SERIELAND RECO - "Black Mirror", "Sense8", "Friends", "Household Scenes", "Bojack Horseman" ... in the series we also celebrate Christmas.
Since when do these special episodes exist?
And how do we celebrate Christmas in the series?
Eva Roque and her team of serivores, Margaux Baralon, Clémence Olivier, Clement Lesaffre, Magali Butault and Tristan Barraux, offer you a selection of the best "Christmas Specials".
For several years in England, the United States and now in France, the "Christmas Special", the Christmas episode has given rhythm to many of our cult series.
It allows producers to close a series like
The Office
British version by Ricky Gervais did.
Other productions use it to mark a break between December and the end of January and to mark a temporality.
But how do we celebrate Christmas in the series?
Is the Christmas spirit with its share of good feelings still there?
To talk about it, Eva Roque surrounds herself with her team of serivores: Margaux Baralon, Clémence Olivier, Clément Lesaffre, Magali Butault and Tristan Barraux.
SERIELAND recommends you in this episode:
A Romantic Christmas Episode:
Sense8
on Netflix
A Creepy Christmas:
Black Mirror
on Netflix
A Good Piece of Laughter:
Friends
on Netflix
A tree, decorations but no mask:
Household scenes
on M6
To make fun of traditions:
Bo Jack Horseman
on Netflix
The new "Christmas special":
Don't do this, don't do that
on France 2
A Perfect Christmas in a Perfect Family:
The Little House on the Prairie
on Teva
Want to listen to the other SERIELAND episodes?
>> Find the episodes on our Europe1.fr site and on Apple Podcasts, Google podcasts, Deezer, Dailymotion and YouTube, or your usual listening platforms.
>> Find here the user manual to listen to all the podcasts of Europe 1
The essential Christmas episodes of the SERIELAND team:
Sense 8: Christmas Special (between season 1 and season 2)
The pitch of the series:
8 people were born at exactly the same time in different countries and are connected to each other by thought.
It is the series of the sisters Lana and Lilly Wachowski, which we know mainly because they directed The Matrix.
It's a somewhat mystical series, you have to hang on ...
Why we recommend the Christmas episode:
it's literally a Christmas present.
It went live on December 23, 2016, a year and a half after Season 1 ended, and the remainder of Season 2 aired just six months later.
Be careful, it lasts 2 hours, it's almost a Christmas TV movie!
It's an episode that takes a lot of liberties with the codes of the "Christmas Special".
If during half of the episode, there is no question of Christmas, little by little we come to it.
On the program: a snowball fight in Berlin, a decorated Christmas tree in Mexico City, an ugly sweater in San Francisco, skating in Chicago… and an avalanche of good feelings.
Black Mirror: "White as snow"
The pitch of the series:
Black Mirror
is a benchmark in dystopia.
Each episode develops a different plot and imagines all possible technological drifts.
Why we recommend the Christmas episode:
Snow White
takes all the codes of the genre to twist them better.
It is snowing, two men are talking to each other in front of a roaring fire, but they are eating canned goods and they seem to have relatively little conversation.
They end up telling each other stories, far removed from Christmas tales.
Obviously, technological advancement will go wrong.
We end up with three stories in parallel, each more horrible than the other.
In the end,
Black Mirror
could only offer an anti-Christmas episode, and it was successful.
Friends: "The One in Disguise" (Season 7 Episode 10)
The pitch of the series:
the cult sitcom of the years 1990-2000 tells the daily life of Ross, Rachel, Joey, Chandler, Monica and Phoebe, six friends who evolve in a fantasized New York.
Why we recommend the Christmas episode:
This episode, in which Ross wants to educate his son Ben about the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah and finds himself disguised as an armadillo, an exotic tortoiseshell animal, is extremely funny.
The costumes are grotesque, the floodgates are linked and Ross is constantly interrupted ... But the strength of the episode is also to evoke a more serious subject: it is a question of transmission, of acceptance of different religions and different cultures.
It is an ode to tolerance.
Bo Jack Horseman: "Sabrina's Christmas wish"
The pitch of the series:
Bo Jack Horseman
tells the story of an alcoholic and depressed horse, ex-Hollywood star.
He is known to have been the star of the
family
sitcom
Galipettes
which has since become very hasbeen.
We follow him in his daily life surrounded by anthropomorphic animals such as a Labrador, Mister Peanut Butter, actor and former rival.
There are also humans like Todd Chavez, his very lazy best friend.
Why we recommend the Christmas episode:
If you like cynicism and dark humor, this episode is for you.
Todd offers to watch a special episode of
Galipettes as a family,
except that the horse is clearly jaded by this kind of tradition.
Bo Jack even pokes fun at the making of Christmas episodes in general and it's very funny.
Household scenes
: Will there be masks at Christmas?
Will Huguette and Raymond be able to celebrate Christmas to more than six people?
The M6 series, which gathers an average of 4 million viewers each evening, offers episodes every year that evoke the end of year celebrations, in reference to the daily life of a large majority of French people at that time.
While this year everyone is preparing to celebrate Christmas in a somewhat special way, due to the coronavirus epidemic,
Scenes of Households
proposes on the contrary to remove the masks.
"We will especially not be glued to the news," says Mathieu Laurentin, the executive producer of the series.
"Our mission is to entertain people and I believe that a Christmas under Covid-19 is a little anxiety-provoking Christmas. We are not here for that".
"SERIELAND" is a Europe 1 studio podcast
Author and presentation: Eva Roque
Production: Christophe Pierrot
Editorial project manager: Adèle Ponticelli
Distribution and editing: Clémence Olivier, Magali Butault, Tristan Barraux and Salomé Journo
Graphic design: Karelle Villais
Director of Europe 1 Studio: Olivier Lendresse