COLOMBINE (TF1)

Corinne Masiero puts the chapka of Capitaine Marleau aside for something completely different.

The bottom line: Capitaine Marleau, ange gardien.

Launched in 2015 on France 3, Capitaine Marleau stars Corinne Masiero as an offbeat gendarme with no first name. Produced and helmed by French television powerhouse Josée Dayan (Les rois maudits, Les misérables, Le comte de Monte Cristo), the crime drama gradually became a ratings juggernaut and a pop culture phenomenon. Last year, both Dayan and Masiero took a break from Marleau to shoot Quand sort la recluse, a 2X90-minute film for France 2's Collection Fred Vargas (based on the work of the bestselling crime writer).

Corinne Masiero reprised her role of Violette Retancourt, a character she first played in 2009, alongside Jean-Hughes Anglade and Jacques Spiesser (Magellan). Except that she had now the tremendous popularity brought by Capitaine Marleau. Last april, the unconventional detective hit another rating record (7.70 million viewers/32.8%!) The next day, Part 1 of Quand sort la recluse caught 4.64 million viewers (20.65%). Those numbers certainly didn't hurt the announcement earlier in the month that Corinne Masiero would play a nun for TF1 in Colombine, a TV movie written by its director Dominique Baron and Sophie Deschamps (with Anne  & Marine Rambach) and to be filmed in Senegal.

Not just any nun, as the press informed us, but "a whiskey drinking, trigger-happy nun with a strong temperament who runs a bush dispensary welcoming ill children and orphans" (1). Colombine (no last name) shows her shotgun in the pre-credit sequence. Mélia, an idealistic emergency doctor, arrives from Paris to work at the dispensary. Oddly, though she was born in this troubled West African country, Mélia wasn't curious enough to get information about its current situation. Colombine celebrates her arrival with a stock of unused jokes from Capitaine Marleau.

The nun raises a little girl named Amina like her daughter since the civil war. Mélia puts herself in great danger when she tries to learn more about her origins, which forces Colombine to intervene. The leader of the opposition to the country's president takes refuge in the dispensary. Colombine is basically a compilation of Marleau's one-liners and social commentaries mixed with a compilation of tropes from Joséphine, ange gardien. Interestingly, Dominique Baron directed the pilot of TF1's long-running comedy/drama in 1997. Some scenes of Colombine are involuntarily funny.

Also starring Annabelle Lengronne (Mélia), Noom Diawara (Qu'est-ce qu'on a fait au Bon Dieu?) as Bakary, Jimmy Woha Woha (Aziz), Julie Judd (Manon), Issaka Sawadogo (Quand sort la recluse, Guyane) as Issaka, Sandra Luce (Sandra), Alioune Badu Ba (Doukoure), Hanae Capraja (Amina), Namory Keita (Moussa), dancer, choreographer and actress Prudence Maïdou as Mata, Lamine Ndiaye (Bishop Dabo), etc. Produced by Big Band Story (Al Dorsey, détective privé, Coup de foudre à...) with TF1 in co-production with Solo Films, Be-Films and Umedia (in association with uFund).

Exec produced by Stéphane Amphoux, Oumar Sy and Éric Névé. Produced by Michel Catz. Co-produced by Christophe Louis, Nadja  Khamlichi and Cédric Iland. Benjamin Dupont-Jubien and Mehdi Sabbar are the line producers. Francis Barrois and Souleymane Kebe are the production managers. Executive production in Senegal by Astou Films. Music composed by Christophe La Pinta. Cinematography by Dominique Bouilleret. Editing by Sandrine Deegen. Colombine will premiere on TF1 in 2X52 minutes on September 16.

(1) "Une religieuse à fort tempérament, buveuse de whisky à la gachette facile, qui dirige un dispensaire dans la brousse accueillant des enfants malades et orphelins." (http://tvmag.lefigaro.fr/programme-tv/corinne-masiero-bientot-dans-une-fiction-sur-tf1_7ad604e6-5614-11e9-a881-ea15f5149b64/?utm)

https://www.tf1pro.com/programmes/colombine-colombine-partie-1-196763
http://www.bigbandstory.com/index.html