Power, Paranoia and Politics Mark Series Mania Thriller ‘In the Shadows’
21.03.2024 - 11:33
/ variety.com
Ben Croll Of the many politically-tinged projects premiering at this year’s Series Mania, French thriller “In the Shadows” could very well claim the best pedigree. While showrunner Pierre Schoeller has spent a career tracing his country’s corridors of power through films like “Versailles” and “The Minister,” he found a most opportune creative partner working with politician Edouard Philippe to adapt the latter’s 2011 novel. Perhaps the name rings a bell.
When Philippe published his eponymous novel more than a decade ago, he was a small city mayor running for a seat in France’s National Assembly. By the time he signed on to co-write this small screen adaptation in 2020, Philippe was coming off three years as French Prime Minister – while planting the seeds for an anticipated presidential run of his own in 2027. Only don’t expect “In the Shadows” to mirror Philippe’s own ascension – or that of any one political figure, as the showrunner explains.
“Making political fiction means creating a parallel universe,” Schoeller tells Variety. “You have to be wary [of hewing too close to real life]. Either you’re repeating what we already know, just not as well, or you move too far in the other direction and find yourself in the realm of satire and caricature.” Fleshing out a source text that left personal details and party affiliations purposefully opaque meant updating a political context a generation removed from that of 2011.
This 2024 iteration folds in concerns of technological malfeasance evocative of the Cambridge Analytica scandal alongside a resurgent far right and widespread apprehension about the very electoral process. It also meant anchoring the narrative in a better-defined partisan reality. For this tale of a
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