2023-07-16 15:38:00
The first channel is preparing the return of this flagship program of France 3, stopped in 2022 after 18 years of broadcasting.
The Mistral will reopen its doors. Already mentioned, the return of the soap opera Plus belle la vie on the first channel was announced this Sunday by Ara Aprikian, the deputy director general in charge of content for the TF1 group. The program is due to resume in early 2024, a year and a half after its controversial shutdown by France 3, which has been broadcasting it daily since 2004.
“Plus belle la vie is a great popular, regional soap opera, embodied around the values of solidarity”, declares to the Figaro the framework of TF1, which hopes to “promote the construction of social ties” by reviving the soap opera.
More beautiful life followed the daily life of a gallery of characters who gravitated around the Mistral, a Marseille bar. With its 18 years on the air and its 4,665 episodes, the soap opera had become the longest in the history of French television.
The announcement of its end in 2022 had provoked the anger of the fans, who had become fewer over the years (between 5.6 and 6.4 million viewers at its beginnings for 2.3 million at the end) but also that of its teams: its filming in the Marseille studios of La Belle de Mai provided 600 jobs a year.
Dual Opportunity
TF1 saw a card to play there: “Iconic television brands are rare. Those that continue to have a loyal audience and are largely made up of young people are very rare,” says Ara Aprikian.
“And those who, in addition, are able to generate strong audiences both in linear and on digital are extremely rare. It turns out that Plus Belle la vie brings together all of these qualities.”
The digital, precisely, is one of the main parameters of this operation of TF1. The channel does not hide its ambition to use it to succeed in making MYTF1 “the first free streaming platform in the French-speaking world”, as Rodolphe Belmer, the group’s CEO, confides.
Because for the first channel, the formula has already proven itself on the web. Tomorrow belongs to us and Here it all begins, its two daily soap operas launched in 2017 and 2020, “are the main audience contributors to our digital offer” according to Ara Aprikian.
Mix of old and new actors
TF1 and Newen France, its production company, will work hard to start filming in mid-October. Until then, they will have to create new sets, bring together a team of authors and, of course, write the first scenarios.
What to expect from this new formula? The director of Newen France Nicolas Meslet raises a corner of the veil in the columns of the daily. “It will not be a simple sequel, but a new creation”, he warns, explaining that this new version will call on screenwriters from the original program as well as new ones, and s will address both fans and laypersons.
He nevertheless assures that “all the fundamentals will be respected” and that “new plots with new characters” will come to mingle with “existing characters from the series who will have new destinies”. Le Figaro thus lists the returns of certain emblematic actors, in particular Laurent Kérusoré (Thomas Marci), Léa François (Barbara Évenot), Cécilia Hornus (Blanche Marci) or even Sylvie Flepp (Mirta Torres). The broadcast time of the episodes is not yet fixed.
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