It’s an unspeakable mess. Fans of
Beijing Express
will have to hang on to succeed in following the last two episodes of season 18, which will see friends Fanny and Jérémy, colleagues Patricia and Jessica as well as the hairdresser/client duo Romain and Laura clash, firstly for the semi-finals then for the final. Because the end of the season saw its programming be greatly disturbed by matches football broadcasts by M6.
The channel is in fact the official broadcaster of the Europa League and therefore offers its viewers the best poster for each day of the competition. And a French club is putting up resistance in the tournament: Olympique de Marseille. But if for the first matches, the M6 group had chosen to broadcast the club’s matches on its small channel W9, for the final phases, no concessions.
Room is therefore made initially on Thursday April 11 for the Benfica – OM quarter-final first leg, in place of Beijing Express. But who says first leg, says second leg. This Thursday, April 18, the game presented by Stéphane Rotenberg must still give way to football, thus leaving fans of the program without a new episode for three weeks.
The final on a Saturday?
And it’s what happens next that everything gets complicated. If Olympique de Marseille does not qualify on Thursday, everything will be fine for fans of the game, who will have the semi-final on April 25 (date unchanged regardless of the result), then the final on May 2. But if the French club manages to beat the Portuguese club, an appointment has already been made for May 2 and 9 for the two-way semi-finals.
M6, however, has already planned this: the final of Beijing Expresswill be broadcast… on a Saturday! May 4 more precisely. Which would in turn delay the start of the broadcast of the 21st season of the series NCIS, initially scheduled for this date. A programming imbroglio which is enough to give headaches to the faithful of Beijing Express while waiting to discover the big winners of the season.