The Returned series 2 arrives on More4 in the UK tonight, Friday the 16th of October.
An inevitability of using a second language though, is the odd grammatical slip.
A pitfall of writing fantasy TV, Gobert said, is that you could lost yourself.
Thats the tricky challengeThe Returnedis facing in series two.
Put simply, it needs not toLostitself.
According to him, it was a question of breaking the story in precisely the right way.
Its more complicated than a whodunit, Gobert explained.
We had to take time to be sure of the stories we wanted to tell.
If it wasnt difficult, we would have aired a year ago!.
Fabrice fought for the best of the story and not for production or commercial things.
That was reassuring because Fabrice managed to make a success of the first season by fighting this way.
Were there production battles behind the scenes?
The main battle was with the scripts, the stories, the characters, says Gobert.
Its partly also to do with the French TV system.
Unlike in the UK and US, its common for French series to recur every two years.
After we finished series one we immediately started to write season two.
Neither does France have the writers room tradition.
It was also, Gobert suggests with some humility, a matter of relative inexperience.
Before they became showrunner they worked as screenwriters, or as screenwriting interns in good series.
but all the writers ofThe Returnedwere beginners.
Maybe in ten years we can make a better series faster, I hope!
All of that should be reassuring toThe Returneds audience, not that its made the wait any more bearable.
As a TV fan, Gobert understands our pain.
I would be very frustrated ifGame Of Thronesstopped for three years!
We know that Adele is pregnant with Simons child.
Jenna Thiam, who plays twin Lena, expands on Perriers words.
Season one opens and nobody knows what they want.
Youll see all the obstacles that are in the way of each of our objectives.
Whats for sure, says Perrier, is its getting higher and higher and higher.
The pressure is rising and the story is evolving a lot.
The storytelling takes it into account.
Youll see, says Gobert.
For the next series I will think about it a bit.
I think inLostthey had the same problem with Walt.
Because there are no examples in life, maybe theycangrow.
Gobert played no part in the US remake.
They asked me if I wanted to participate but I couldnt because I was writing season two.
But I didnt watch it.
Its so close, its like a literal remake adds Desmarais.
It was the same shots, agrees Perrier, but bad.
Thiam has no warmer feelings about the show.
I thinkLes Revenantsis interesting because its French.
It cant be translated in an American way.
Its not like [beats chest] Were French!
she explains, laughing.
If not French, then what is it?
In your life youre dealing with existential questions and at the same time youre having sex.
Thats what I mean by its not particularly French, there are both sides of life.
Its human agrees Perrier, nodding.
So we have to deal with that.
Ive never felt that all the doors that we open…
I knew when we opened them how we could shut them.
Thiam adds reassuringly, Almost all the answers are given out in the end.
When this show about a very strange small mountain town aired, theTwin Peakscomparisons came thick and fast.
Hes also a fan of giving his actors character references.
He gave everybody a mythological figure explains Thiam, mine was Antigone.
Like with the Greek myths and movies, religion is just another cultural reference.
Fabrice never went into real religious interpretations, never, just using it as a myth, says Perrier.
Thiam agrees, In France, were very secular.
He continues, We listened to the Rosemarys Baby music for a sequence in episode three.
So now its changed.
I used that image in series two, in episode eight, but its not the final one.
But its a storyyou will see when you see all of season twoits the story of a place.
We called them chapters because we think that there is a strong link between season one and season two.
Something closes at the end of chapter two, agrees Desmarais.
The Returned series 2 starts on More4 in the UK tonight, Friday the 16thof October at 9pm.
