To close the love story between the longest soap opera ever produced in France and its audience, France 3 is devoting a special evening to it. It opens at 8:15 p.m. with the broadcast of two episodes.
Around 9:00 p.m., they will be followed by a final episode, an extra-long version of 1:40, entitled “Seven weddings for a funeral”.
Kilian, the youngest son of Roland, the star character of «Plus belle la vie» (PBLV), will celebrate his wedding there on the Place du Mistral.
As the title suggests, this latest installment from PBLV promises its fans many twists and turns around the heroes and heroines of the series.
The actors sent «millions of thanks» to their fans in a column published Friday by Le Parisien. The opportunity to return to the role played by PBLV, «often ahead of newspapers and entertainment programs».
«We claim to have, thanks to you, with you, changed France on certain subjects. Everyone thinks of the role that the series has played in fighting against homophobia, for example. We have never had afraid to address sensitive issues such as discomfort in the police, difficult weekends, harassment or Alzheimer’s and so many others,» they say.
Very much in touch with social debates, «Plus belle la vie» staged the first marriage between two people of the same sex on French television in 2013, just eleven days after the promulgation of the law authorizing it in France. A transgender actor starred there as early as 2018.
The series has also sparked controversy by showing how to roll a joint, the use of poppers or by talking about surrogacy (illegal in France) in a light that is too favorable for some.
– 3,232 actors –
The last take of «Plus belle la vie» was shot on September 29 at the end of the afternoon in the historic studios of Belle-de-Mai, a working-class district of Marseille.
Shortly before 11:00 p.m., the documentary «The great adventure of Plus belle la vie» will return to the series, its treatment of societal issues through its 4,665 episodes broadcast from 2004 to 2022, specifies France 3 in a press release.
The announcement of the end of the series last May by France Télévisions had caused a shock wave among its fans and in Marseille, where its filming generated a real economy.
Nearly 600 people worked each year for the series and 3,232 actors in all, to which must be added the extras, took part in the filming.
After a timid start, this popular series also gave the third channel record audiences in the early evening time slot, bringing together some evenings in 2008 up to six million viewers.
Far from these peaks, audiences fell to 2.7 million viewers in 2021-2022.
The series also allowed the breakthrough of daily soaps in France but ended up bearing the brunt of competition from its heirs, «Here everything begins» and «Tomorrow belongs to us» on TF1 and «Un Si grand soleil» on France 2.
After the last day of filming, the president of France Télévisions Delphine Ernotte had promised to «compensate for the impact of the stoppage» of the soap opera on «the Marseille audiovisual sector» by scheduling other filming in the region.