This week, the internet was filled with jokes by a headline: "An Orbán MEP resigns after participating in an orgy in full confinement by the pandemic."
Suddenly, the European Union and Brussels seemed a much more exciting universe than we ever imagined.
That the host of the sex party blamed "rival orgies" for giving the tip painted another layer to a plot apparently taken from
Eyes Wide Shut
.
Some journalists surely ran to ask their boss to transfer to that city where it rains 200 days a year, they eat mussels with potatoes and whose most visited statue is a dwarf boy pissing in a boxed fountain.
It is true that in the
Parliament
series
, available on Filmin, there are no orgies, and not even good mussels.
What's more, they spend much of their first season arguing about shark fins.
Even with those ingredients, it has become the most fun that came from the European Parliament in this fateful 2020. At least it was before learning the paradoxical story of the ultra-conservative Hungarian.
"The problem in Europe is not only a deficit of love, it is also a deficit of presence and visibility.
Thanks to
Veep
,
House of Cards
or
The West Wing of the White House
, we are all familiar with the American political system.
And that their federalism is not more complicated than that of the EU ”, explained the creator of this crazy comedy, Noé Debré, to Le Figaro.
Parliament
is fun and scathing, and it squeezes out all the topics available, but is at the same time didactic.
Although it seems incredible for the genre, with its trips, stabs and bad temper, the series ends up defending between the lines the values of the union, and everything that the system contributes, better than any politician.
Amid pure chaos, placing the EU in the collective imagination gives the organism relevance by itself, a position in the culture war.
Just as, no matter how many times we see the White House explode in the cinema, the oval office remains that icon that fits so well on the screen.
Young French assistant Sammy Cantor is our entry into this seemingly boring, bureaucratic world.
And it didn't take long for us to discover that the EU is a cage of crickets of lobbies, civil servants, inept MEPs and some Swedish Nazis, but that there are also touches of affection in their offices.
Even when it is involved in the fight against
finning
(a practice by which alerts to sharks are savagely ripped off), an issue as unintelligible as the EU is to the average citizen.
Luckily, viewers who think this is an insider documentary can rest assured.
That is only a mere excuse, a
macguffin
, for the viewer to know each section of the body, from Brussels to Strasbourg, and to be able to insult the Spanish nobles a little.
Although it did not know it needed it, the EU deserved its own Armando Ianucci (creator of
Veep
and
The thick of it
), and yet,
Parlement
(in its original French version) does not get carried away by fashion.
Who wants to find unscrupulous politicians and mouths full of insults, this is not your series.
This is a sweet and conciliatory political satire, closer to classic
Hollywood
screwball comedy
like
New Moon
than to British cynicism.
It also does so by appropriating one of the great values of the continent: linguistic diversity.
You can hear French, German and English, an ideal ingredient for your own misunderstandings.
Sometimes they even deign to the cameo of the Spanish and Catalan, although the Iberian Peninsula is clearly ignored by the French neighbors, which will embarrass a Juan Carrasco called to be a great MEP.
Worst unemployed is the United Kingdom.
The European Union returns its blow in the form of satire, that element for which they always stood out, given that, after years watching how the British exceeded in political comedy - from
Yes, Minister
(also available, and essential, in Filmin) to
The Thick of it
-,
the post-Brexit era has left us orphans of its gaze (they are already preparing a series of Boris Johnson in pandemic).
Thus,
Parliament
travels back years in the past to try to be the work that portrays Brexit at its peak of follies and lies.
Rose, a British assistant, is our gateway to the UK.
A highly prepared woman who watches her world fall apart.
His MEP was pro-Brexit but now realizes that it will put him out of a job.
The unreason of a movement turned into surrealism and sadness, and, years later, into comedy.
Who needs an orgy with these elements?
This is the series that Orbán, nor his now famous deputy, will not like.
All premiere and return dates, in the Fifth Season series calendar
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