Europe1 .fr with AFP / Photo credit: BERTRAND GUAY Credits: AFP 14:36 p.m., September 27, 2023

Léa Drucker embarks on a political comedy on Arte, crowned best French series at the Séries Mania festival. She embodies a humanitarian overwhelmed by her new function as minister. A satire in six episodes, in which the actress wanted "to show that politicians are fallible men and women who do not have the instructions for the function".

Crowned best French series in March at the Séries Mania festival, Arte's comedy "Sous contrôle", where Léa Drucker embodies a humanitarian overwhelmed by her new function as minister, makes it a point of honor to laugh at politics without denigrating it.

"Politics lends itself to comedy"

Available since Wednesday on arte.tv, this satire in six episodes of 30 minutes, in line with "Parliament" (France Televisions), will be broadcast on the Franco-German channel from October 5. We follow Léa Drucker in the shoes of Marie Tessier, director of NGOs propelled Minister of Foreign Affairs on the day of a hostage-taking in the Sahel.

Forced to negotiate with both terrorists and her European counterparts, while responding to the concerns of families and the expectations of the President of the Republic (Laurent Stocker), this woman on the ground will discover at her expense the tortuous backstage of the exercise of power.

At the origin of the project, the desire to write a political comedy, a genre popular with the Anglo-Saxons, by the Belgian writer Charly Delwart. "Politics lends itself to comedy. It is a breeding ground of crazy complexity, "explained the creator to the press in March in Lille during Series Mania.

"Fallible men and women"

"I wanted to show that behind politics, there are fallible men and women who do not have the instructions for the function," insisted this admirer of the screenwriter Armando Iannucci ("Veep", "In the loop").

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"We were quite clear on this," said Olivier Wotling, then director of fiction at Arte. It was a question of "showing the difficulty in an uncontrollable world of having to assume these tasks", he explained, recalling that the previous series of Arte, "Games of influence", followed the same logic.

Highly documented, "Sous contrôle" is inspired in particular by an article in Le Monde on the kidnapping of Areva employees in 2010 in Niger. Among the dysfunctions reported by the newspaper, "two lines of negotiation had been paralleled" to the point "that the terrorists no longer knew who to contact," recalled Charly Delwart.

Enough to push the cursors of the genre. To the delight of Léa Drucker: "I dreamed for some time to play a comedy that has a slightly devious spirit and especially that makes sense," she assured.