Between Engrenages and The Good Wife, what’s a 66-5 streak on CANAL+ worth?

What is it about?

A young business lawyer at a prestigious Parisian firm, Roxanne finds her life turned upside down when her husband, a partner at the firm, is accused of rape. Returning against his will to the town of his childhood, he tries to reinvent himself as a criminal lawyer in Bobin’s court.

66-5, designed by Anne Landois (Engrenages) in collaboration with Audrey Fuchs.

Every Monday at 9pm on CANAL+ from 18 September (two episodes per week) and available on demand on myCANAL

who is he with

To play the role of Roxanne, a young 32-year-old criminal lawyer who has to deal with a scandal involving her husband from his own past, which confronts her in the neighborhood where she grew up, the producers of 66-5 called Alice. Isaaz (La Crème de la crème, Le Mystère Henri Pick), recently seen on Netflix in Notre-Dame, La Part du feu and in the cinema Apaches and Couleurs de l’feu.

Opposite her, CANAL+ subscribers will find Raphael Acloque (Les Hautesherbes, Alger Confidential) as Bilal, Roxane’s childhood sweetheart, Eric Pucheau (Vortex, Les Engagés) as the heroine’s husband accused of rape, Samuel, and Nailia Harzoune (Forever Disappeared, Grand Bazaar), which lends its qualities to Yasmin, Roxanne’s best friend.

Not forgetting Rani Bhemuk (Tomorrow Belongs to Us), Melvin Boomer (Sage-Homme, The World of Tomorrow), Rashid Guelaz (Verified), Alain Bouzig (Caméra café) and Julien Masdoua (Un Si Grand Soleil) who perform very well Actor 66-5.

Is it worth checking out?

After BRI, which will soon return for Season 2, CANAL+ has hit again with a big 66-5, opening the channel’s 2023-2024 season tonight in terms of original French fiction.

Screenwriter and producer Anne Landois, at the helm of seasons 3 to 6 of Engrenages, returns to CANAL+ via TF1 detour for La Promesse and continues to explore its core themes (the work of the French judiciary and the police, the suburbs, the past wounds).

This new series can actually almost be compared to a spin-off of Engrenages, which would abandon everything to concentrate on one aspect: the behind-the-scenes world of criminal lawyers.

“When I stopped working on Engrenages at the end of season 6, Canal+ asked me to think about a new detective series”Explains Anne Landuy’s question about the genesis of the project.

“I got embarrassed pretty quickly, because when you say new detective series, you’ve got to ‘get rid of Gear,’ which wasn’t really my thing. I was thinking about that and Gear in my In my opinion, there was one aspect that wasn’t covered enough. , it was lawyers. I was a little bit caught up in the role of Audrey Fleuro, and there was a whole aspect of criminal lawyers that I was interested in. That’s how the project was born.”.

Aided once again by the criminal lawyer Clarice Serre, who had advised and supported her immensely during the Carolyn Proust and Audrey Fleuro series, Anne Landois also wanted to leave Paris and its court. “dusty” To explore another vision of justice: Bobin’s court.

“When Clarisse took me to the audience of a billion in Bobigny, I had the feeling that there was a quite original arena in this suburban court and that we could take from it modernity, breath, light and representation of the suburbs. that we didn’t know well”explains the creator of 66-5, which breathes new life into legal fiction (a very American genre that has always had a bit of trouble establishing itself in France).

With its heroine having to rebuild herself and deciding to boost her career as a lawyer after rape allegations against her husband helped her rise socially, 66-5 is clearly thinking of The Good Wife in its opening minutes.

Before working the opposite class defector and bringing Roxanne back to the Bobbin area where she grew up. And that he ran away for reasons we’ll discover as the episodes progress.

Refusing to give up on his career, the character played by Alisa Isaz agrees to take the case to Bobin’s court to help his childhood friend Yasmin. This experience then allowed him to realize his deepest desire: to become a criminal lawyer. And in the end, Roxanne manages to pull back and emancipate herself by realizing what is happening to her husband.

Around this very beautiful portrait of a woman, 66-5 reflects a plural feminism, also focusing on the heroine’s lesbian best friend, her mother who stayed in Bobigny and with whom she maintains a conflicted relationship, or the investigating judge who knew how to impose herself in a world that was far from peaceful for women. And simple.

Everyday heroines we enjoy following and who also feed Roxanne’s questions and trajectory.

The series, which starts out a bit slow, becomes more and more addictive and deep as the episodes go by, and manages to do something that television rarely does: to show a different, bright suburb, far from clichés, where a real community spirit reigns. And focus on the white working class, which is very rare on screen.

“I first imagined picture 66-5 bright and warm. It’s a summer series, bodies are exposed”explains Daniel Arbid (Battlefield, Fear Nothing), who directed the first four episodes of the series.

“I wanted to shoot Marseille in Paris and be the opposite of what we usually see in the series of the world of cities. I wanted to thank their inhabitants. In 66-5 this very abused suburb becomes a less hostile place than usual. It is a risky world, but also one of sensuality, mating and The world of modernity”..

Masterfully carried by the supremely precise Alice Isaez, who brings strength and determination to this Roxanne, who unfolds between two worlds and never ceases to cross the ring road back and forth, which is at the heart of the story, 66-5 also owes much to its supporting roles.

From Nailia Harzoune, who shines throughout as Yasmin, to Raphael Aklock, extremely magnetic as Bilal, who keeps bringing Roxanne back to this past she’s been trying so hard to escape. And that will set him back again, even at work and in the drug business he will have to manage.

Immersed in the world of fascinating criminal lawyers and the world of Bobin’s tribunal, 66-5 creates an incredibly rich setting and characters and manages to combine realism, violence and romance. A real success that we already hope for season 2 very soon.