Plus belle la vie

Very good show! Actors are excellent and stories are interesting and gripping.

On air since 2004 and still successful.

All categories of people are portrayed in this show: teenagers, families with children, older people, poor or rich people. All those people encounter at Place du Mistral, in Marseilles, France.

Roland is the owner of the bar, Mirta owns Hotel Select, Charlotte the boutique... There is also Blanche, the teacher with her children, Vincent, the architect and his daughter Ninon, Rudi, Mirta's grandson et Luna's son, who will be a medicine doctor...

Many murders are committed and most are solved by policeman Léo.

And many other guest people in this show.

I just found out I cannot see PBLV in advance. I will miss my 25 mn no brainer soap

I am hooked on Plus Belle La Vie on TV5 Monde - Europe. The story lines are the staples of the soap universe, to be sure, but there is something appealing about the cast (all attractive enough to appear in an Australian soap!) and the setting (the city of Marseilles looks absolutely lovely) that makes it more attractive than the grim misery of EastEnders. I would say it is more akin to Emmerdale in feel - the humour, the melodrama, the age range of characters...

I want escapism from a soap and Plus Belle La Vie delivers every time. As entertainment it does its job very well. And my French is improving with every episode!

I don't usually give a 1/10 because films or TV series tend to at least have something of worth, be it action sequences or something, and I'm a merciful person so most of the time I resort to a 2 or 3 for really bad things. "Plus Belle la Vie" (or "Poubelle la Vie" as I like to call it), is the most grotesque, politically correct, cheesy, obnoxious and of course, unrealistic waste-of-my-life TV series I've ever seen. I have seen a few episodes in their entirety, all against my will. When I accidentally fall on an episode, I quickly change channel because I don't want to give this vile trash any more viewership than it deserves.

I remember an episode about some right-wing racist businessman who was the bad guy (who am I kidding, most of the bad guys in this show are right-wing racists - but not the realistic kind, the kind that can only be fantasized by "bourgeois-bohème" writers). In the end of the episode, it was revealed that this right-wing racist businessman was actually... Satan. Yeah, you read that right. That's fine in a De Niro or Pacino thriller movie, not in a awkwardly colorful and politically correct French TV show.

Also, the actors are bad as can be, playing cardboard characters, acting in boring plots, which are often about political or social subjects, the TV show always happy to make tolerance and upper-class hippie naivety be the correct thing to do against the bad meanies! That doesn't mean that you'll like it if you're left-wing. I know of many anarchists and communists who detest this series for those reasons. I will never in my life understand the appeal for "Poubelle la Vie".

This is a French answer to UK's Eastenders and Emmerdale. Pleasant and easy to watch.