“I wanted to adapt ‘Fortune de France’ since I was a teenager”

The director of the series Bardot, Christopher Thompson, signs a great historical and family saga taken from the work of Robert Merle Fortune of France. Creator, author, but also director of this series, which begins Monday September 16 on France 2. “In contrast to traditional historical frescoes, which generally depict great history and the powerful”, he explains, “Here we are really in the daily life of a family from Périgord in the 16th century.” Divided into six episodes, the story takes place at the end of the Renaissance, behind the ramparts of Mespech Castle.“All the members of this family live together and we follow the important moments of their life in a France on the brink of civil war between Catholics and Protestants”, Christopher Thompson continues.

This religious war also has repercussions in this house and eats away at the couple played by Nicolas Duvauchelle and Lucie Debay. The story nevertheless remains very modern and evokes, for example, the place of women in society, conspiracy theories or even religious fanaticism. “I discovered a lot of things about French history through these books,” explains Christopher Thompson, and as we wrote, we realized that there were a lot of echoes with our times.”

France Télévisions had not broadcast a major historical saga for a while.The channel took this bet, Christopher Thompson points out. We are a little off the beaten track of the fiction of the platform run-of-the-mill.’ If Fortune of France is initially visible on France 2, the series will then be available on the max platform, which will give it international visibility. “I made this series with this flame of childhood memories, concludes Christopher Thompson. “I wanted to adapt Fortune of France since my adolescence.”