After the detective series, make way for burlesque tragicomedy in the style of the Coen brothers! Stéphane Bergmans, Benjamin d’Aoust, Matthieu Donck, the trio behind Trucereturn this Thursday and April 20 at 8:55 p.m. on Arte (and available on Arte.tv) with their new creation entitled good people. This crazy 6-episode miniseries follows the crazy story of Tom and Linda (Lucas Meister and Bérangère McNeese), a couple who set up a life insurance scam. The earthy tale of what happens when “good people”, feeling unfairly wronged by the system, decide on small arrangements with the law. Grand Prize for the series at the 2023 Luchon TV Festival, this Franco-Belgian tragicomedy, which has its eye on the Coen brothers, skilfully mixes film noir and caustic black humor.
“The series was not born from the “yellow vests”, but we were developing the beginning of our story when the “yellow vests” crisis broke out in France. We said to ourselves that our characters were the cousins of the “yellow vests””, explains Benjamin d’Aoust, that 20 minutes met at Series Mania.
The series is thus interested in “those who are not seen in the public space, who are not rich, but not super poor either. These are the people who have two salaries, who earn 2,000 to 3,000 euros per month. They want to access the happiness that is sold to them, but do not succeed. Suddenly, they are frustrated, like a lot of people around us. Tom and Linda are a bit of “yellow vests”, “continues the co-creator.
The portrait of a small “Fargo”-style community
good people takes place in a small community forgotten by modernity. “We had already shot Trier in more or less the same region, in the south of Belgium, in Couvin. It takes place on the Belgian-French border, a place where people often go to write, scout and get inspired. It’s a bit like the last train stop, modernity goes a little by the wayside and the people who live there don’t have access to the world that is offered to them,” says Stéphane Bergmans.
In the manner of Fargo of the Coen brothers, good people follows different actors in this small community: Linda and Tom, a debt-ridden couple who set up a life insurance scam, Philippe (Michaël Abiteboul seen in Spangled Shrimps And Ghosts), a policeman who has understood everything, but whom no one takes seriously, his teammate Stéphane (India Hair) and Cassandre (Dominique Pinon), their leader, blinded by the mourning of his wife, an accident expert (François Damiens) or another rail ticket clerk (Corinne Masiero).
“We always start from a documentary base in our writing. Concretely, we go for a walk and we meet people. The character played by Dominique Pinon was inspired by a gas station attendant who lost his wife in an accident. Our job is not to do a political thesis on “yellow vests”, but to say this is the society we are observing. We think that we will get attached to these people because they are real and they have this story, ”says Matthieu Donck.
Small arrangements with legality
In three stages (the accident, the before and the after), their miniseries unfolds what happens when good people cross the red line. “This border between France and Belgium, it is porous and what we deal with in good peoplethese are people who will just switch to the other side of morality, but their border is also porous, they do not have the impression of having switched”, analyzes Benjamin d’Aoust.
“In the “yellow vests” movement, what was very touching was that there was a diversity of feelings of injustice. No one experiences the same injustice, but everyone experiences an injustice. We worked on two feelings: our good people, all victims in a certain place of frustration or injustice, ”explains Benjamin d’Aoust.
What begins as a thriller with the discovery of Linda’s burnt-out car turns over the episodes into an offbeat slapstick comedy. “We like to enlarge the line, to tell somewhat exceptional stories. We wanted to keep a shift from the tale, from the fable to create a reality deeply rooted in a place and which at the same time exists in an imaginary world”, comments Matthieu Donck. “Our humor is absurd, a bit burlesque. It’s a way of laughing at yourself and a bit of the world, laughing at drama to play it down. If a character is ridiculous, so are we. The real always goes beyond fiction,” adds Stéphane Bergmans. Result ? A scathing comedy with caustic humour.