Daily Blague

Chasing inspiration for the last of this week's contributions to the "L'Hexagoniste" archive, I spent yesterday afternoon watching TV5MONDE - as the channel has been rechristened in a recent spruce-up. TV5 is not a French television network but a confection, a "best-of" collection of programs drawn from Switzerland, Belgium and Canada as well as from France. It was from a Swiss news broadcast that I learned of the latest non-scandal, involving what the President knew about Hurricane Katrina and when he knew it - and about how he lied about all of that. "Mensonge" was a word that came up several times in the story. Needless to say, nobody at the Times is saying any such thing. That's why it's so vital to have a foreign source of news. And no, I don't hate America - although I do think that too many Americans have a very different idea of how a republic ought to be conducted than I do.

The show that was on when I tuned in was all about the gardens at Versailles. Someone from the Podalydès family of actors impersonated a guide leading a group through the parterres and among the fountains. The show had an unbelievably impromptu air, and did not appear to be photographed by a professional. Now that I think of it, the shots of the statues and jetting water were great, but the tour shots were incompetent. Never mind. The point was to explain the significance of the gardens. Why up until now I have thought that the decoration was merely decorative I have no idea. Because not only does the layout reflect the monarchy, symbolically, but it really reflects it, by making constant allusions that reverse the cardinal topography. East is west, south is north - because inversion is what you get in a mirror. I'm amazed that I understood as much of it as I did. Of course I hauled out my big French coffee-table book about the château - no inconvenience, because I've been referring to it while reading Kathryn Davis's Versailles, a novel about Marie-Antoinette that I am grappling with at the moment.

I had to switch over to something else for a while during a show called Village en vue. This is a Canadian show, and the village in question was Inverness, Québec, not a particularly French corner of Canada. The accents were - well, I've heard about French-Canadian accents, but I didn't think they got much worse than those on display in Les Invasions Barbares. They do, however. The name of the village alone is enough to wear down a French accent.

When I came back, it was time for Les coups du coeur de Bruno. Only Stephen Fry, I think, could play Bruno Clément in the BBC version. Massive in a somewhat compact way (he's French, after all!), Bruno is even more massively sure of himself. He loves to eat delicious food. He seems to have no interest whatsoever in making it, however, and when he's listening to a cook outline the steps of a recipe, you feel that Bruno is not taking internal notes. (The recipes are available from the show's Web site, but I didn't catch it. Maybe next Thursday.) This is not to deny that Bruno is a celebrated restaurateur. Alain Ducasse is a "buddy." On his show, Bruno goes here and there to sample great food, usually (on the evidence of one show) in a professional chef's home kitchen. The chefs' home kitchens in the show that I saw were all in Malta, and indeed the photography of Valletta would have been interesting enough to keep me watching even if I didn't know from All-Clad. Bruno's guide to Malta was a former knockout in her fifties who still looked great. She seemed to be a maltaise who spoke excellent French and could tell you how deep the port is. The very idea of Les coups du coeur de Bruno on American television was hilarious.

Then followed two game shows, and on this point the difference between Here and There is blinding. French game shows are hard, much harder than, say, Jeopardy. In Des Chiffres & des Lettres, contestants either unscramble strings of letters to form words (not necessarily using all the letters), or they figure out how to reach a numerical figure by manipulating given integers. Imagine: You're to arrive at 785 by adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing five or six other numbers. The host is cute in a Richard-Thomas way, the set is a quiet riot of pastels, and it's all done with lighting, but beneath the surface glitz nothing American will be found. The audience members all seemed to have their own pens and pads, for working things out.

I began to bear in mind Raymonde Carroll's thoughts about seduction, and, sure enough, everyone was séduisant. Not necessarily great-looking, and certainly not alluring in any obvious way. But everyone was presentable, with trim hair and stylish eyeglasses, and, what's more, an eagerness to engage. The French don't appear to feel that their privacy is invaded by one's interest, because they've got a whole forecourt of privacy that's designed expressly to be invaded, while the castle itself remains unassaulted.

The second show was called Télélettre, I think. This was a words-only game, but it was plenty complicated, and where Des Chiffres & des Lettres had a library-like calm while heads were scratched (as they never were), the atmosphere at Télélettre was tense, and I had the delight of answering a couple of questions ahead of time. The game was complicated, too, with many things going on at the same time (strings of letters were to be unscrambled, with the sole misfit taking its place in a question-and-answer combo. ("Ou de Vinci a-t-il peint sa 'Cène'?" "Milan.") The questions were tough, although quite a few involved American pop culture.

American game shows are all about quick responses under pressure. French game shows add genuine difficulty to the mix. The people who appear on them, obviously, were good students once upon a time, and their minds are highly disciplined. I don't suggest for a minute that the French are smarter than we are. But their smarts are more public, more prized. The French don't appear to believe that you're giving up an advantage if you let someone know how intelligent you are. Au contraire.

A children's show came on. I can't remember the title, but it had craque and cérise in it. The End of French Television For Yesterday! There was a time in my life when I was convinced that the French are capable of extraordinarily bad taste; when I would point out that even the most sublime works of Rameau and Ravel can't resist the occasional, and very discreet, fart. I now believe that if I'm right about the farts, then French taste is the best in the world. But the kiddie show that came on after the games was - diabetic. It made Mr Rogers's Neighborhood look like Sunrise Semester. It's nice to think that French children grow up warm and secure in their extended families, but if TV like this is part of the equation, I'll take the edgier American version.