Comme Des Gosses: A New Comedy Series On M6
In July, the channel M6 decided to replace its daily short program Scènes de ménages by a new fiction called Comme des gosses. In this new show, the teachers and the parents of the students turn out to be more dissipated than the children and get into a lot of mischief. Here is what you need to know about the new comedy series of M6.
School continues on M6
As July marks the end of the school year in France, M6 is playing the elementary school extension with its new comedy drama called Comme des gosses. Since July 4, 2022, this daily short program replaces Scènes de ménages in the 8:30pm slot.
Although this new series is set in schools, it is less about the students and more about the teachers, school staff and parents. This funny and punchy drama is indeed based on the idea that children do not have a monopoly on mischief and mischief-making.
Crazy teachers and neurotic parents, completely overwhelmed or too involved in their children's education, provide material for many gags.
Hilarious characters
As the title suggests, adults are sometimes more immature than the children they care for.
This fiction offers a gallery of colorful characters:
- a heavy-handed school principal who accumulates blunders
- a rock'n'roll teacher with a fishwife's glibness
- an old-school teacher who tries to bring order to the educational team
- immature student parents like these dads who fight a ridiculous battle of egos during a sack race at the fair
- a dark widower father who turns the heads of the moms.
This drama has fifteen main characters, not to mention the kids. They are played by several comedians like Doully, Élodie Pou or Antonia de Rendinger.
A successful French adaptation
Comme des gosses is the adaptation of a Dutch series that had 10 episodes of 26 minutes. It was revisited by the production company Calt Story, which specializes in short formats such as Caméra café, Kaamelott and Soda.
The production has declined this concept into 200 episodes of 3 minutes 30 that address different social issues such as education, homoparentality, the place of women or racism. This format indeed allows to treat serious subjects with lightness, in a setting (the school) that is the reflection of our society.
Some thirty authors worked on these episodes under the direction of former TV host Gaël Leforestier who is also the co-director of this fiction. After having been a music columnist in Studio Gabriel on France 2, this film enthusiast went behind the camera in the 2000s. He worked on the series Soda on W9 and Parents mode d'emploi on France 2, among others.
A real school... of laughter
The filming of Comme des gosses took place in a natural setting in Le Plessis-Robinson in Île-de-France in a disused school building. A working elementary school across the street even provided several extras for the 80 children appearing in this drama.
This choice of shooting on location and not in a studio brought a good dose of realism to the series and helped create a whole universe.
The result is rather successful, with gags and repartees that follow each other without a break. The tone adopted is voluntarily transgressive, even cash, but the humor remains benevolent towards all the characters sketched in these sketches.
Familiar faces and new talents
In the cast of Comme des gosses, you will probably recognize Stéphane Debac seen in Bracelets rouges on TF1, François-David Cardonnel and Noémie Chicheportiche who played in Clem, but also Antonia de Rendinger seen in César Wagner.
The short program, which is a French specialty, has this advantage of brushing the portrait of the characters by small touches, to finally make them deeper and more subtle than they seem at first glance.
The bulk of the cast is unknown to viewers but not lacking in talent. This new comedy fiction, to be discovered from Monday to Friday at 8:30 pm on M6, therefore deserves a good grade.
The entire first season of 200 episodes will be broadcast for four weeks, before the return in August of En famille, which celebrates its 10 years of existence.
Scènes de ménages will continue to be broadcast in early afternoon on weekdays and weekends at 8:30 pm. Fans of M6's flagship short program will have to wait until the start of the new school year for new episodes to make their return at 8:30 pm.
