Fanny Herrero, creator of Dix Pour Cent, is finally back. With Funny for Netflix, she signs a touching, fair and terribly modern work on stand-up in France. A little marvel.
What is it about ?
Four young actors are trying to find a place for themselves on the Parisian stand-up scene.
Funny, a series created by Fanny Herrero with Younès Boucif, Mariama Gueye, Elsa Guedj, Jean Siuen… Available on Netflix
Who is it with?
The cast of Funny is not made up of stars. As with Dix Pour Cent when it started, Fanny Herrero is betting on choosing actors who are almost unknown to the general public but who, we hope, will experience the same success as their predecessors.
Thus, we discover Younès Boucif in the role of Nezir which will be a little the common thread of the series. Already appeared in Les Magnétiques, he is best known for being the “rapper of Rouen”, simply under his first name “Younès” then “Yoon on the Moon”. The young man is as clever with a microphone to make people laugh as he is to rap.
It is the best known of the distribution. Mariama Gueye has distinguished herself in numerous TV productions including La Smala s’en mélle and more recently in Gloria and Sophie Cross. She radically changes register with Funny and reveals all her comic power by playing Aïssatou, a humorist married with a child who breaks through thanks to an explosive sketch.
Mika Cotellon/Netflix
In the role of Bling, a former star of the French stand-up and owner of Funny (the comedy club which is used as HQ with the series), Jean Siuen holds its first major role. After small roles with the Palmashow, in Fais pas ci Fais pas ça and recently in A Man of Honor with Kad Merad, he embodies a fallen star and on the wrong slope.
Finally, a real revelation of the series with Younès Boucif, Elsa Guedj embodies Apolline. A brilliant young woman – and a bit quirky – belonging to the Parisian upper middle class, she dreams of going on stage and making people laugh.
Well worth a look ?
Making a series behind the scenes of stand-up in France, telling the mechanics of building a good valve, the daily struggles while making people laugh, here is a challenge that only Fanny Herrero, with her particular talent for creating endearing and singular characters, could raise.
Challenge taken up hands down with Funny. We found only one small flaw in the series, its slow start. After the first two episodes, which linger a little too much on exposing the characters and their issues, Funny really takes off and keeps all its promises.
Mika Cotellon/Netflix
Car Funny tells the story of four characters who have a common goal – to make others laugh – but who come from very different backgrounds. Nezir lives alone with his father in poor health and works as a delivery man. Bling knew the glory but dark in the drug, unable to produce the slightest sketch. Aïssatou, married to a doctoral student and mother of a little girl, did not choose the career hoped for by her parents. And Apolline, still a student, already has a life mapped out by her parents away from the stage.
And this desire to make people laugh has nothing to do with a superficial dream of glory. As the series’ catchphrase states, “they want to make a living out of humor, but it’s humor that allows them to live“. It’s a visceral need for each of them. And we realize how much this career choice is akin to a priesthood.
Whether it’s Nezir who reworks his valves all day long on his bike, Apolline who thinks about her punchlines even in her most intimate moments or Aïssatou who exposes her sex life to bend her audience in two… all give their flesh and their sweat , go bare and in the least flattering way possible to hit the audience right in the heart.
Mika Cotellon/Netflix
Faithful to her culture as a pioneer in the field of comedy, Fanny Herrero changes here – again – the codes of French comedy. In Funny, the characters debunk all the stereotypes we see assigned to them in too many French productions. Nezir, Aïssatou, Bling and Apolline each in their own way explode the shackles of their origins.
Fundamentally modern, in its tone and the treatment of its subjects – a mid-season sex scene is of public utility – Funny is both very realistic in its representations and at the same time slightly out of time. It looks like a marvelous tale, in a 2.0 version and in an ultra-contemporary Paris. A marvel, we tell you.