toning gym and aeronautical espionage in 1980s France

OCS MAX – THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8 AT 9 PM – SERIES

Do not trust the title in the form of a nostalgic wink of the series developed by Géraldine de Margerie and Maxime Donzel, the two creators of the parody videos Tutotal, for the OCS Signature label. As in its big American sister Physical (on Apple TV+), aerobics serves as a pretext for a story of feminist emancipation, here against a backdrop of transatlantic industrial espionage.

The spy in question is blonde, Texan, oddly single and has just settled in Blagnac (Haute-Garonne), a Toulouse suburb and incubator of French aeronautics. With his broken French and his “babyass” (“BBQ”) on Sundays, it quickly intrigues desperate housewives locals, and especially Karine (Claire Dumas), the wife of an engineer specializing in the design of airliners. To cover their tracks, Jane (Alexia Barlier) organizes an aerobics class at the local sports association. After attracting the neighbors, the course seduces a few neighbors who care little about what people will say, then imposes itself as the breath of fresh air that Blagnac needed.

Little by little, the withered joggings of the beginning gave way to tight leotards. The flesh hardens and the self-esteem of the inhabitants of the district recovers. Meanwhile, Jane puts microphones and infiltrates offices. The series overplays the contrast between a fit, triumphant America and a potbellied France, always a little behind when it comes to catching the train of modernity. The members of the Blagnac Aérobic Club thus conjure up in perspiration the disappointed aspirations of this very beginning of the 1980s.

Interesting ambiguity

Between the housewife tyrannized by her teenage daughter, the divorcee in love with a married man, the complexed high school student and the young woman of North African origin who dreams of being a businesswoman, the members of the club really need a pick-me-up. Especially when you see the heads of the men who, opposite, put a spoke in their wheels. Pot-bellied and poorly groomed, the husbands and bosses staged in doggie particularly expensive.

And if the series hits the mark, it’s mainly thanks to its female roles and the very involved actresses who play them. Claire Dumas, in particular, gives an interesting ambiguity to the character of Karine, the quadra who refuses to resign herself. But if doggie stands out as one of the most attractive creations of OCS currently, it is also thanks to its very free writing, a little wobbly, which navigates between two stories without it being clear how the two proposals are going eventually come together. By escaping, at least for the time of the first episodes, from an overly clear program, the series gives itself the time to draw portraits, to improvise dialogues that are sometimes fragile, but which change.

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