In 2018, Yacine Rharbaoui was on an internship in Paris and was really bored. Fortunately, this Lyon business school student was also a stand-up actor. It was while wearing this cap that he wrote the sketches he played that very evening. “But there were situations that I couldn’t transcribe in a stand-up format,” he explains. I put these jokes aside in a fund that has become quite substantial. At the end of 2019, it took the form of a small comedy series. “
In 2020, the Covid brought him back to his parents in Lyon. As he could no longer perform on stage, he took the opportunity to finalize the episodes. “When I understood that the Covid was likely to last a while, and that filming was more or less authorized, I set up a team, by searching on Facebook cinema groups in Lyon. »Castings followed with his friends and fellow stand-ups, and the first episode of Somewhere in town was filmed in July 2020.
Places known but rarely filmed
In these five episodes of ten minutes each, we follow the comical daily life of a group of seven friends in their twenties in emblematic places of Lyon. Yacine Rharbaoui is very attached to his hometown and wanted to show his beauties on screen: “It is also a motivation for the project; I had looked Cherif, a France 2 series shot in Lyon, and it made me happy to see my city on TV, but it’s very rare! My little brother pointed out to me that for comedy, we need places and situations that are familiar to us, in order to be able to identify and laugh at it better. I agree with him. “
Somewhere in town is also a baptism of fire for this training salesman who tried his hand at directing for the first time, with a team and volunteer actors. This has its share of good surprises: “The craziest filming location we have had was the Charlemagne ice rink … Their schedule is constantly taken by lessons, matches, and thanks to the Covid we had the great luck to have it all to us. “
A first episode broadcast from November 12 on YouTube
We also talk about stadium and football in this web series which also wants to show the soul of the city, how 18-25 year olds live there who are a little idle in summer, for example. “I want to show the real life of young Lyonnais through the way of speaking about the characters, their references… We have an episode called” La rouille “: for young people who have to stay in town during the summer holidays, it is “rust”, it is empty, there is nothing to do! “
The entire webseries premiered in Meyzieu on November 4 and received a warm welcome. The first episode was uploaded Friday, November 12 on YouTube. Hoping for a season 2 for Yacine Rharbaoui to realize another somewhat crazy dream: that of filming in the deserted OL Park… without Covid.