Netflix’s Marseille promised to be a treat – a French political drama series with big stars and big production values.

Could this be, I wondered, an experience to parallel the superb police/legal drama series Spiral? Settled into couch with drink in hand, I press the button: Big opening, Gerard Depardieu enters a vast stadium, thousands of fans yell in excitement  I’m in Marseille.

The actors deliver their opening lines. What comes out?

American English. Dubbed. Voices that don’t fit bodies. Sentences that don’t go with lips. Ventilated corpses. The essence of Frenchness eliminated.

What was Netflix thinking? That its audiences  might get tired lips from reading subtitles?

I am thankful that my late friend Raymond Saucisson did not live to see this day.

 

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