?), with which we can identify and whose flaws we can criticize to reassure ourselves about our own relationship (or our celibacy).

In addition,

illustrates, like a time capsule, what it was like to be a "modern" couple in the 2000s: two partners who work, who have projects, each with their entourage and their distinct passions, which communicate.

But the program also caricatures gender roles, especially when Jean sees his virility attacked, or when Alex rebels and sends everything waltzing.

Above all, reviewing the series 20 years after its last broadcast, what marks is the question of the mental load: Alexandra takes care of everything, plans everything.

Already in 1999, it was an issue that was shown, discussed and mocked, in particular by the excuses of Jean who does not “know where these things are stored” or who lets go “but why didn't you tell me?

Between fiction and reality, there is only one step.

Happy #Saturday, all in #beauty 😊#chouchouetloulou #ungarsunefille pic.twitter.com/H6TVfGAkeE

— A guy a girl (@ugufofficiel) October 5, 2019

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A paradigm shift, including outside the studios

Reproducing

in 2022 also means eliminating attitudes of domination within film studios themselves.

In 2018, during an interview with the Belgian media The Last Hour, Alexandra Lamy had declared: "For

, I only received a third of Jean Dujardin's salary, while the series was produced by three women and we had a program director", while specifying his commitment to equal pay in the world of cinema.

“After eight or nine months, I talk to Jean about it.

He was all the more scandalized because it was often me who rewrote the texts or adapted them.

I was doing more work than him and I was earning much less,” she added.

The actress had also told how Jean Dujardin had himself intervened: “He went to the producers' office and demanded that I earn the same as him, otherwise he would leave the program.

The producers, Isabelle Camus and Hélène Jacques, had denied these remarks:

“This statement is totally erroneous and we want to reestablish the truth about the difference in salary treatment of which she claims to be a victim.

The first season having been shot almost nineteen years ago, Alexandra Lamy probably no longer remembers the fees paid to her.

Ouch.

Since the end of the program in 2003, many things have changed, especially in the film industry.

The sector was particularly shaken by the #MeToo wave, which revealed the systems of domination and abuse of power at work off-screen.

Many actresses and filmmakers mobilized against Roman Polanski's nomination for the Césars in 2019, while the 50/50 Collective was created, for more equality in the audiovisual and cinema sector.

Things are moving, television programs are diversifying and attacking current themes that shake our society: from Skam France to Plus Belle La Vie, we talk about sexist and sexual violence, racism, we show LGBT + families... Even if it means doing a reboot of

, might as well give it a little facelift to make it in tune with the issues of our time.

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• Television

• Series

• TF1

• Couple

• Jean Dujardin

• alexandra lamy

• TV program

• gender equality

• Homophobia