Astrid and Raphael on France 2: “Season 6 will end on a huge cliffhanger”… The producer of the detective series tells us everything

This Friday, October 24, Astrid and Raphael make their big return to France 2 during the new Season 6 broadcast. A new burst of episodes in which our two heroes face a new investigation led by Sarah Mortensen and Lola Duer, more mysterious than ever.

To mark the launch of this 6th season, AlloCiné sat down with Jean-Sébastien Bouilleux, producer of Astrid and Raphael, to discuss these new episodes.

AlloCiné: What’s next for Astrid and Rafael in this season 6?

Jean-Sebastien Bouillot : We ended the 5th season with a big question. Raphael was between life and death. So the 6th season will begin. We will see if it survives and especially how. Without saying much, this poisoning will affect his trajectory this season.

The entire first part of Season 6 will revolve around how Raphael copes. And this season there is a role reversal between him and Astrid.

This is Raphael, who is weakened and will rely on the strength of his friend. And this new dynamic is taking us to a destination we’ve never had before.

Season 6 is definitely going to end on a huge cliffhanger. In turn, Astrid discovers things about Tetsuo that will redefine their relationship.

The two heroes will have many challenges on an emotional and personal level, but also on a detective level, as the investigation mirrors their personal trajectories.

Astrid and Raphael are in their sixth season. How do you manage to update yourself from season to season without falling into identical patterns?

For me, the bottom line is having strong characters. Without it, we cannot renew ourselves. And this is exactly the case with Astrid and Raphael. We have emotionally strong and complex characters.

When we have oversimplified characters, we are forced to redo the same diagrams. For example, Astrid’s journey has always been about saying that we offer new experiences during the season.

And it’s a bit the same for Raphael. It’s up to us to find those experiences and offer new challenges that shed light on a part of their characters.

So it allows you to renew yourself because it is infinite. And what also comes into play is our team of authors, led by Alexandre de Seguin. The scripts are very careful and this allows the series to work internationally.

And how do you explain this success both on France 2, where the 5th season gathered millions of viewers, and internationally?

I think the most important thing is the singularity of the series. I feel like the more intimate you are with the characters, the more universal they become. I think having characters with very basic but very deep universal themes like loneliness allows us to reach as many people as possible.

Astrid and Rafael are two people who were very alone and who managed to connect and work things out. But above all, they found a friendship that lasts forever.

At the beginning of the series, the loneliness of the two characters greatly affected the audience. And when you think about it, friendship stories aren’t that common on television.

It is also rare. But I think there are other factors that explain success, like interpretation. We were lucky enough to meet two great actors who had instant chemistry.

Astrid and Raphael is approaching its sixth season, are you already thinking about ending it? Aren’t you afraid of exceeding the season?

No, I’m not thinking about the end of Astrid and Raphael yet. When you’re doing a series, it’s impossible to plan the ending, otherwise you stop. We still have a lot to say.

It will be the community and the channel that decides. But we don’t make a serializable object that can be completed. We will always come up with something because we are always very enthusiastic about developing characters.

Astrid and Raphael’s episodes always rely on surprising settings. How do you find filming locations?

We always start from scripts. Even as we write, we tell ourselves that we need iconic settings. Often a series works per episode thanks to a strong universe.

When we do an astronomy episode, we immediately tell ourselves that we’re going to go to the observatory in Paris, for example. It’s not always easy to have the places we want, and we don’t always succeed.

But we try to have four or five big iconic sets a season. Plus, we shoot in Paris, which gives us access to great locations.

In the previous season, there was a crossover between Astrid and Rafael and Alexander Elle. Are you going to repeat the experience?

Yes, we will try to do another one. is planned.