There’s nothing smugger than asking friends what foreign language programme they’re enjoying currently, only for them to stare back blankly, forced to reveal they don’t like things with subtitles. I’ve been banging on about Call My Agent! to anyone who’ll listen for the last few weeks, acting like some sort of unappointed Walter Presents in my attempts to make everyone watch it. Sure, the smugness has been advantageous bycatch (a phrase borrowed from the harrowing Netflix documentary Seaspiracy), but I’ve genuinely enjoyed my hour an evening with Paris’s craziest talent agency, so there’s been a touch of altruism in my evangelising. I’ve already bored everyone here with my inconsistent keepings-up with the French language, covered in my post on Lupin, but Call My Agent! actually came into my life following a flurry of articles on the Guardian extolling the show’s virtues. Suddenly, I was the recipient of smugness, unable to nod knowingly as I read the journalists’ words celebrating a secret club of enlightened British folk who enjoyed comedy dramas that were almost too French to function. I didn’t want the Guardian thinking I can’t keep up, so off I went.
Let’s start with the premise: bienvenue chez ASK. Agence Samuel Kerr is a top-flight acting
agency in Paris, representing all the biggest names in the French film
industry. I’ll stop you there if you can’t
actually name any French actors or if you didn’t know there was a French film
industry. There are a lot of the former
and plenty of the latter – don’t give me an excuse to be even smugger! Our pilot episode introduces us to the four
key agents that run the show, cruelling letting their boss and the agency’s namesake
expire during a rare stretch of annual leave, meaning that four egotistical
workaholics are about to find out it’s not so easy keeping France’s flightiest thespians
on their books when to do so involves sacrificing their own happiness to see to
their every whim. Enabling and hindering
them in equal measure is a team of assistants, papering over cracks, often of
their own making, in order to solve that episode’s désastre.
You’ll come to adore the characters pretty quickly. From Andréa’s extreme sarcasm to Arlette’s extreme
honesty, via the relief that Gabriel does sometimes get a haircut and Mathias
nearly always, eventually, somehow, sort of does the right thing. Agents aside, though, I’m here for the
assistants. We’ve given all the best
lines to Hervé, our sympathies lie with Camille as Mathias’s illegitimate daughter,
Sofia injects a sense of fun and Noémie steals every scene with her madcap and manic
antics. All of them, in true French
style, fly off the handle and deliver expletive-laden abuse at the slightest
inconvenience. This doesn’t seem to be a
sackable offence in the workplace. Rampant
door-slamming is also positively encouraged, so sign me up.
With such a rich cast, you almost don’t need the show’s
other main feature: A-list guest stars.
Just as Extras built each instalment
around sending up the public persona of a household name, Call My Agent! does exactly
the same thing. I’ll admit to not recognising
every big name to cross the threshold of ASK with unreasonable demands, but you
can tell they’re really enjoying entering into the sense of fun, and who am I
to deny them a nice day out? But, dare I
say it, I almost don’t need them… It
must be the uncultured Brit in me, so if you’ve recognised each one of them,
caught all the references to classic French films (Amélie doesn’t count) then
feel free to smug it all over muggins here.
My other slight adjustment at first was the episode length – clocking in
nearer an hour, I always felt I was done ten minutes prior. But by the time I was fully invested in
seasons two, three and four, I ended up feeling wishes that it would never end.
Fans of silliness will fare well here, but given our Gallic
cultural influence, it’s more of a sexy silliness. There’s surprise nudity, as our neighbours
across the Channel take a far less prudish approach to the female nipple, but
snogging seems to be banned. Any kissing
is reduced to lengthy pecking which rings ever so slightly false when there’s
so much passion elsewhere. This is the
joy of watching something from another culture: it’s not for you. Much discussion takes place about fathers
officially recognising their progeny, not just Camille, but also Andréa and
Colette’s new-born. I assume this is a
piece of very efficient legislation we don’t have here, no different to having
to cope with people paying for medical treatment in US dramas when we’ve got
the trusty old NHS here funded by weekly clapping.
On that note, as we slide out of lockdown, you could do
worse for escapism with Call My Agent! Paris
looks its best, but even in the drizzle, you’ll be itching to catch the train
there, just so a waiter can be rude at your attempts to speak the language or
you can be run down by Gabriel on his moped.
Most enduring of all, though, is the signature theme tune, oscillating
through storylines with all the power of the music in Succession, elevating our sexy silliness to
something a bit more artistic.
So, read along with Paris’s best agents, or, find your GCSE, A-Level and actual degree in French returning episode by episode so that, by the end, you’re suddenly able to meet a friend and spend the whole afternoon talking French after a gap of a decade. Educational, and fun! On that note, do be warned of the classic gopping translation of tu and vous. English doesn’t distinguish by politeness between forms of the pronoun, you (and we only have one if you discount the archaic thou). But in every French adult relationship, parties must elect to switch from the formal vous to the more LOL tu. This is artfully done by using the verbs tutoyer and vouvoyer, but in the subtitles you simply have cast members saying “Hey, shall we be familiar with each other now?” Call My Agent!, with a fifth series now promised after claiming the fourth would be the last, you can be familiar with me all you want.
