Under control on Arte: a political comedy between Veep and Parliament (review)

With Léa Drucker as an NGO leader discovering the absurdity of realpolitik.

Is the corrosive humor of the Scotsman Armando Iannucci soluble in French comedy? This is the question that screenwriter Charly Delwart and director Erwan Le Duc seem to have asked themselves (Partridge) when they imagined Under controla comedy of power which evokes the tone of the author of Veep And The Thick of It – this mixture of satire, dark humor and documented vision of the political world. Also taking over from some recent French fictions that have attempted an amusing portrayal of daily life under the gold of the republic (like Quai d’Orsay by Bertrand Tavernier, based on the comic strip by Christophe Blain and Antonin Baudry), this Arte series tells in six thirty-minute episodes the arrival at the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of an idealistic NGO leader, Marie Tessier (Léa Drucker), appointed by a President with false airs Macronians (Laurent Stocker), dashing, bossy and impatient. The neophyte will discover the mixture of brutality and absurdity which makes up the ordinary of realpolitik, and all the more quickly since, on the day of her appointment, we learn that French people have just been taken hostage in a Sahel countries.

Under control So watch this “fish out of water” discover a world where human lives are traded during cynical, violently prosaic and often ridiculous negotiations. European ministers organize crisis meetings in a broom closet (for lack of available meeting rooms), while the hostage-takers, before releasing their prisoners, have them fill out a satisfaction questionnaire… That’s the type of comical shifts which fuel Under control. At first, the series suffers a little from comparison with its models – without even measuring it against the comic virtuosity of Veepa series like Parliament managed better, at least in its implementation, to mix sarcasm, documented vision and in-your-face humor – a mixture that is all the more delicate to handle as care must be taken not to tip into poujado caricature. Here, the valves only work every other time. But the actors ensure and allow us to forget the failures. Léa Drucker is very invested in the French Julia Louis-Dreyfus, surrounded by lots of well-drawn supporting roles – special mention to the driver who swears by Bernard Kouchner.

The six episodes of Under Control are broadcast this Thursday, October 5 on Arte, and available for streaming on Arte.tv (episodes seen 3/6)