Start by begging those who, perhaps a little too quickly, decide to wring Rabbit’s neck and cause his downfall. To say that it is certainly possible that we will be scalded by this unsympathetic character but that patience and clemency will be largely rewarded. It’s even a safe bet that you find yourself like the author of these lines: headphones on and hilarious enough to make your neighbors jump in front of so much narrative and linguistic ingenuity, not to mention a sense of humor that needs to be delivered well because everyone will take it for granted.
So, obviously we could summon the greatest – Balzac, the soap opera, his Comédie humaine, his recurring characters or even La Fontaine and his “no point in running” – but let’s say more modestly, and after listening to the first ten episodes, that the authors of this audio series have found their cadence. That’s good, we are whispered in the ear that it should last six months – and maybe even beyond.
But let’s start again earlier. At the beginning was Boris Razon, editorial director of Arte France, and his wish to produce daily fiction to expand the audience of Arte Radio, the web radio of the Franco-German channel. Having heard of the original idea, the author and director Benjamin Abitan (The Last Session and The Prehistory of the Future, two radio fictions awarded the prestigious Europa Prize), proposed to Silvain Gire (then director of Arte Radio, since replaced by Perrine Kervran) different pitches, all refused until his meager but promising “It’s the story of a guy who finds his classmates from primary school to take revenge”.
Narcissistic pervert
Benjamin Abitan and Wladimir Anselme, co-authors of the series La Vésicule bleue, broadcast on France Culture in 2011, then began to write in a “crazy and disorganized” way. Not crazy (especially since the allocated budget is still 800,000 euros), the channel then puts Laura Fredducci, co-writer in particular of Un si grand soleil, the France Télévisions soap, in their hands, so that Rabbit does not go too far outside the scope and specifications of the soap opera with its share of cliffhangers and other “in the next episode”.
Like in fairy tales, they lived their collaboration happily (in progress). Moreover, this is understandable because it is with a certain avidity that we await our daily dose (every day, since February 5, an episode has been posted online, at a rate of five per week) as we are he is, let’s admit it, attached to Rabbit and his adventures.
But let’s just say a few words about the story: so Rabbit, episode 1: “I’m going to tell you how I took revenge on the people who had hurt me during primary school and how this revenge caused the worst disaster ecological of all times. » And to tell how, at 38, he lost his benefits received as a narcissistic pervert (sic) and was forced to join a podcast therapy program if he wanted to get them back (re-sic). On how he had to return to Lapinville, the town of his childhood with a “degraded ocean-style climate”: “When you come back to your hometown, you expect things to stir up a lot of things. It made me neither hot nor cold. Nothing had changed. » What will change, however – and this is the horizon of the end of this series which already announces at least 200 episodes – is nothing less than… the destruction of the Earth!
Let’s say then that to do this the authors write at the same time as the series is filmed and edited, that the directors (some of whom, like Cédric Aussir and Laure Egoroff, come from Radio France) follow one another, that each brings their own dough and own grammar, that Benjamin Abitan watches over (which also earns him the title of artistic director) so that harmony reigns in Lapinville, which does not prevent them from having fun, allowing themselves the pleasure of discovering what one imagined to see how it possibly fits into the big story.
Because if the authors know how it will end, the possibilities of achieving it remain almost infinite, which leaves them the freedom not only to deploy a particular character or subplot but, let us trust them, to sometimes slip out of the hole and properly realistic soil.
But since disclosing is a nasty fault, let’s just end by saying how delightful this fiction is which borrows and renews at the same time the clichés and conventions of the soap opera, has fun multiplying jokes and mise en abyme, and takes care of its downfalls for the most great pleasure to our ears.