The ax fell in the Mistral. France Télévisions will stop broadcasting its flagship series in November More beautiful lifeon screen since 2004 on France 3, announced the group, Thursday, May 5, to AFP, citing the evolution of “Viewer Expectations” and of “the consumption of programs” from eighteen years.
The director of the Antennas of France Télévisions, Stéphane Sitbon-Gomez, Anne Holmes, program director, and Christian Vion, in charge of antenna resources have officially announced at the Belle de Mai studios the end of production of the Marseille soap opera.
Launched in 2004, on the antenna of France 3, the emblematic series of France 3 gathered every evening five million viewers, with peaks at nearly 7 million.
Roland, Mirta, Luna, Céline, Blanche, Mélanie and Thomas entered French households in September 2004. With More beautiful lifeFrance Television has successfully revived the popular soap opera genre.
The series quickly became cult and even helped to gild the image of Marseille.
One of the keys to the success of the series, created by Hubert Besson, is to reflect society and its evolutions. The soap opera tackles many sujects through the daily life of its characters. PBLV will thus remain as the first fiction to have shown a kiss between two men on French television.
Today, the fans are more than 2.5 million to find themselves in front of their post to follow the intrigues of the Mistral.
For two years, the public is no longer at the rendezvous. The audience is running out of steam. Competition from other series on competing channels accentuates the drop in ratings.
“This pioneering and emblematic soap opera has become the longest daily French series in history and a strong brand of France 3”, praised the group about a program “transgenerational, rooted in proximity, authenticity and the realities of French society in all its diversity”.
But “a renewal of the creative offer is necessary” believes France Télé, at a time of the boom in streaming platforms and when three other daily soap operas compete with “Plus Belle la vie” on TF1 and France 2.
If the end of the series will leave thousands of fans orphans, it will also cause the end of the contract of many collaborators in the audiovisual sector. Technical staff, actors, scriptwriters, More beautiful life has employed some 600 intermittent workers every year. Even if everyone expected an end, thehe announcement made on Thursday came as a shock to the teams. “That’s it, it’s the end clap. We were told the end of filming at the end of September”, lamented to AFP Thierry Lavaille, Force Ouvrière union representative, present on the set at the Belle de Mai.
However, the public group has undertaken to pursue “a new story with Marseille and its region” via “a new creative pact” in the Marseille city, “in the extension of the France 2030 plan”, who must “translating into the filming of new original series”.
“We are relieved in a sense because France Télévisions has undertaken to compensate to the nearest penny, or 30 million euros per year, the amount of the filming of ‘Plus Belle la vie’ in Marseille via mini-series” or TV films “, added this technician who has been working on the series for 17 years.