FROM THE ARCHIVES: Jean-François de Fromage Blanc (19/11/08)

Welcome once again to From The Archives, where we take a gander at the comedy series that I scripted while studying at Warwick University. This week's episode of The Yesterday Show has a decidedly French feel.

It may come as a surprise to some of you that my interest in film was not always quite so rabid or fanatical as it is now. I only began to seriously get into cinema at university, and even then I was very much dipping my toe in the water. So when it came to do an episode about cinema, Tom and I went for the old chestnut of French films being pretentious or ostentatious, and tried to put our own stamp on a very old joke.

Jean-François de Fromage-Blanc is essentially my very bad impression of Gerard Dépardieu, who has coincidentally been making headlines recently surrounding France and the tax system. The conceit Tom and I came up with was an actor who spoke English very well but had great difficulty understanding it being spoken from other people, leading to a great deal of confusion. Ultimately I don't think the joke worked quite as well as we thought, but I think the second half of the interview makes up for it.

This episode is also notable for the development of Alex's story. This is the first instalment of a two-parter I promised you back in January (here), in which we get to see how badly Tom and Alex's relationship has gone downhill over the course of the series. Originally this wasn't intended as a two-parter, with things going back to normal the very next week, but as ideas began to crystalise for the Christmas show, it increasingly made sense to end things the way we did.

You'll have to wait until next week to find out what becomes of Alex, but for now sit back and revel in some good old-fashioned French-bashing, courtesy of Jean-François de Fromage-Blanc:

Daniel