Stéphane Bern in the shoes of a grieving officer on France 3

Stéphane Bern is everywhere. On television, in the theatre, in magazines, on the radio, at the Heritage Mission and now in fiction. After a murder in… broadcast on France 3 a few months ago, followed by an episode of The Art of Crime in which he appeared larger than life, here he is in the uniform of an air force commander caught between his hierarchy and his obsession to clarify the circumstances of the death of his son, also a soldier, during of a mission in Mali. A tragic but also ambitious role, when we know the work necessary for the training of the actor and this type of character.

“I worked like crazy”

“Hosting TV shows until I’m 80 isn’t one of my prerogatives, and I’ve long wanted to experience comedy. A childhood dream that Anne Holmes, head of fiction at France Télévisions, allowed me to realize“, repeats at will the person concerned.

The work is extensive. The character, Paul Leclerc, while restrained, steeped in his sense of duty, discovers the inextinguishable nature of anger fueled by guilt, loneliness, grief and the intimate conviction that something is being hidden from him. The host does his best and does quite well. “I worked like crazy in the hope of being up to the task and of those – I mean the director and the real actors – who agreed to welcome me on this shoot“, he confides again, before adding: “I also know that in the eyes of the public I would be more credible in the clothes of characters from the story that I have been trying to tell for so many years. But where would the real adventure be for me then? The one that consists of taking the risk of embarking on the newest and most different project…»

Dual plot

Constance Dollé (the police captain), Julie-Anne Roth (the commander’s ex-wife) and Bruno Debrandt (her second husband) play opposite her. And the double plot unfolds: on the one hand, the bruised hero and his quest for truth, on the other, the police and the constraints of an eminently complicated investigation. The work is calibrated, precisely written, with all that is relevant today. The underlying themes of the role of the army, patriotism, external operations or family mourning are approached with the necessary distance.

The question arises all the same of the incongruity of these invitations to play the actors launched to TV presenters by a growing number of channels. Michel Cymes in The Doc and the Vet. Claire Chazal or Stéphane Plaza in Murders at… Stéphane Bern again, soon in the credits of Bellefond. In this next adventure, planned to become a collection, he will be dressed in a magistrate’s robe, that of a prosecutor whose integrity and humanism push him to rush into the stretchers of the Republic.

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