"Eurovision: Europe Shine a Light", Saturday May 16, France 2,
at 8:55 p.m.
The health crisis was right for the 2020 edition, which was to be held in Rotterdam. To console the "eurofans", the organization decided to offer a replacement program entitled "Europe, Shine a Light" ("Europe, make a light shine" in French) broadcast live on France 2. Stéphane Bern, back du Perche where he was confined, will comment on this entertainment from the premises of France Televisions. Exit Sandy Héribert who was originally to join him. The specialist in crowned heads will be surrounded, from a distance, by former participants and animators. This special two-hour evening will bring together the 41 artists who should have competed this year. In duplex from their place of confinement, Tom Leeb, the French representative, and his competitors will interpret their song and then join their voices in a collegial title in tribute to the victims of the pandemic. Former winners, like the Dutchman Duncan Laurence who won last year, will also participate in the event by singing competition classics.
"Orient Christians, 2000 years of history", Saturday May 16, on Public Senate, at 9:10 pm (two parts)
The eventful history of Eastern Christians is told with brio in this documentary by Thomas Marlier and Marc Wattrelot. Persecuted by the Romans, Christians see their religion become official after the conversion of Emperor Constantine. Power struggles appear between Byzantium and the eastern patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. Paradoxically, the Arab-Muslim domination from the 7th to the 14th century allows pluralism within Christianity. "These Christians transmitted to the Arab world the culture that they themselves had inherited from the Greeks," explains Archbishop Pascal Gollnisch, director of the Work of the Orient. But they were discriminated against with their status of "Dhimmi" (protected), taken over under the Ottoman Empire. The chapter on persecutions is discussed here, in particular the Armenian genocide of 1915. It is also a question of the missions, for example French, which formed a Christian elite. Finally, the increasingly worrying current situation of these populations, particularly in Iraq, is perfectly underlined.
"The Act", eight 50-minute episodes, on MyCanal,
In Escape at Dannemora, Patricia Arquette was unrecognizable with her greasy hair and coated body. The actress does it again in this mini-series, inspired by a real news item that hit the headlines in the United States in 2015. She plays with a toxic mother suffering from Münchhausen syndrome by proxy. Dee Dee Blanchard inflicts on her daughter Gypsy, whom she believes to be suffering from leukemia, epilepsy and cerebral palsy, youth in a wheelchair and unnecessary operations (and shown on the screen in every detail). Infantilized, Gypsy, who even ignores until her true date of birth, is of perfect docility and recognition until the impulses of adolescence break this unhealthy mutual worship. Patricia Arquette sometimes burns with absolute maternal love, sometimes with exacerbated tyranny. Lying and sincerity get married to her when it comes to telling Gypsy's sufferings, denouncing the cowardice of men, bamboozling doctors and neighbors and abusing the charity of others.
"Filming memories",
8 episodes of 30 minutes, on Disney +
For 20 years, Dan Lanigan has been collecting film accessories: trinkets, preparatory drawings, costumes, etc. He uses his knowledge to tell behind the scenes of some of Disney's most emblematic feature films: Pirates of the Caribbean, Mary Poppins, The Incredible Christmas of Mr. Jack ... Each episode is constructed like a police investigation. Finding the umbrella with the parrot head handle with which Mary Poppins descends from the sky and lands in the lives of the children Banks proved to be an almost impossible mission. But each stage of his quest is punctuated by testimonies from artists who have worked on the magic of storytelling: the composer and faithful collaborator of Tim Burton, Danny Elfman, the choreographer Dee Dee Wood. “With this program, I don't just want to share my love of the seventh art, I also hope to draw the viewer's attention to the multitude of trades and skills necessary to make a film: costume designers, carpenter, painter. .., he tells us. And maybe give birth to vocations ”.
"Les Rustres", play by Carlo Goldoni, Sunday, May 17, on France 5, at 8:50 p.m.
This 18th century Venice where the action of the Rusters is located is not at all what we imagine. At Lunardo (Christian Hecq), we don't laugh! He keeps locked up as in a cassette his daughter Lucietta (Rebecca Marder, ideal) and Margarita (Coraly Zahonero, very fine) that widower, he married. The two women stick together while working for this obtuse domestic tyrant. The argument is simple. Everything happens quickly: Lunardo wants to marry his daughter to Maurizio's son. Fortunately, Filippetto is a handsome and kind young man, but he too was crushed by his father. The barbs don't want the kids to meet. Taking advantage of the carnival, the beautiful and enterprising Felice, wife of Canciano, a good bourgeois (Gérard Giroudon, very noble), develops a stratagem, with the support of his friend Count Riccardo (Laurent Natrella, funny). They are the only two characters to be dressed in bright colors! Jean-Louis Benoit knows the Comédie-Française troupe very well. They had great successes together (Monsieur Bob'le, Les Fourberies de Scapin, Le Revizor ...). On the set - where we speak loudly: we don't know the speckled foil, among the boors - there are all the generations of the house. From the dean, Gérard Giroudon, to the young Rebecca Marder, brunette and wisely wild, superb. The text has been translated from the Venetian by Gilbert Moget. It is lively and fluid, like the movement of representation in which each one gives the best of himself with intelligence. An ideal show to share with the family.
“Peter Falk versus Columbo”, Sunday May 17, on Arte, 10:50 pm
What if his character of lieutenant with crumpled mac had vampirized Peter Falk? And if, conversely, Columbo's incredible success was due first and foremost to the personality of the actor who died in 2011? So many questions raised by the excellent documentary by Gaëlle Royer and Pascal Cuissot. It would also be better to speak of a thorough and malicious biographical investigation, which is based on numerous testimonies including that, full of laughing modesty, of Peter Falk himself or of Steven Spielberg who, in 1968, produced for the channel NBC a TV movie, Charged with murder, without knowing that he would serve as a pilot for the 69 episodes of Columbo. Falk's first steps in the Bronx, this tumor which made him lose his right eye at the age of three and gave him this look that was both fixed and asymmetrical, his beginnings as an actor late (at 29 years old) ) in the skin, ironically, of a little mafia killer. His role in Capra's latest film (Billionaire pour une jour) or his unwavering friendship and admiration for John Cassavetes, whose complexity and intentions he did not always understand when filming Husbands or Une femme sous influence. His entire career is reviewed until he crosses paths with the character created by Richard Levinson and William Link. An anti-hero par excellence, in reverse of all the police officers who then paraded on American TV. A seemingly muddled spirit, who does not like arms and suffers from a certain lack of authority. The series itself is outside of all the canons: we know the murderer from the start and the investigator arrives only a quarter of an hour after the start of the episode at the wheel of his Peugeot 403. Uh , one last thing ...?, as Columbo would say. No, except that you have to watch this documentary to understand why Peter Falk and his fiction double ended up being one.
