September 2009

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I couldn't help thinking, as I watched this, how much more impressive these women are than their husbands. True of the recent ones, anyway.

La chaîne parlementaire, which isn't known for light and trivial programming, does what may be the worst game show in the world. Three contestants who thought they were going to be on 'Qui veut gagner des millions?', find themselves answering questions like, what are the rules for being a sperm donor in France? They are faced with a choice of two possible answers, of which one is always so unbelievable that the other one must be the truth.

A programme on La chaîne parlementaire that I always enjoy is Déshabillons-les, where psychologists, linguists, sociologists etc analyse the public utterances of politicians. This one was on their reaction to political failure, and our clip is from an interview with Françoise de Panafieu, who ran for Mayor of Paris, unsuccessfully.

Very rare to hear such honesty

Six years ago I started to be fascinated by this question of listening to French, and it was this man, Raymond Devos who started it all off. A friend played me a recording of Devos at the Olympia in Paris. It was evidently hilarious, judging by the audience reaction - and I understood not one word.

Devos was the great jongleur de mots. More than any other comic he exploits the richness of the French language. And he is a clown in the finest music hall tradition.

I find the history of French popular culture fascinating, and nostalgia is as popular on the other side of the Channel as it is with the Brits. The series L'air du temps mixes the history of popular singers with the current events of the time. A nice programme

I would not normally follow one song clip with another, but there I was Saturday afternoon watching a repeat of a comedy and song nostalgia programme on France 3, when Karen Cheryl shattered the gentle bonhomie with this terrible story.

An article from the evening news on the plight of the workers who came from North Africa to rebuild France during Les 'Trente Glorieuses' and who are now stranded in a society which seems to have forgotten them

Here's an extract from the French-dubbed version of the film Elizabeth.

Now here is a real find ! I love humour, and the French have the best stand-up comics in the world. I record all the sketches I can find off French TV - and there's a lot.

However I have only one clip of Jean Carmet, and it's a corker

It's difficult to achieve a balance of content on a site such as this, and we're a bit short on scientific themes. So here's a piece on the possibility that extra-terrestrials have visited the earth. Well, popular science.

I don't do many song clips, because you can find the words on the Internet, and that's cheating ! However, this is Fernandel, a cultural icon if ever there was one

There are very few comedy sketches that can be classed at Level 1

Here's one, though

One of the things I love about coming to French television now is that there is a whole new popular culture of the 20th century to learn about - films, comedians, and singers. I had never even heard the name of Claude Nougaro until France 5 did a documentary on his life. He's become one of my favourite singers, this strange man with his face and build of a boxer, his voice of a bass Sinatra, and his inspired use of the French language.

I wanted to include a piece from the short discussion programme 'C'est à dire'. The subject - the burkha - is not an enormous issue in Britain, but in a country like France - deeply attached to the principle of secularity in public life, it raises hackles

Arte transmitted Le train de 16h50, the French dubbed version of Murder she said. I often wonder what the French make of British eccentrics such as Margaret Rutherford and James Robertson Justice. We're seen as a nation of eccentrics, of course.

Nicolas Sarkozy's laudable desire to include more women in his government was not entirely successful - Rachida Dati has now gone to Brussels to show the Eurocrats how to dress.  But Rama Yade is still with us. This very bright young woman started as a political counsellor to the President. He gave her the job of representing the Rights of Man in the French Foreign Office, where she collided painfully with the Secretary of State Bernard Kouchner, who does not tolerate anyone who looks prettier on television than he does

So now she is Minister for Sport, and gets to go to all the big matches and chat to the players on the plane on the way back. I like her a lot.

I keep hoping that Arte will broadcast the French dubbed version of Forman's Amadeus. Here's the next best thing, an interview in the series Café Picouly with a theatre producer who was smitten by this - terribly inaccurate - but very engaging film

What would we do without Des racines et des ailes? Wonderful camera work, insights into the work of artisans who restore the patrimoine of France - and clear voice overs. Perfect for Level 1 extracts

Judi Dench and Bob Hoskins ham it up in this film on the founding of the Windmill Theatre in London

David Pujadas interviewed Florence Foresti on the evening news. One of the leading female French comics, she has taken a couple of years off to have a baby. She believes that women can enjoy themselves after becoming mothers - hence the title of her show, which tends to raise Anglo-Saxon eyebrows a bit.

One can find Stéphane Berne's passion for the monarchies of Europe, and the panting enthusiasm with which he addresses the camera, rather trying. But the series Secrets de l'histoire is well-produced, and perfect for the student of the language

We saw Florence Foresti being interviewed earlier. Here is one of the sketches to which she referred from a couple of years ago on Laurent Ruqier's evening chat-show

I was surprised that Arte television - a cultural channel if ever there was one - should decide to screen The Tudors, that sixteenth century soap opera of daily passions at the Palace of Whitehall. The mock-Tudor dialogue is awful, but it sounds better in French than it does in English.

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