the Philadelphia institutes that charmed America

A tender and zany love letter to teachers that became the surprise critical and public success of the year in the United States. Hidden in the thick Disney+ catalog is nestled Abbott Elementary. Launched in December 2021 across the Atlantic, this comedy adopts the sitcom and mockumentary format. It follows the daily life of a team of teachers in an African-American public primary school in Philadelphia, which is sorely lacking in resources.
As Janine (played by series creator Quinta Brunson) likes to point out, she is one of three trainee teachers (out of 30) who made the kamikaze choice to get tenured at Abbott. Low wages, clogged toilets, shortage of school supplies, air conditioning failure are the lot of these “survivors”.

Educating, feeding and keeping clean the toddlers who attend her is part of the priesthood and the D system. What Janine does not have in budget, she makes up for with an overflowing enthusiasm of Geo Trouvetou which generates small and big disasters when she gets involved in plumbing defaulting or call for donations.

Alarm bell

Enough to exasperate his mentors: the experienced and strict Barbara who leads her class with the stick, or the cheeky Melissa who cultivates her acquaintances with the mafia. Their patience is already well tested by the egocentric principal Ava, more concerned with her career as an influencer than with her teaching team. Luckily for Janine, Abbott harbors a few allies. On the one hand his clumsy and bourgeois classmate of promotion Jacob. On the other hand, Gregory. The new substitute teacher is not insensitive to the charm of the young woman and is desperate to see her decked out with a rapper boyfriend who lives off her meager hooks.

Daughter of a teacher, Quinta Brunson, only 32 years old, wanted to pay tribute to the dedication of her mother and drew on her memories. “Being a teacher also means having the cap of administrative officer, social worker, therapist, adoptive parent, or even just parent”, recalls one of his characters. A wake-up call at a time when education is the poor relation of federal and local budgets and no longer arouses vocations in the United States. Many teachers there are forced to take on a second job to make ends meet. These thirteen episodes are funny, lucid and fatalistic, which says a lot about the finesse of the series.

The comedy stormed into awards season, overshadowing favorites The Fabulous M^me Maisel and Only Murders in the Building. Janine and her colleagues have garnered seven Emmy Award nominations. Thanks to this recognition from the Television Oscars, ABC, broadcaster ofAbbott Elementaryis the only traditional channel to win chances for statuettes, on September 12, in a competition monopolized by platforms and cable giants.