When Booba co-creates and stars in his first series, what does it look like? Our opinion on the French fiction “Ourika” by Clément Godart and Booba, available on Prime Video.
What does Ourika say?
2005, in a city in the Paris suburbs plagued by riots, the Jebli family reigns supreme over cannabis trafficking. While the neighborhoods are burning, a big narcotics raid blows up the clan. Driss, the youngest son, is forced to take over the family business even though he was planning a career in finance. Facing him, William, a novice and ambitious neighborhood cop, is determined to bring him down. Their meteoric parallel rise will change their destiny forever.
Who is in the casting of Ourika?
Rapper Elie Yaffa alias Booba launches into French fiction by co-creating his first series with Clément Godart and even takes up the game of a small secondary role for the first time on the small screen.
To carry Ourika, we are treated to a charismatic leading trio brimming with energy: Adam Bessa, seen in Tyler Rake and its sequel, but also Mosul and Harka, Noham Edje, seen in the Bardot series and the films Les Amandiers and An Affair of Honor, and Salim Kechiouche (La vie d’Adèle, Mektoub My Love, Lupine, L’Enfant du Paradis).
Mika Cotellon – Prime Video
The rest of the cast includes other strong personalities like Max Gomis (La Gravité), Sawsan Abès (Rue des Dames), Marwen Zaibat alias “Usky” (66-5), Abdé Maziane (Engrenages, 66-5), Rayan Bouazza (November), Karim Aissaoui (I3P), Valentin Pradier (66-5), Meriem Serbah (L’Esquive, Les Miens) and Yowa-Angélys Tshikaya, in his first role.
Ourika, is it worth a look?
When a former police officer and a successful rapper team up to create a series, it can create sparks (and good ones!). Friends for several years, Clément Godart and Booba decide to tell a simple but effective story: that of the rise of a young cop and a young thug, whose destinies are forever linked.
Inspired by real events, such as the François Thierry Affair and the abuses of the fight against drugs, Ourika is based as much on a documented social subject and a reality on the ground and life in the suburbs brought by Clément Godard and Booba as on the fictional writing talent of screenwriters Clément Gournay, Sabine Dabadie, Vincent L’Anthoën, Sylvie Chanteux and Mehdi Fikri, directed by collection director Marine Francou (Engrenages).
Mika Cotellon – Prime Video
From the first episodes, we feel the ambition to offer a French series well produced and calibrated for its audience, with inspirations ranging from The Wire to Gomorra, with the little French touch that we found in Engrenages.
Ourika fits perfectly into the genre of police thriller, taking up the classic codes with a complex investigation, unexpected alliances, obvious betrayals and very violent confrontations, while the backdrop of the series is set during the riots of 2005.
The action is obviously there with muscular direction by Marcela Said (Lupin, Gangs of London) and Julien Despaux (Profilage, Paris Police 1900, Les 7 vies de Léa) to film chases, explosions, arrests and other confrontations which punctuate the sustained intrigue of Ourika.
Mika Cotellon – Prime Video
From muscular thriller to family fresco
But this high-energy thriller in the suburbs doesn’t just aim to amaze you. The series plays with clichés, either by embracing them wildly but more often by twisting them (witness the surprising but welcome opening scene of the first episode), and takes the characters to interesting places to evolve into a family drama and “brotherly”.
The main characters are constantly evolving, with a trajectory that we guess quite easily at times, but we do not shy away from our pleasure in the face of the twists and turns and the fascinating progression of the stakes that we feel are getting higher and higher.
Mika Cotellon – Prime Video
Because we can well imagine that Ourika is not intended to last just one season and that these first seven episodes are only the beginnings of an immense police and family fresco, which should take us beyond the Paris region and the Ourika valley, which remains the central cradle of the Jebli clan.
With its main characters, who have everything to become emblematic, and its colorful secondary characters, including Booba who manages through his charismatic presence to bring a certain gravity without being in excess. After a first season, which places its pawns well on a large-scale political-social chessboard, we hope for a season 2 so that the series plays new cards.
The Ourika series is available on Prime Video.