STRICTLY COME SINGING

Series three of TF1's Danse avec les Stars, the French Strictly Come Dancing/Dancing with the Stars, starts on Saturday 6 October.

Called Strictly Come Dancing in the UK and Dancing with the Stars in the US, the BBC Worldwide format features celebrities with professional dance partners competing in Ballroom and Latin dances in front of three judges. Danse avec les Stars arrived in France on TF1 in February 2011, six years after the private channel tried a similar concept called Celebrity Dancing.

The contestants of DALS's third series are singer Amel Bent, singer Chimène Badi, former model Estelle Lefébure, olympic champion fencer Laura Flessel, singer/actress Lorie Pester, Swiss singer Bastian Baker, former international rugby player Christophe Dominici, singer Emmanuel Moire, roller champ Taïg Khris, and Gerard Vives. Vives is an actor who got fame with in the 1990s as gym gay employee Gérard in French sitcom Les Filles d'à côté and its sequel. Until recently he was the sidekick of host Vincent Lagaf' in the French The Price is right.

They will team up with dance pros Christophe Licata, Julien Brugel, Maxime Dereymez, Grégoire Lyonnet, Katrina Patchett, Candice Pascal, Fauve Hautot and Silvia Notargiacomo. Plus newcomers in the show, Denitsa Ikonomova and Christian Millette - both seen in the fourth series of the Canadian So You Think You Can Dance. Like the previous two series, Danse avec les Stars is hosted by Sandrine Quétier and Vincent Cerutti.

Salsa world champion Chris Marques and Canadian dancer and choreographer Jean-Marc Généreux - who was a judge on the Canadian edition of So You Think You Can Dance - remain aboard as judges but Alessandra Martines, pregnant, cannot participate this year. Judges will be four for this series as Marques and Généreux are joined by dancer and choreographer Marie-Claude Pietragalla and singer Shy'm, winner of DALS 2. Danse avec les Stars is co-produced by BBC Worldwide and TF1 Production.

In French:

http://tvmag.lefigaro.fr/programme-tv/article/divertissement/71681/danse-avec-les-stars-tout-sur-la-saison-3.html
http://www.ozap.com/actu/gerard-vives-je-dirai-non-au-remake-des-filles-d-a-cote/443090
http://www.ozap.com/actu/bastian-baker-quand-on-m-a-contacte-pour-danse-avec-les-stars-j-ai-dit-je-danse-avec-quelle-star/443086

LES PETITS MEURTRES D'AGATHA CHRISTIE

Belgian? No... French. Imagine that Hercule Poirot, the detective created by Agatha Christie, is an epicurian cop and a womanizer living in the 1930s north of France. Imagine also that his assistant is gay and interested in modern investigation techniques.

Aired by pubcaster France 2, Les petits meurtres d'Agatha Christie ("Agatha Christie's little murders") is a French adaptation of Christie's books with two local sleuths, Commissaire Jean Larosière and Inspecteur Emile Lampion, instead of her detectives.

Larosière (Antoine Duléry) and Lampion (Marius Colucci, son of comedian and actor Michel "Coluche" Colucci) first appeared during Autumn 2006 in Petits meurtres en famille (A family murder party), a mini-series produced by Sophie Révil's Escazal Films, AT-Production and Belgian television RTBF, with TV5Monde and France 2. It was adapted from Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot's Christmas by scriptwriters Anne Giafferi and Murielle Magellan, and directed by Edwin Baily.

Set in Brittany in 1939, and filmed there thanks to the support of Région Bretagne, the 4X90-minute episodes were centered on the murder of the rich Simon Le Tescou (played by movie and stage veteran Robert Hossein). They caught an average of 7.3m viewers, which was tempting then to give the detective duo of the case its own collection of TV movies. Even if events in the mini-series actually prevented it.

And so the detectives created by Giafferi and Magellan came back in January 2009 for Les petits meurtres d'Agatha Christie, starting with an adaptation of The ABC Murders set in the north of France prior to Petits meurtres en famille. The series is produced by Sophie Révil for Escazal Films, with France 2, TV5 Monde and CRRAV Nord-Pas-de-Calais (Centre régional de ressources audiovisuelles) and the support of Région Nord-Pas-de-Calais. 10 more episodes followed until now, each attracting between 4m and above 5m viewers.

The stories of Agatha Christie (Ordeal by Innocence, The Moving Finger, Peril at End House, etc...) are cleverly transported in France as a period crime comedy/drama. The ambiance evokes Christie's classics, of course, but also Midsomer Murders and Maigret with Bruno Cremer (1991-2005). Duléry is flamboyant as Larosière, the very French authoritarian, charmer and gourmet supersleuth with some secret emotional cracks. And Colucci is absolutely perfect as his young assistant, the shy and clumsy Emile, amazed by modern policing and gay.

Those two engaging, complex and subtle characters form a fun and effective pair in one of the best French television fiction since the already mentioned Maigret and Nestor Burma (1991-2003). Most regrettably, the two actors announced their departure in january and last week France 2 aired their final episode, adapted from Lord Edgware Dies, in its friday crime drama slot. An adaptation of They Do It With Mirrors will introduce a new duo, Commissaire Laurence (Samuel Labarthe) and reporter Alice Avril (Blandine Bellavoir), in the 1950s.

It will be very hard for them to top Larosière and Lampion, whose era is already a classic. Abroad Les petits meurtres d'Agatha Christie is aired in Finland, Hungary and Japan. The music is by film and TV composer Stéphane Moucha (Das Leben der Anderen) and Romain Segaud designed the great title sequence. Petits meurtres mais grande série.

In French:

http://tvmag.lefigaro.fr/programme-tv/article/serie/68278/dulery-pourquoi-j-arrete-petits-meurtres.html
http://www.leblogtvnews.com/article-tournage-des-petits-meurtres-d-agatha-christie-nouveau-duo-nouvelle-epoque-105795508.html

See also:

http://vimeo.com/15886532 (Title sequence)
http://www.stephanemoucha.com/
http://www.romainsegaud.com/

MRS. PEPPERPOT

Doctor Who - Asylum of the Daleks (Series Seven, Episode One). It's a day like any other day in Albert Square. Amy (Karen Gillan) and Rory (Arthur Darvill) have a problem, the Daleks have a problem and the new girl in the block has a problem. The Doctor (Matt Smith) has a problem too: the Daleks wants him to solve their problem.

After eight months since The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe (the 2011 Christmas special) and almost one year since the last regular episode, Doctor Who is finally back for its seventh series on BBC One and BBC America. Five episodes in september, this year's Christmas special, and the remaining eight episodes in 2013.

Series six was uneven and often talkative, looking overinvested in terms of production values at some points and the reverse at some others. And sorry but its high concept soap story arc was painful (1). But who cares anyway? As Doctor Who's 50th birthday approaches, Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill are more popular than ever. Fans majoritarily adore the work of showrunner Steven Moffat and his writing team. The ratings are great and the brand is commercially at the top globally. It's so global that viewers outside the U.K. get a pre-title sequence with Mrs Pond reassuring us just in case we'd think this is Strictly Come Dancing.

« Hang on a minute, lads, I've got a great idea! » (Charlie Croker, The Italian Job)

No Doctor at the London Olympics opening ceremony? Don't panic. We've been promised "a blockbuster every single week" for this series (2). Each episode is meant to be written like a "movie poster" and have one, which is amusing given the brouhaha around a the possibility of a jump to the big screen. The title sequence has been given a (terrible) makeover and the logo changes according to the theme of the episode. This is the "year of the blockbuster" and it starts with an Asylum of the Daleks packed, we're told, with "every Dalek ever!"

The Doctor is thought dead but the Daleks manage to bring him in front of their parliament, where he's reunited with the future ex-Pond couple because the time lord's deadliest enemies have a most unusual demand. Yes, the rigid pepper pots do have a parliament and even a Prime minister! - Question Time must worth a look. « What do you know of the Dalek asylum? » asks M to 007. The Daleks have a planet where they dump their broken ones (the battle-scarred, the insane, Spike Milligan's "Pakistani Dalek", etc...) (3)

« It never made any sense to me, » comments a lucid Doctor. « Because you'd just kill them. » But they have not only a parliament and a PM, they have also cafés philo where they discuss the beauty of the "divine hatred"(« Perhaps that is why we have never been able to kill you. ») This sudden state of enlightenment doesn't include Georges Bizet apparently. Somewhere on the asylum planet a young woman is listening to Carmen and making soufflés while the crème de la crème of nutter Daleks is about to escape.

« How much trouble, Mr. Pond? Out of ten? Eleven. »

The real divine element of Asylum of the Daleks, written by Steven Moffat himself, is the early arrival of Jenna-Louise Coleman, due to appear as the Doctor's new companion at Christmas. There will be no two-parter but we cannot bet for no arc as her introduction augurs another contrived storyline - the "twist" was no Keyser Söze - to replace the Pond soap opera. Moffat's recycling of his own previous ideas has been widely noticed and the episode displays a formidable sense of self-awareness, which culminates with the « Run, you clever boy. And remember » scene.

The Daleks won't remember (oh, lucky them). « Doctor who? » Precisely... On the plus side, director Nick Hurran gives a true cinematic feel to this Asylum of the Daleks and a return of Anamaria Marinca (The Last Enemy) as Darla Von Karlsen, the "Dalek puppet" (surely they have no word for "action figure"), would be interesting. Matt Smith's portrayal of the Doctor remains amazing and Nicholas Briggs does a superb job as the voice of the Daleks.

(1) http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2012-05-21/steven-moffat-people-who-call-sherlock-and-doctor-who-too-complex-are-presumably-fairly-stupid
(2) http://www.cultbox.co.uk/news/headlines/4585-doctor-who-exec-on-series-7-the-shows-fans-and-a-female-doctor
(3) http://www.telegoons.org/milligan_pakistani_dalek.htm

http://www.cathoderaytube.co.uk/2012/09/doctor-who-series-7-asylum-of-daleks.html
http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2012/09/doctor-me
http://www.tardib.fr/article-critique-doctor-who-asylum-of-the-daleks-7x01-109952993.html (In French)
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-09/01/dr-who