[Favourite of the Month] Déa Versini is a police captain with a very special partner: her imaginary friend.
« Moi personnellement je serais l'incarnation de son inconscient mais c'est pas prouvé. »
French crime/comedy drama
Double Je premiered last Friday on
France 2. This
8 x 52-minute series was created by
Camille Pouzol (
Hard) with
Stéphane Drouet and Lionel Olenga (1).
From 2013 to 2019, this duo produced
Chérif, the crime drama they co-created (with
Laurent Scalese) for
Making Prod, the company behind
Double Je, and the same channel.
Chérif tried a similar concept in a 2017 episode where
Kader Chérif teamed up with
Huggy Bear from
Starsky & Hutch (
Antonio Fargas reprising his famous role), whom he was alone to see and hear.
Captain Déa Versini, a shrewd Bordeaux police detective on the eve of her 40th birthday, lives with her young son and her italian father. When
Alice Duval is found strangled in her appartment, Déa goes to the crime scene. She arrives late in her old red Alfa Romeo, awaited by a tall man with a mustache and a tuxedo. Named
Jimmy, he's classy, smart, witty... and he exists only in her imagination. Which doesn't prevent him to investigate with the capitaine until Déa's boss assigns her a temporary partner:
Lieutenant Matthieu Belcourt. His arrival disrupts an already complicated life.
Carole Weyers, a Belgian actress seen in
Modern Family,
Grey's Anatomy,
Manhattan and
NCIS, plays Déa Versini
(2).
François Vincentelli (
Hard,
Les Chamois) becomes Jimmy with a look between James Bond and
Tom Selleck in
Magnum, P.I.. Matthieu is played by
Ambroise Michel (
Cut,
Nina,
Plus belle la vie). The lieutenant is uptight, by-the-book, and averse to Versini's laid-back style of policing. Jimmy notices that his resumé is too good for a temp job at the police station and gets quickly annoyed by his presence. Déa tries to avoid working with Belcourt on the Duval case but she's not indifferent to his charm.
Alice wrote with
Arnaud Lentin, an environmental activist, a book about an important testing laboratory involved in a scandal. The laboratory belongs to
Jean Duval de Thiéré, a powerful man and Alice's father.
Double Je is fun, very well done, subtle and the cast is absolutely brilliant. It has shades of
Randall & Hopkirk,
Moonlighting and the
Cary Grant comedies. There's a poster of
The Philadephia Story (1940) in Déa's cosy "office", which is meant to be the place of the archives in the commissariat. The appearances of Jimmy sometimes remind of
Al in
Quantum Leap.
Capitaine Versini and Lieutenant Belcourt learn to know each other. They're called to the hospital by Déa's ex-husband
Pr. Vincent Laubier because a multiple sclerosis patient says he witnessed a murder while he was hidden to smoke cannabis. Except that there's no dead body! Though the biggest mystery maybe Matthieu himself because his file is classified "Secret défense" and he has a second cell phone. The first couple of episodes of
Double Je have great dialogues, a finely wrought characterization, good stories and an astute direction by
Laurent Dussaux (
Fais pas ci, fais pas ça,
Hard).
Fleur Geffrier plays
Jeanne Granger,
the pathologist.
Bruno Gouery is hilarious as
Brigadier Fred Jolin. Also starring
Pierre Laplace (
Commissaire Xavier Frémont),
Bastien Bernini (
Damien),
Denis Sebbah (
Déa's psychoanalyst),
François Dunoyer (
Massimo Versini, Déa's father) and
Giacomo Angotti (
Théo, Déa's son).
Le système D guest stars
François Berland (
Jean Duval), the excellent
Jean-Toussaint Bernard as
Arnaud Lentin, etc.
Daniel Njo Lobé (
Astrid et Raphaëlle) plays
Maître Bernard.
Débat de conscience guest stars
Benjamin Bellecour as Vincent Laubier.
Both episodes were penned by Camille Pouzol and Lionel Olenga. Camille Pouzol is also the artistic director and the
directrice de collection of the series. Story arcs by Camille Pouzol and Stéphane Drouet. Produced by Making Prod with
France Télévisions. With the participation of
TV5Monde and the support of
Région Grand Est. Stéphane Drouet is the producer. Music composed and performed by
Michaël Tordjman and Maxime Desprez. Cinematography by
Bruno Degrave. The charming main title sequence was designed by
Romain Bedouet. Filmed in
Reims,
Epernay and
Bordeaux. Distributed by
Mediawan Rights (
Alter Ego is the international title).
(1) Based on an original idea from
Stéphane Drouet.
(2) In March,
Carole Weyers received the
Best actress award (French competition) for
Double Je at the
Séries Mania festival.
Amandine Attard contributed to this review.
https://www.makingprod.com/
http://www.leparisien.fr/culture-loisirs/series/l-ancienne-base-militaire-de-reims-reconvertie-en-studios-de-series-tele-25-04-2019-8059917.php
