And so Channel 4 finally give Great Britain some credit and screen excellent French drama The Returned in prime time positioning, 9pm on a Sunday. None of this shove-it-onto-BBC4-and-hope-for-The-Killing-Mark-2 timidity. No siree - conversely, not only has a major commercial network taken the risk at their audience aren't too spangled from their weekend's frivolities to reach for the spectacles, they've hijacked an ad break and shown all commercials in French. Mais non? Mais oui, indeed.
It seems odd that anything subtitled generally lives in the relegation zone of Saturday night on a freeview channel. The success of The Killing, which pulled in some of the highest ratings BBC4 had ever seen, should have really given the telly execs a bit of food for thought, but no - other European successes which followed still cropped up in the slot that BBC4 schedulers must have named "Saturday night foreign intelli-cop procedural time".
However, did the risk pay off? 1.5 million tuned into The Returned last night - it might sound like a lot, but percentage wise it had 7% audience share, whereas Poirot took home nearly 22% with 4.8 million. And anyone who watched it will be able to say that it's not going to be a program you can jump into halfway through. I watched the entire hour-and-a-quarter opener last night, in silence, only to turn around at the end and say, "well, I haven't got a fucking clue what's going on, but I'm enjoying it". Is that kind of heavy, delineated drama going to attract audiences on a Sunday night; traditionally the enclave of the easy-on-the-rain brain mush, such as Call The Midwife, or, indeed, Poirot? Do people want to be deciphering why loads of dead French people are reappearing in a small town and scaring the living crap out of them the night before they have to go back to work and present the annual figures to Gary From Accounts?
It's definitely going to be an interesting experiment for Channel 4. I for one hope it is a success, as there are all too many excellent pieces of television being made around the world that this country is missing out on, because of the belief that "people don't want subtitles". Well, as one of "the people", I'm fine with it, so please, bring it on.
NB: If anyone has a clue about what the hell is actually going on in The Returned, I'd greatly appreciate any tips.
