French Literature Reviews - 2026
Un Village français. L'Histoire au risque de la fiction
Theatre and Performance
Un Village français. L'Histoire au risque de la fiction, ATLANDE, 2017. EAN13: 9782350304311.
Collection "A suivre", Atlande, October 2017, 2018 pages, 15 euros
Un Village français (broadcast on France 3 from 2009 to 2017) is an exceptionally ambitious and large-scale French television series spanning seven seasons and a total of seventy-two episodes. How did this historical series with "auteur ambitions" (F. Krivine), unanimously praised by both critics and a loyal audience, rise to the challenge of writing history when exposed to the risks of fiction, without ever sacrificing its dramatic impact? This is the central question this book seeks to answer.
Table of Contents
Preamble
"A crazy, extraordinary project"
The historical "formula"
A series with "auteur ambitions"
1. From One Landing to Another...
A Particular Day
The Hour of Choice
The "Liberation": Beyond Good and Evil...
2. Through Days and Seasons
A Narrative in the Present Tense
One Day, One Episode...
Intensifying Dramatization Across Seasons
"Narrative Tension" and Its Mechanisms
3. Writing History Through Fiction
The Realism of the Chronicle
How History Comes to the Series
Narrative and the "Make-Believe" of History
Exemplary Characters
4. Focusing on the Characters...
What the Series Does to Its Characters
Blurring Boundaries
"Laying It on Thick"
Characters Who Resemble Us
5. The Model Viewership
A Loyal Audience
The "Model" Viewer
The Ethics of Representation. 75
Epilogue
The End of the "Saga": Serial "Infinitude" and Historical "Crescendo"
The "Duties of Memory"
The End of the "Tunnel"
Tools
Notes
Bibliography
Technical Specifications
Episode List
List of Illustrations
"In the Peaceful Aquarium of Fiction": Excerpts from an Interview with Frédéric Krivine
The intersection of television drama and historical representation has long occupied critics concerned with how collective memory is shaped on screen. Long-form serial storytelling allows for sustained engagement with the past, unfolding chronologically through recurring characters and shifting local dynamics under occupation. Productions with auteur ambitions navigate the tension between documentary precision and the narrative imperatives of serial fiction, inviting viewers to engage with moral choices set against the backdrop of mid-century French history. Such analyses often examine how episodic structures sustain suspense while depicting complex historical circumstances.
This volume investigates the methods through which the acclaimed television series addresses historical events and character development across seven seasons. Readers interested in contemporary French television studies, media representations of history, and the analysis of serial narrative structures may find it relevant to their inquiries.