Jeux d'influence

As of 2024, the show streaming in the Walter Presents showcase at PBS Passport in the US, titled "Circles of Powers", is in fact Season Two (without Season One) of the French series titled "Jeux d'influence", which already has its own page here at IMDb with full cast and crew credits and pages for each show of Season One and Season Two.

Reviewers here who could make no sense of "Circles of Power" have a legitimate complaint, since this series begins with Season Two of "Jeux d'influence"--Season OPne opened the story with the same characters and plotline, so "Circles of Power" starts in the middle of the story with no explanation of who's who what is motivating them and the plot.

Are the programmers at Walter Presents/PBS totally inept? Why is there no Season 1 of this show streaming in the US, so viewers can see the first part of the story? What a crazy snafu! And a black eye for PBS Passport.

When they hit obvious plot points, we get it and yet they keep explaining it to you. I love the main plot of farmers trying to sue pesticide companies but I don't care about the love story. It's just not needed. Could be great if they cut all but the political thriller aspect.

This seems like a show about Politics and Capitalism but it's much deeper than that. It's about character. The good, the bad, the evil. It's also about the evolution of character as the education of the protagonists is pummeled with facts, not myths.

The main characters are drawn realistically, complete with human strengths and weaknesses. The two women, Claire and Chloe stand out most. Claire as a servant to her bosses dictates who slowly, almost too slowly, sees the light. Chloe as the fierce daughter who loves and respects her father and pursues justice while her mother dithers.

Where the series fails is in it's cop out ending. Instead of a resolution and justice we get a maybe. Are they setting us up for Season 2? Apparently not.

This series starts off in total chaos. The scenes seem to be totally disconnected from one another, and each scene brings in new characters despite there being no back story to explain the roles of characters in the previous scenes. There is a lot of bizarre camera work as it follows people walking back and forth, shouting and one another and just uttering short, incomprehensible, and irrelevant dialog. As the episode continues, the narrative does not get any clearer. The story is just one of chaos. After a while, interest is lost as the characters continue their bizarre conversations, with no end in sight. Who makes garbage like this?

Fast paced show where they focus on the day to day life of persons like you and me who, for different reasons and different motivations end up doing things against their own belief and reason. For some it's very conscious, for others, more like an instinct.

Even if the show is very short, it left me thinking how much of it is reality or an exaggeration. How much drama is on the actions and decisions of the characters? How would a real pharma multinational CEO or a minister would see it? Would they say "this is a lot, we cannot do things like this in the real world"? Or would they say nothing at all...?

It is a nice picture of the state of politics and economics interests in the modern world, from the perspective of the individual parts that composes it (mostly Claire, Chloé, Romain and Delpierre)

The only problem with it: it won't be any season 2.. The show ends abruptly and many things are left to be known, even though the message is clear within the last 15 min of the series.