“We are in the urgency of the news with the possibility that the government falls and perhaps a dissolution”, comments Jean-Michel Carpentier, the editor-in-chief of the magazine. 1:15 p.m. on Sundaybroadcast on the sidelines of the Sunday television news of France 2. While its teams were preparing in the greatest secrecy a series of reports in the heart of the political world entitled Estates, they were taken aback by the blaze of debates in the National Assembly and the use of 49.3 by Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, concerning the pension reform. “We find ourselves editing 90 minutes in ten days, it’s a day and night job! »
At the beginning of September, when Emmanuel Macron began the fifth month of his second presidential term, the political field seems more fragmented than ever. The invectives and other setbacks that agitate the political field seem to increasingly disinterest the French men and women. “We wanted to make a series that could bring viewers, but especially young people, to look at politics with new eyes,” says Jean-Michel Carpentier.
“There is no off”
If this idea has been in his head for several years, the moment has never been so opportune when the French political future seems more vague than ever. But what do they think, those who sit every week on the benches of the National Assembly? With this question in mind, he goes to meet them.
“I saw about twenty elected officials from all sides, one by one. To my surprise, it was immediately a rather general enthusiasm, ”he rewinds. “Our agreement with them stipulates that if we go somewhere, they don’t take us out, whatever happens, and everything we film is broadcast, there is no off. »
Cameras on their shoulders, journalists consider politicians “like characters in a series, following them in their professional but also personal activities”. The team of 1:15 p.m. on Sunday, made up of journalists whose politics is not the main subject, begins filming. In sight the anniversary date of the re-election of Emmanuel Macron which occurred in mid-April, gives the course.
The humans behind the big ideas
The objective is then that the various episodes evoke a current theme which punctuates the life of the French and the French. Behind the scenes, we are already planning to address the place of women, nuclear energy, school… “What they liked was being able to explain themselves. Sandrine Rousseau told me that if the series had existed at the time of the sequence on the barbecues, she would have explained why she had said that. Behind the great ideas there are men and women,” says Jean-Michel Carpentier.
Individuals whose work has been shaken by the pension reform for several weeks. Debates so lively that they force the public service to review its plans and urgently mount a first episode.
Among the sequences that punctuate the series, the teams of 1:15 p.m. on Sunday allowed MEPs to express themselves in front of the camera, live from the debates in the hemicycle. A journalistic process never seen, according to the editor. ” As in House of Cardswe wanted to have the expression of what they have in mind at the very moment when they follow the debates”, justifies the editor-in-chief.
Entitled Estates, this new meeting has pushed references to American productions right down to its title, inspired by the HBO series. “We added an “s” at the end because the succession does not only concern Macron. For the moment, with the exception of the extreme right, all the French political forces are in the process of succeeding themselves, ”concludes Jean-Michel Carpentier, confiding that he does not know where this unprecedented exercise will lead his teams. The second episode should arrive mid-April.