Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.
French TV shows are having a moment this month with the premieres of two series that rely heavily on French-speaking characters subtitled in English: Amazon Prime Video’s ballet dramedy “Étoile” and Apple TV ’s “Carême,” a period, Frenchified spin on “The Bear.”
‘Étoile’
Veteran showrunners Amy Sherman Palladino and Daniel Palladino, the married team behind “Gilmore Girls” and “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” return with “Étoile,” which means “star” in French. All eight episodes are now streaming.
While Amy’s snappy, hyperfast dialogue remains intact, the lines lose something when viewers rely on subtitles for an English translation from French in some scenes.
“Étoile” also suffers from excessively long episodes — granted there’s world building on two continents, but some judicious editing would have been wise — and initially unlikable lead characters. “Étoile” feels more like work and less fun than the Palladinos’ last effort at a dance dramedy, one-season-and-done 2012-13 Freeform series “Bunheads.”
In “Étoile,” the head of New York’s Metropolitan Ballet, Jack (Luke Kirby), seeks to combat declining ticket sales by agreeing with his counterpart from a Parisian ballet, Genevieve (Charlotte Gainsbourg), to trade their top talent to boost ticket sales on both sides of the Atlantic.
American choreographer Tobias (Gideon Glick) relocates to France, and French ballet star/lefty activist Cheyenne (Lou de Laâge) returns to the New York stage where she previously danced.
The loss of Cheyenne doesn’t sit well with some members of the French ballet’s board, with one claiming his grandson told him, “Grandpa, losing Cheyenne is worse than the burning of Notre Dame and the Nazi occupation combined.”
“He sounds fun,” Genevieve replies.
Just don’t expect to see much ballet in “Étoile,” at least not in the early episodes. Viewers hear a lot about the genius of Cheyenne’s dancing (“To watch you dance is like dying and finding out there is a heaven,” Jack tells her), but there are few pirouettes as Cheyenne grumps around offending other dancers while she tries to convince Gael (David Alvarez, filmed-in-Pittsburgh “American Rust”) to rejoin the company and dance with her.
Through its first three episodes, “Étoile” focuses more on the politics behind the scenes (the donors, management, conflict between the business and creative sides) and mines humor from casting a bull in a ballet performance and from a wealthy right-wing donor who drives Jack crazy.
Fans of “Gilmore Girls” take note: Yanic Truesdale — inn clerk Michel in Stars Hollow — plays a vaping American who works for the Paris ballet company; Kelly Bishop (aka matriarch Emily Gilmore) guest stars as Jack’s mother; Dakin Matthews, who played Hanlin Charleston on “Gilmore Girls,” recurs as a ballet muckety-muck.
Whether those Easter eggs and Sherman-Palladino’s comedic patter is enough to win enough viewers for “Étoile” to dance on remains to be seen. If I had to guess, I’d say this one will go the way of “Bunheads.”
‘Carême’
Imagine if Carmy from “The Bear” lived in France during the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte, working as a pastry chef and spy, and you have a good idea what to expect from Apple TV ’s “Carême,” streaming its first two fully-in-French episodes April 30 (six additionalepisodes stream weekly on Wednesdays through June 11).
The French Carmy even has a right-hand woman (Alice Da Luz) as his sous chef, and the pair have the same crackling will-they-or-won’t-they sexual tension as Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) and Sydney (Ayo Edebiri). Might as well nickname this show “L’Ours” (“The Bear” in French).
Based on the book “Cooking for Kings: The Life of Antonin Carême, the First Celebrity Chef” written by historian/playwright Ian Kelly (“The King’s Man”), “Carême” was created/written for streaming by Kelly and Davide Serino (“The Bad Guy”).
Antonin Carême (Benjamin Voisin) loves feeding whipped cream to girlfriend Henriette (Lyna Khoudri) when he’s not in the kitchen working for his adoptive father, Bailly (Vincent Schmitt).
After Carême saves an ailing Napoleon with a salve concoction, Carême rejects an offer to work in Napoleon’s kitchen. When Bailly is kidnapped by Napoleon’s soldiers, a former bishop, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (Jérémie Renier), agrees to help Carême get Bailly back if Carême will spy on Napoleon.
Featured Local Businesses
For an Apple show, “Carême” is surprisingly horny, with a fair amount of bed-hopping mixed in with cooking, blackmail and subterfuge.
The show’s villain, minister of police Fouché, would definitely twirl a mustache if he had one. He seems like a first cousin to Javert from “Les Misérables.”
Thanks to Voisin’s charisma, “Carême” entertains consistently through its first three episodes, though it loses some points for its blatant rip-off of “The Good Fight’s” exploding-objects opening credits. The main credits of “Carême” also feature copious culinary masterpieces getting blown to smithereens.
You can reach TV writer Rob Owen at rowen@triblive.com or 412-380-8559. Follow @RobOwenTV on Threads, X/Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky and Facebook. Ask TV questions by email or phone. Please include your first name and location.