On August 30, 2004, viewers of France 3 discovered the first episode of a soap opera that was to become a phenomenon. But despite a real popular fervor still intact, eighteen years later, Plus belle la vie will bow out as announced for a few months. Anne Holmes, director of programs for France Télévisions, also confirmed the bad news to our colleagues from Télé-Loisirs last June. “The average audience was no longer as good. The public told us that he had lost the fundamentals“, she regretted.
So before they definitively close the doors of their Marseille universe, the actors who made the heyday of the series delivered their most crisp anecdotes to our colleagues from Society who decided to devote part of their last issue to this small television phenomenon.
If “Plus belle la vie” quickly became one of the most watched series of the PAF, the beginnings were nevertheless disastrous. “The first episodes do not work at all. We have something like 6% market share. A disaster”, explains Christine Coutin, editorial director of the series on France 3. But very quickly the mayonnaise takes hold of the public. “The turn is still clear and the audiences are progressing quickly. We start at 6%, then we go to 7% at the end of November, 12% in January and 20% at the end of June. Which makes after a season five or six million viewers per episode,” says Vincent Meslet, former deputy director of programs for France 3.
A success that will also have its impact on the actors. “At the beginning, the letters we received were not analyzed, but there were problems. For example, I received pubic hair, and a sorting was done, fortunately“, says Dounia Coesens who played the role of Johanna Marci. “During the first ten seasons, I received a lot of letters. A grandmother wrote to me because her grandson, a homosexual, had been disowned by his son, and it had become a war between the two.“, says for his part Laurent Kerusoré who had a bad experience of the announcement of the end of the program which made him famous.
CT
See also: Dounia Coesens: and now the baby!