TF1 is broadcasting the second episode of season 5 of “Balthazar” this Thursday evening, during which the characters of Tomer Sisley and Constance Labbé are faced with the disappearance of an influencer. An investigation freely inspired by a news item.
The new season 5 of Balthazar – which will be the last as previously announced – continues this Thursday evening at 9:10 p.m. on TF1 with a new very successful episode not to be missed which is entitled “Under influence” and echoes, by a point very precise, to a true news story.
Returning to Paris during the first episode of this fifth and final season to arrest a serial killer nicknamed “The Puppeteer”, Raphaël Balthazar (Tomer Sisley) is stuck at home with an electronic bracelet on his ankle while awaiting a court decision.
To pass the time, the most daredevil of forensic scientists therefore begins to spy on his neighbors and suddenly notices, looking out the window, that a teenager wearing a duck mask on his face is mutilating himself and to try to end his life in the building across the street.
At the same time, in Paris, a scene of terror occurs: a figure wearing the same mask kills three random passers-by. The beginning of a nightmare, punctuated by various outbursts of violence, which could well be linked, in one way or another, to the disappearance of an influencer, Gabrielle Gauthier (Jade Pedri), who is followed by two millions of subscribers on social networks and promotes positive thinking.
The Gabby Petito case served as an influence for the screenwriters of Balthazar
To imagine the various investigations that punctuate each season of Balthazar, the screenwriters of the hit detective series from TF1 often draw their inspiration from various facts, as explained by producer and showrunner Clothilde Jamin to Entertainment TV : “We always start from true stories or stories that we have heard, from miscellaneous facts. Each time, we start from several sources of inspiration that mix”.
And in the case of tonight’s episode, which includes an actor from Here it all begins, it was the disappearance and then the murder of an American youtuber who influenced the authors of Balthazar at the time of the writing of this fifth and final season: “[Cet épisode] was written at the time of the disappearance of the influencer Gabby Petito in the United States”reveals Clothilde Jamin to our colleagues.
Party on a road trip across the United States in August 2021 with her boyfriend, Gabrielle Venora Petito, known as Gabby Petito, had soon given no sign of life to her family. His disappearance then made the headlines in the American media, and his body was eventually found in a forest in Wyoming in September of the same year.
A few weeks later, it was the turn of the lifeless body of Brian Laundrie, her boyfriend, to be found in Florida. The young man shot himself to death after confessing to Gabby’s murder in a notebook found by the FBI.
Far removed from what viewers of Balthazar will be able to discover in tonight’s episode, the Gabby Petito affair obviously simply served as an influence for the scriptwriters of the TF1 series by giving them the idea of an investigation putting stage the disappearance of a young influencer. The strength of their imagination having done the rest.