Underplayed Gems

Les Guignols de l'info (1988)

Les Guignols de l'info poster
Genre
satire
Country
France
Length
30 seasons, 1603 episodes
Rated
NR
Rating
8.0 of 10 from 21 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this series is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

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How it feels

This French show uses latex puppets to mock politicians, celebrities, and current events. It presents daily sketches in the style of a news broadcast. The humor comes from exaggerating real-life figures and situations.

irreverenttopicalwittysatiricalfast-pacedclevercynicalplayfulobservational

What happens

Les Guignols (French pronunciation: [le ɡiɲɔl], The Puppets), formerly Les Guignols de l'info (French pronunciation: [le ɡiɲɔl də lɛ̃fo], The News Puppets), is a popular satirical latex puppet show on the French television channel Canal+. The show, which ran daily, was created in 1988 and drew inspiration from the French program Le Bébête Show (1982–1995) and the British puppet satire Spitting Image (1984–1996). Using a format similar to a news broadcast, the show satirized the political world, media, celebrities, French society, and international events. Throughout the years, it usually aired at 7:50 p.m. as a segment of other Canal+ shows, such as Nulle part ailleurs or Le Grand Journal. On Sunday afternoons, Canal+ aired a weekly recap called La Semaine des Guignols, featuring a back-to-back replay of the week's episodes. The show began in 1988 as Les Arènes de l'info (News Arenas). Initially, it did not cover current events in real-time and was less popular due to being scripted weeks in advance. However, in the 1990–91 season, the show rebranded as Les Guignols de l'Info and shifted to daily news commentary. It then enjoyed a tremendous growth in popularity with its different coverage of the first Gulf War, and quickly eclipsed its rival, Le Bébête Show. The structure of the series stayed constant throughout the years: a headline, a few quick stories, a pre-recorded video skit, an interview with a personality, then one last story. It rarely diverged from this layout, usually only doing so to drive points across further (e.g. replacing all news with a seven-minute interview of one of the Sylvestres during the 2003 Iraq War). (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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