“For the moment, it is impossible to say whether this is an incident or a disaster. » April 1986, the Chernobyl plant has just exploded, the editorial staff of the front page has no idea that a cataclysm of another order is brewing. One of the three public service channels will be privatized. Convinced that it will be Antenne 2 or FR 3, TF1 journalists are for the time being more keen on “understand what is going on” with Chernobyl and this cloud so disciplined that it miraculously stopped its course at the borders of France.
The combination of rich documentation and personal memories
It is obviously no coincidence that Thomas Quillardet chooses to open his fresco devoted to TF1 in this way: in three hours, French television (1) plunges the viewer into the history of the channel between 1986 and 1994, at the pivotal time of its privatization. To construct this ambitious play, the author and director, born in 1979, carried out extensive documentation work, viewed hours of archives and met around thirty journalists.
→ REREAD. “ORTF, they invented TV”, a history of television
While stuffing the show with a few nods to his own childhood memories – Michel Chevalet’s explanations, the title of The Thursday Event“They walked on the One”, which had intrigued the young reader of Tintinas he was at the time – Thomas Quillardet intertwines historical and fictional elements in a resolutely theatrical framework. On stage, neither screen nor video but a real theater set, the mess of offices – adorned of course with dial telephones – where the emulation of the journalistic adventure is measured.
Hilarity tinged with bitter irony
The sequences replayed as they took place on the air (the report on the radioactive salad, the face-to-face Tapie-Le Pen) are close to the daily life of an editorial staff soon turned upside down by the takeover by Francis Bouygues . Audience curves suddenly bloom in the elevator, and certain subjects no longer have citizenship.
French television also reconstructs the incredible hearing of the businessman, surrounded by his henchmen, before the national commission for communication and freedoms, for the attribution of the channel. He then promises a high-level cultural offer, theater galore and an evening for “Olivier Messiaen’s birthday”.
Irrepressible hilarity, obviously tinged with bitter irony, seizes the room. Impossible to resist the humor deployed by Thomas Quillardet and his troupe of formidable actors, who take on all the roles with mischievous agility. Through the intelligence of laughter emerges a profound reflection on the role of television and the meaning of information. A mirror emerging from the past that powerfully reflects the issues of an ever more burning topicality.
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