THE COLLECTION, AMAZON PRIME
THIS stylish new series has been launched on Amazon’s Instant Video service and is being talked about as the French equivalent of Mad Men.
It’s set in post-war Paris, which is still haunted by the occupation and stricken with suspicions about collaborators, some of whom are now being put on trial.
Paul Sabine runs a fashion house and is seemingly free of such dirty associations. He’s told that his fashion rivals have been dressing the wives of German officers, and is asked by the government to revive the country’s reputation for style and “restore France’s faded glory.”
But under the glamour is panic: he is living on credit, struggling, trading on his wife’s connections, and reliant for the creative side on his wayward brother. And perhaps his family’s wartime past is not as clean as others think? When an American journalist comes to his studio to take photos, Sabine begins to sweat.
WE THE JURY, BBC2, 10pm
IT’S William’s 30th birthday and he gets the best present he could have hoped for: a summons for jury service.
Unfortunately, the letter arrived weeks ago but his mum hid it from him so she could present it along with his birthday presents, and it seems he’s due in court in half an hour. He mustn’t be late and deny himself an “opportunity to stand up for justice!” He’s in such a rush that he attends court still wearing his BIRTHDAY BOY! badge.
This is a silly, surreal pilot comedy about the misery of jury duty. But the judge isn’t miserable. It’s her last case before retirement and she’s determined to relax and enjoy it: “Yes folks, it’s a murder trial! Yes folks, murder is the dream!”
The jurors soon get to know one another, and bicker and bond over the case and whether it’s OK to discuss it if you meet another juror in a nightclub. Maybe it’d be OK, “like if a butcher told another butcher about a murder…”
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