Eric Cantona, Tiphaine Daviot and Arielle Dombasle film for M6 “Serial Hunter”, a thriller in which a cop and a former media expert on serial killers join forces to catch a serial killer. We met them on set.
Masks screwed on the face, the two characters embodied by Eric Cantona and Tiphaine Daviot could give the impression of having set foot in a swinger party, but it is not so. The atmosphere is quite different. Daniel Hansen and Amélia Delcourt, the heroes of Serial Hunter, a new series intended for M6 currently filming in Belgium, are in reality seeking to unmask and arrest Shakespeare, a fearsome serial killer who rages in the North of France.
Far from the regional thrillers and police comedies à la HPI which have been kings for a few years on French television, Serial Hunter, created by Nathalie Hug and Jérôme Camut, and produced by Nathalie Perus and Elisabeth Yturbe for Atlantique Productions (Mediawan group), has chosen an American-style story, which obviously brings to mind films like The Collector (with its serial killer who called himself Casanova), and is, by the very admission of its producers, part of the vein of American television thrillers such as Mentalist, Blacklist or Dexter.
Because a bit like Patrick Jane in Mentalist, Daniel Hansen, former media expert on serial killers who has committed an irreparable act and is now paying the price for rejection, is “linked” to the killer he relentlessly tracks down, who plays with him for a reason that the hero of Serial Hunter ignores when the series starts.
Eric Cantona, Tiphaine Daviot and Arielle Dombasle immersed in the heart of a somewhat special auction
When we set foot in Brussels on Tuesday July 4, the teams of this series in four 52-minute episodes directed by Renaud Bertrand (I promise you) are filming crucial scenes from episode 2 within the Aegidium, a former village hall located on the Parvis de Saint-Gilles, which was a high place in the Roaring Twenties in Brussels and which, while waiting to be renovated, offers incredible possibilities for production, including that of a kind of club select reconstituted in one of the huge rooms of the building.
Daniel and Amélia, the intrepid young cop with whom he is forced to collaborate, invest a murderabilia – contraction of “memorabilia” (memory in Latin) and “murder” (murder in English) – that is to say an auction sale of objects having belonged to serial killers or crime scenes. All this in the hope of collecting new clues and getting closer to Shakespeare who, Amélia is sure, has made a new victim in the person of a missing teenager.
Upon her arrival, supposed to be incognito, in this macabre auction, the investigator embodied by Tiphaine Daviot (Les Randonneuses, En Famille) has the feeling of having landed with the madmen. “They’re not crazy people, they’re art enthusiasts. A somewhat special art, of course”, assures Hansen in a rather phlegmatic tone. Unconvinced, Amélia Delcourt stuck to her guns when she learned that one of the guests had a skull of one of Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims at home.
Nicolas Velter/M6
Renaud Bertrand hard at work with his film crews.
Serial Hunter, in addition to being part of a genre adored by viewers, is also surfing on the trend of true crime, with its cop heroine fed with miscellaneous facts by her mother, this skilful reference to Dahmer, the success of Netflix, and this murderabilia which alone represents the fascination that murderers exert on society.
“There’s a pretty crazy, or goofy side to the tone, but in reality most of the things you’ll see in the series are quite documented, it’s a little scary”explains Elisabeth Yturbe, referring to the somewhat strange collectors that Hansen and Delcourt meet in the sequences shot that day, but also to a Murder Party which plays an essential role in another part of the series.
Indeed, the scariest part of all this is that these murderabilia really exist and were not invented by the writers of Serial Hunter. “It really exists, it’s crazy. There are fairs that are held clandestinely on the darknet in particular”continues Nathalie Perus, the other producer of the series. “And the people who get together aren’t just very gothic people or marginal people. There are also jet set people who come from all over the world and have a kind of morbid obsession and don’t know how to spend their money. A bit like Yumi, the character played by Arielle Dombasle, who is a collector and a high priestess of these events.”.
A real aesthetic, mystery and humour, a winning cocktail for M6?
Arielle Dombasle, precisely, shoots her very first sequences that day and quickly stands out on the set, in her anything but discreet costume. Very invested, the actress and singer “participated in the development of her look, which we wanted here to be vaporous, a little black widow, with tulle, a corset, and a headdress”tells us Sarah Guichard, the costume designer of Serial Hunter.
First of all convinced by the presence behind the camera of Renaud Bertrand, of whom she liked “vision”Arielle Dombasle admits to having embarked on this adventure because she had the feeling that this new series was going to stand out from all that we have seen on screen for years to come in terms of thrillers.
“I liked the idea of a thriller that has a real aesthetic ambition, an aura, a mystery. These are things that I like as a spectator”she admits to us on the set. “I find that all the thrillers that are shot look alike, there is often a heavy realism, and this is not the case, we are in something different. Like today, with this staging and this commentary around addictions, collectors, and the parallels that we can weave between these very particular collectors, lovers of objects that belonged to crime scenes, and contemporary art for example”.
The exchange we are witnessing this Tuesday July 4 between Hansen, Amélia and Yumi, who happens to be an old acquaintance of the character played by Eric Cantona, sets the tone of the series, between humor and serious investigation, eyeing the side of the creepy and the macabre.
“The scenes today are quite symptomatic of the whole series”explains Renaud Bertrand, who presents Serial Hunter as a “introspection around a serial killer, but from an angle that had not necessarily been well treated elsewhere before”.
“There is something a little baroque in the series, and at the same time you have to believe in it, and there is humor. You have to find a balance between all that”continues the director. “We don’t want to go into something too crazy, which we won’t believe. We don’t want to do something shy either, because that would be a shame. And it has to be funny, mysterious, disturbing, embarrassing, a little unhealthy. The character of Arielle is a bit of a reflection of all that, she brings humor, mystery and transgression”.
Throughout the day, the chemistry between Eric Cantona and Tiphaine Daviot, the two stars of the series, is palpable. We already have the feeling of a duo that should make sparks on the screen. “I really wanted to play with Eric”says Tiphaine Daviot between two sequences. “The two characters are a bit of a dog and a cat, it’s very funny, very The lethal Weapon in the duet. At first they don’t like each other, they sting each other all the time. In fact, the series is very first degree in the investigation, but we allow ourselves a real quirky, funny tone, so I tell myself that the cocktail can be nice”.
NicolasVelter
Eric Cantona, and his Big Lebowski look, facing Charlie Dupont in Serial Hunter.
Eric Cantona, who has become a regular on the M6 series after Les Anonymes toured at the start of the year but still unpublished on the air, says he is delighted with his collaboration with the channel and is full of praise for his playing partner: “Tiphaine is great, she has real comic timing, she’s full of life, we form a duo that works very well. Amélia constantly provokes Hansen, this rivalry between the two is one of the central elements of the script, it creates real tension, it’s super interesting”.
In short, a mismatched duo, like television offers a lot in detective series, but which evolves this time in a different universe, full of Anglo-Saxon references. “We started with something very aesthetic, very polished, very qualitative, I think it will pay off”continues the one who has multiplied roles in series since Le Voyageur and Dérapages.
As the first set photos visible above suggest, fans of Eric Cantona will however have a little trouble recognizing him because the actor sports a slightly bohemian and neglected look, a reflection of the drifting lifestyle of Daniel Hansen, who, since he committed a major fault, lives in a caravan, in the garden of his former assistant.
“At the beginning, physically, I had sent a photo of Jim Morrison at the end of his life. And then the production had the idea of going towards a look at the The Big Lebowski Or David Duchovny In Californication“says the actor. “It’s a bit of a mixture of all that. I find it important to change your look, your head, with each project, I like that”.
To discover the look of Daniel Hansen on the screen, as well as this story of tracking down a formidable serial killer also with Vinnie Dargaud, Catherine Hosmalin and Charlie Dupont in the cast, meet in 2024 on M6. With the key, if successful, the possibility of a season 2 which is already in the minds of producers and authors.