You probably didn't have to be very clever to guess what the first series of Booba for Prime Video would look like. The decor ? The suburbs. That of Seine-Saint-Denis. Heroes ? Cops and thugs. And in the middle blood flows. Gang and police war. Nothing changes under the gray sky of the cities. Except that Élie Yaffa, the real name of the rapper from Boulogne, wanted to show these rivalries with as much realism as possible and far from any salon naturalism.
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By placing the action during the riots of 2005, just after the deaths of Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré in Clichy-sous-Bois, his series, which takes its name from a Moroccan valley in the Atlas, is kept as close as possible to the humans swept away by these bad winds. On the one hand, the Jebli family, which is losing its deal point and whose youngest, Driss, is forced, despite himself, to save his family from dishonor. On the other, a zealous young cop who, at the cost of methods that are not always orthodox, will want to win the esteem of the bigwigs of Octris, the drug sheriffs (Octris now replaced by Ofast, the anti-drug office). narcotics).
Sinister boss
Thus the series weaves together these two destinies, that of a Sciences Po graduate who dreamed of being an investment banker before becoming a robber (played by the cold Adam Bessa) and that of William, “Butch Cassidy” from the cop who acts on instinct, without really thinking about the consequences of his actions (excellent Noham Edje, revealed by Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi in Les Amandiers). We discover, through the network of Jebli associates, how a family can today support an entire neighborhood. How links with Moroccan suppliers are forged. And in what way these ovens, a term which designates deal points, arouse greed and are at the origin of the merciless violence which reigns in our suburbs.
Booba, who took on the role of a boss on screen - but how could it be otherwise? -, adds a little, in the sinister kind with bulging muscles. If he still has progress to make in the game, he had the intelligence to surround himself well to densify his intrigue and the double rise of these heroes. For this, he recruited the cream of screenwriters, including Marine Francou (Engrenages) and Mehdi Fikri (Hippo crate), as well as directors Marcela Said (Lupin) and Julien Despaux (Paris Police 1900). A certain guarantee of quality, at least of real effectiveness for this series which electrified the Séries Mania festival in Lille, where it was presented in preview. A fiction in permanent quest for a reality that is as raw and cruel as possible, a thousand miles from the aesthetic grandiloquence of Romain Gavras' Athena. If we were to look for comparisons, we would find them on the side of Succession among the suburbanites, but also of BAC Nord or Engrenages.
Shabby police stations
Especially since
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does not seek to glorify these characters, neither the traffickers nor the police. Rot is everywhere, in the shade of dilapidated buildings and in the dingy corridors of police stations. As in his songs, he talks about the people he knows: not the ones in the front row, the ones who are always in trouble. But he talks about it well, skillfully deciphering, and not without a certain lyricism, the origin of urban violence and its implacable mechanics.