“Mrs. America ”,“ Parliament ”,“ Run ”… the spring of the series

MORNING LIST

For the series, the shortage will come later, when the stop of filming will be felt. While the cinema is prevented by the closing of the theaters, the overheating of the domestic screens is fueled by the new seasons which bloom (it is spring) on ​​the platforms and the chains.

“Mrs. America ”: the epic of a defeat

The series by Canadian Dahvi Waller takes Alfred Hitchcock’s theorem to the extreme that “the more the villain succeeds, the more successful the film”.

The success of Phyllis Schlafly is undeniable. This American conservative activist succeeded, in the 1970s, in preventing the ratification of a constitutional amendment guaranteeing gender equality, the Equal Rights Amendment.

She is embodied here by Cate Blanchett, who makes her a knot of contradictions that only her ideological stiffness prevents from being undone. In front of her, a whole generation of feminist leaders found their interpreters. Rose Byrne is Gloria Steinem; Tracey Ullman, Betty Friedan; Margo Martindale, Bella Abzug. If the first episodes require sustained attention, so as not to get lost in the maze of political twists and turns (the 1972 presidential campaign, factional struggles within the women’s movement, etc.), Mrs. America ends up exhibiting a gallery of nuanced and rich portraits, while constantly referring to today’s questions. Thomas Sotinel

“Parliament”: in Brussels, in the cabbage

The insults of Sami Cantor (Xavier Lacaille), candid parliamentary assistant and ignorant of a lazy MEP (Philippe Duquesne), could have been the pretext for a proper demolition of the institution that houses the protagonists.

But the project of this satirical and political series (a genre little practiced in France) is not only to imitate the ravaging claws of British models (The Thick of It) or american (Veep).

It is also about education, and a lot will be learned about the European legislative process as Sami tries to get an amendment to the Fisheries Act passed. And above all to bring to light national stereotypes, through a small group of assistants representative, for one, of what remains of the British morgue (the excellent Liz Kingsman), for the other, of the new version of the Germanic superiority complex (Lucas Englander), or, for the third, of the French certainty of being right (Xavier Lacaille). Without forgetting the indispensable dose of burlesque, necessary for comic alchemy. T. S.

“Run”: an irrepressible desire to go out

In the parking lot of a gigantic shopping center, somewhere in the United States, a young woman receives a three-letter text message: “run”. Ruby (Merritt Wever) suddenly quits everything and replies “run” to her correspondent, who does the same.

From this fantasy, common to those who realize too late that the time of adolescence is over when they receive the first installments of a mortgage, Vicky Jones (assisted by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the creator of Fleabag, who co-produced Run) has created a decoction of romantic comedy, thriller and chase that keeps both characters and viewers in unstable equilibrium. The changes in tone, the comings and goings between the quasi-documentary comedy of morals and the incredible twists and turns are exhausting, and it takes all the charm of the two main performers – starting with the astonishing Merritt Wever (she played Scarlett Johansson’s sister in Marriage Story, among others) – to keep up. T. S.

“Tales from the Loop”: the daily life of the strange

The time of the eight episodes Tales from the Loop (the tales of the loop) is made for the one of today, which crawls for some and carries the others in a whirlwind. The title loop is underground, it runs under the streets of an anonymous Midwestern town.

Particle accelerator or portal to another dimension, we will not know, here fiction clearly outweighs science. The Loop is the creation of Russ (Jonathan Pryce), scholar and traditional leader of this withdrawn community. Whatever its nature, its effects are powerful. Over the course of the episodes, the Loop separates children from their parents, breaks friendships and loves.

It takes a little patience to find your place in this universe. The extraordinary events that occur do not tear this soft atmosphere, we perceive them a little deaf, we must make an effort so that they arouse some emotion. The directors of the series (including Jodie Foster – who directed the final, most touching episode), the cinematographers (including David Cronenberg’s cinematographer, Jeff Cronenweth), the magnificent score by Philip Glass and Paul Leonard-Morgan are used throughout this bias of restraint. T. S.

“The Legends Office”: the multinational of pretenses

This fifth season of Legends office is like a new circle of hell, ever further away from the light of day, from the everyday reality of ordinary people.

If the series created by Eric Rochant has sometimes been able to take on the accents of a lucid apology for its subject (the DGSE) – like its model, the trilogy of Karla, John le Carré – the writing and the staging now take a resolutely turn romantic. This one finds its incarnation in the character of Mille Sabords (for the record, all the aliases of the illegals of the Bureau of legends are taken from the thesaurus of curses of Captain Haddock) embodied by Louis Garrel, illegal in Jordan.

He finds his place in the ranks of these increasingly spectral characters who haunt all continents (we will go to Cairo, Moscow, Phnom Penh or Riyadh), pursuing ridiculous stakes, multiplying the pretenses which nevertheless leave real wounds, until the pain and bitterness outweighs the satisfaction of the rightly turned lie. T. S.

“Fauda”: the complete now on Netflix

Darker, but still as effective and particularly successful, season 3 of Fauda landed on Paris Première a few weeks ago, before joining the first two in the Netflix catalog. Small reminder: its title meaning “chaos” in Arabic, this series features the special forces unit of the Israel Defense Forces whose members are trained to blend in with the Arab population.

This season, the main enemy is less a man than a place: Gaza. Because, as one of the characters says, there more than elsewhere and even more than usual, “Everything can very quickly turn badly”. Worse, it is a nightmare from which we do not really come back alive. Without giving the spectator any respite, Fauda digs deeper into the characters and confronts them with a reality other than that of the field: that of their personal life, full of holes, populated by ghosts, damaged by post-traumatic stress and devoured by doubt and guilt. While combat technologies are becoming more and more sophisticated, as hatreds are as tenacious as khamsin, this wind that drives mad and blows over this country as large as two French departments, the characters are bloodless. The spectator comes out breathless. Emilie Grangeray

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