French true crime broke barriers this year when the non-fiction miniseries ‘Unsuspected’ premiered at Series Mania.
Such a showcase is rare for a factual program, but ‘Unpresumably’ is not a common document. The four-part investigation into a maddening cold case from the 1970s combines archival reports with structured recreations, creating a project that defies easy categorization.
“It is clear that the boundaries are blurring,” says Julia Schulte of France TV Distribution. “Is this fiction? Is this a documentary? It’s hard to say – and we’re getting to a powerful point where those lines are harder to draw. What is abundantly clear, however, is that the series is very entertaining.”
Produced by Imagissime boss Elodie Polo Ackermann – the creative director behind Netflix breakout “Who Killed Little Gregory?” – the Series Mania-selected miniseries highlighted a spellbinding storytelling experience as it followed a Parisian psychiatrist obsessed with closing the book on a series of sexual assaults and murders that remained unsolved for more than four decades.
With clean lines and narrative power, the title has left a further mark since its showcase in Lille, as France TV will broadcast the series in a primetime fiction block. And the show is one that pushes the true crime genre forward.
Sambre
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“The two worlds are coming together more than ever,” says Schulte. “Normally the boxes are strictly separated. Document buyers generally do not choose fiction, and vice versa. But now we see more permeability between the two, because French producers have shown what is possible.”
French talent indeed played an important role in the true crime wave; as director of the groundbreaking 2004 miniseries ‘The Staircase’, Oscar winner Jean-Xavier de Lestrade could easily call himself the godfather of the genre. Lately, the godfather has been working on scripted, showrunning limited series such as the HBO original “Laetitia” and the critically acclaimed “Sambre: Anatomy of a Crime.” Whether the reconstruction of a 2011 murder case or more than thirty years of sexual violence, both used true crime as a framework for broader sociological problems.
The results were great. “Sambre: Anatomy of a Crime” broke primetime records when it aired last winter on public broadcaster France 2, scoring more than 4 million viewers per episode and achieving an average market share of 19%. The limited series racked up an additional 3 million views online and nearly 6 million VOD plays.
Other filmmakers have found success by reopening the same case in two different iterations. Production companies La Dame de Cœur and Effervescence first explored a 1970s murder with the 2022 crime documentary ‘The Agnes Leroux Affair: Confidences of a Convict’, before bringing out the glitz and shine for the scripted version, ‘French Roulette – A Mother’s Ordeal’. ” Set in Nice, the latter series was picked up by Paramount, and was the first French original when the Paramount+ platform launched in Gaul.
And while true crime remains a driving force in the US, Scandinavia and Germany, France TV’s Julia Schulte believes that settings like the Cote d’Azur in ‘French Roulette’ and the Paris of ‘Unsuspected’ can give these titles much more cachet while at the same time can help The French series distinguish themselves in international markets that already have strong local production.
“There are a lot of powerful images associated with France,” she says. “As we clearly saw with the Olympic Games, Paris remains quite magical for the whole world, even in English-speaking markets. We can also export that.”
“French roulette – a mother’s ordeal”