Calling All Fans of "Call My Agent!"

                 

It was my own agent (Hi, Stuart!) who first turned me on to Call My Agent!. This French series originally titled Dix Pour Cent (or Ten Percent), was spread over four seasons, beginning in 2015. Which means its memorable stars have by now all moved onto other projects. When I get to the end I’ll certainly miss them.

The series explores day-to-day life in a talent agency, where starry clients are the norm. The brilliant title sequence begins with a young woman in full eighteenth-century aristocratic attire. She seems to belong at the court of some King Louis, until we watch her beautifully shod foot step over a series of wires and cables. At which point we know we’re on a movie set . . . and before long the same fille is striding out the door, clad in sneakers and tight jeans.

  Part of the fun of Call My Agent! is that it features real-life celebrities who seem to be having a ball playing slightly ungainly versions of themselves. They’re always in crisis mode:  two old-school performers are in the midst of a longtime feud; an up-and-comer slated to star in a road movie has panic attacks when behind the wheel; a well-known twosome break up just before they’re scheduled to shoot a film that will tap their romantic chemistry. An American viewer can’t fully appreciate these unfamiliar French vedettes, but as the series wears on it presents some names well known on this side of the Atlantic. One example: Juliette Binoche, who in the second-season finale appears as the celebrity host of the Cannes Film Festival. Not only is Binoche trying to elude a stalker but she’s also forced to make her big welcome speech while wearing a hideously poufy designer gown. I won’t soon forget her desperate sprint to locate the ladies’ room behind the scenes in the cavernous Palais.

 Though the warts-and-all French celebrities are charming, the series’ focal figures are in fact their representatives, who’ll do (just about) anything to further their clients’ screen careers. The jostling among them is sometimes reminiscent of Mad Men, though this is hardly a period piece reflecting a bygone era. People of color play some of the featured roles, and one of the agents—the uber-passionate Andréa—is unabashedly gay. She’s a vivid presence, as is the fashionably scruffy Gabriel (who perhaps unwisely gives his heart to a fledgling actress), and the dapper Matthias, whose personal secrets come to the fore over the course of seasons 1 and 2. But the audience favorite may be wide-eyed young Camille, the diligent assistant whose journey into the business of agenting we follow over the course of the series. Is she the Peggy Olson of Call My Agent? Not exactly, but I look forward to following her trajectory in seasons 3 and 4.

 There was a time when episodes of a mostly comedic TV series could be viewed in any order, since (during a season, at least) no big transformative changes took place. But in Call My Agent!, as in so many of today’s series, there is a constant unfolding of events that change everything. I’ll avoid any big reveals, so as not to spoil the fun, but do expect a glimpse of the softer side of Andréa, and wait for the moment when the starchy Matthias melts into a puddle of deep emotion. Minor players too are full of surprises.

 Call My Agent! is a terrific way to improve your grasp of colloquial French. Thank goodness, though, for subtitles.

 

 

Lighting Up the Tube with “Mad Men”

It’s a good thing cigarette smoke can’t emerge from television screens. Otherwise, viewers like me might be struggling now with lung cancer. When I was a kid (and among the first generation of regular TV watchers), I saw countless characters—parents, doctors, authority figures— lighting up. And, of course, I was bombarded with commercials sending the message that “You’ve got a lot to like with a Marlboro” and that “Winstons Taste Good Like a (clap clap) Cigarette Should.”  Growing up in a family of militant non-smokers, I never succumbed to the lure of nicotine. But watching the full run of Mad Men has reminded me how heavily smoking has figured in the advertising world, especially in the Sixties, the era portrayed so vividly in the series’ seven seasons.

 In Mad Men, both the characters who work in advertising and their spouses at home are constantly sucking on cigarettes. Of course, genuine tobacco products weren’t actually used on-camera, but I recall hearing that the producers, in organizing casting sessions, were screening out actors who had never smoked, because they wanted to populate their cast with  those who viscerally understood the lure of smoking . . . and the desperate need to reach for a cigarette in moments of agitation. Given how much happened in the course of the series—the times of tension and despair as well as the rowdy celebrations—naturally the air kept turning blue with smoke.

Of course there’s the fact that the show is set in an advertising agency, kept afloat for many years by its contract with Lucky Strike. When Sterling Cooper is unexpectedly cut loose from this lucrative account, Don Draper shrewdly makes lemonade out of lemons by circulating a large ad detailing the health risks of smoking, with Sterling Cooper congratulating itself for saying goodbye to the whole nasty business. Alas, this strategy backfires when other big tobacco firms begin to back away from Sterling Cooper. Soon the ad men are groveling once again for tobacco accounts –and smoking in the office goes on unchecked.

 In a way, Don’s whole troubled existence relates to smoking. We learn via a complicated flashback that Don’s discarded match on a Korean War battlefield is what accidentally dooms his commanding officer, a failing he’ll never entirely live down. And at the show’s end his beautiful but troubled ex-wife Betty is dying, much too young, from lung cancer. The daughter she’ll leave behind, a privileged but restless teenager, is by this point an experienced smoker too. Here’s hoping her mother’s sad example will scare Sally into quitting before it’s too late.

 Of all the characters on Mad Men, the one with whom the audience can best identify is Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), who is first seen as a ponytailed “everygirl” secretary, then slowly rises toward the coveted role of creative director with the help of brains, talent, and a determination to work harder than anyone else. Peggy, who initially lives at home with her stern Catholic mother, doesn’t start out as a smoker. But she desperately wants to fit in, and to prove herself one of the guys. Pretty soon she’s being made the point-person for a “lady’s cigarette” campaign. At the tail-end of the final season, when Sterling Cooper personnel are being swallowed up by a much bigger agency and she feels her authority threatened, Peggy nervously stays away from the new digs. Then, at last, she rallies. Entering McCann Erickson , she swaggers down the hall like the Terminator, with dark shades and a determined look on her face. And yes, a cigarette dangling from her lips.