"This is us" finally arrives in France on a non-paying channel. A true phenomenon in the United States, with its record audiences, the series examines the life of a white, endearing and dysfunctional family, with its two imperfect and charismatic parents (the singer Mandy Moore and Milo Ventimiglia, revealed by Heroes) and their three children, Kate, Kevin and Randall. It sails smoothly between the past, visited at various pivotal moments of the parental couple and the childhood of the siblings, and the present of the three children who have become young adults. We will see how Kate gets rid of an obesity that prevents her from building, how Randall, a black exbebite adopted at birth, manages his identity problems, or how Kevin, a handsome kid back and actor, hides a complex sensitivity. We will cry a lot. And the worst thing is that we will like that.

The evolution of contemporary series has given access to much more daring or singularity, but we also lost a certain immediacy of feelings. The most
The shining example of this mutation is Mad Men, a brilliant, profound series that did not play on our primary emotion but on something more cerebral: we never wailed at the existential crisis of Don Draper, but it made us think. "This is us" revives a certain primitive pleasure of the TV series, that of finding each week cherished characters, to like them like friends, with their problems which resemble ours (couple, career, identity ...), but whose dialogues are much better written than our daily lives.

Sharp destinies

Warning: all this is not gnangnan so far. The high-flying writing reserves sharp exchanges, and the structure in flashback is sophisticated. Kate, become a singer, does not dare to enter
on stage and we see it then, child, give up the show of end of year; Randall welcomes a problematic teenager to his home, and as he recounts his journey, we revisit the scene where he explains to his adoptive family the need for him to look for his biological parents. Time interleaving, parallel as well as emotional editing, is the great art of "This is us".

"This is us" finally tells us much more than what his well-crafted soap trimmings reveal: it's basically a series on time. And maybe if it makes us cry so much, it's because it reminds us tirelessly how much the past and memories are woven into us.

"This is us", season 1 in December on 6ter, season 2 currently on Canal