4 out of 5

Created by: Dan Franck, Frederic Tellier, Charline de Lépine and Emmanuel Daucé

covers season 1

According to the wiki, the French title – Les Hommes de l’ombre – means ‘The Shadow Men,’ which is ultimately cooler, but I guess it misses out on the meta way that the show ‘spins’ our conceptions of what dramas of this nature would regularly focus on to deliver a fairly straight-forward character study… and though the misleading still allows for some plot padding, the show is ultimately stronger for the direction it takes.

The current French president is assassinated; in the wake of his death, elections are announced and we’re shown the self-confident dealings of PM Philip Deleuvre (Philippe Magnan), skipping over consideration of the tragedy for calculating his ascension to the role.  Aware of the questionable nature of how the assassination is being presented to the public – as something to stir political favor as opposed to being exposed as the random act it actually is – the spin man who helped the former pres get elected, Simon Kapita (Bruno Wolkowitch) decides to make a return to France to rep Deleuvre’s opposition, Anne Visage (Nathalie Baye).  Complicating matters are his protege and now rival, Ludovic Desmeuze (Grégory Fitoussi), who goes to work for the PM, and with whom Simon shares a romantic interest, Valentine (Clémentine Poidat).

So assassination cover-ups and affairs – get ready for twists a’plenty and steamy sex scenes and hidden motives, yes?  Those things exist, but they’re not the focus.  In fact, most people are relatively up front with their desires – to be elected, mostly – and are written and acted as human beings.  Philip and Ludo are absolutely cast as the villains against Simon and Anne’s good guys, but the PM has an honest desire to serve his public, and Ludo, happy to foil Simon as he is, doesn’t want to really sink to the dirty tactics both parties end up using against each other.  This is Spin’s biggest trick: that it ends up really not being about the politics and people at all.  While some understanding of what’s what is probably helped by knowing France’s government structure, even without that knowledge the gist is clear: our PR men are just moving pieces around a board, gaining favor with the right people, twisting public perception.  Whether you’re right or left or center isn’t really the most important thing, so long as you have people supporting you who encourage a certain vote and as long as the way you’re seen and heard is meted out in a similar fashion.  The assassination cover-up which looms in the background of the series is what weaves through the plot and subplots, only to end up being relatively unimportant as well, except as a bargaining tool regarding who’s covering up what.

Spin is a fascinatingly restrained drama that starts with a bang – kill the president – the most shows would use as fuel for their entire season.  Instead, the creators and writers focus on making their characters on both sides of the election fully human, which helps to blur and confuse the lines between good and bad much more than overt twisty cliff-hangers and ‘shadow men’ making shadowy decisions ever could.