• France 2 broadcasts this Sunday, at 13:20 pm, the first episode (of 90 minutes each) of the new series Successions entitled The battle of pensions.
  • In the cards of the public service since September 2022, the news related to the debate on pensions has forced the teams of this new format to compose this first issue in record time.
  • "As in House of Cards, we wanted to have the expression of what elected officials have in mind at the very moment when they follow the debates" on this reform, tells 20 Minutes Jean-Michel Carpentier, the editor-in-chief of 13:15 p.m. on Sunday.

"We are in the urgency of the news with the possibility that the government falls and perhaps a dissolution," comments Jean-Michel Carpentier, the editor-in-chief of the magazine 13:15 on Sunday, broadcast on the sidelines of the Sunday news of France 2. While his teams were preparing in the greatest secrecy a series of reports at the heart of the political world entitled Successions, they were taken aback by the conflagration of debates in the National Assembly and the use of 49.3 of Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, concerning the pension reform. "We find ourselves climbing 90 minutes in ten days, it's a job day and night!"

At the beginning of September, as Emmanuel Macron began the fifth month of his second presidential term, the political field seems more fragmented than ever. The invective and other setbacks that shake the political field seem to disinterest the French men and women more and more. "We wanted to make a series that could lead viewers but especially young people to look at politics with a new perspective," says Jean-Michel Carpentier.

"There is no off"

If this idea has been in his head for several years, the moment has never been so opportune while the French political future seems more blurred than ever. But what do they think, those who sit every week on the benches of the National Assembly? With this question in mind, he goes to meet them.

"I saw about twenty elected officials from all sides, one by one. To my surprise, it was immediately a rather general enthusiasm, "he rewinds. "Our agreement with them says that if we go back somewhere, they don't take us out, no matter what, and everything we film is broadcastable, there is no off."

Cameras on their shoulders, journalists consider politicians "as characters in a series, following them in their professional but also personal activities". The 13:15 p.m. Sunday crew, made up of journalists whose main topic is not politics, begins filming. In the line of sight the anniversary of the re-election of Emmanuel Macron occurred mid-April, gives the course.

The humans behind big ideas

The objective is then that the different episodes evoke a topical theme that punctuates the lives of the French and the French. Behind the scenes, we are already planning to address the place of women, nuclear power, schools... "What they liked was being able to explain themselves. Sandrine Rousseau told me that if the series had existed at the time of the barbecue sequence, she would have explained why she had said that. Behind the great ideas are men and women," says Jean-Michel Carpentier.

Individuals whose work has been shaken by the pension reform for several weeks. Debates so lively that they force the public service to review its plans and urgently mount a first episode.



Among the sequences that punctuate the series, the teams of 13:15 on Sunday allowed the deputies to express themselves in front of the camera, live from the debates in the hemicycle. A journalistic process never seen, according to the editor. "As in House of Cards, we wanted to have the expression of what they have in mind at the very moment when they follow the debates," justifies the editor-in-chief.

Entitled Successions, this new event has pushed references to American productions into its title, inspired by the HBO series. "We added an 's' at the end because the succession does not only concern Macron. For the moment, with the exception of the far right, all the French political forces are succeeding themselves, "concludes Jean-Michel Carpentier, confiding that he does not know where this unprecedented exercise will lead his teams. The second episode should arrive in mid-April.

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