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Concept
Les Guignols
Summary
Les Guignols (le ɡiɲɔl, The Puppets), formerly Les Guignols de l'info (le ɡiɲɔl də lɛ̃fo, The News Puppets), was a daily satirical latex puppet show broadcast on the French television channel Canal+. It was created in 1988, inspired by Le Bébête Show (1982–95) and for the puppets form by the British (1984–96). Using the same structure as a news programme, the show satirized the political world, media, celebrities, French society, and international events.
Throughout the years, it usually aired at 7:50 p.m. as a segment of other Canal+ shows, such as Nulle part ailleurs or Le Grand Journal. A weekly back-to-back replay of the week's five broadcasts was aired on Sunday afternoons, as La Semaine des Guignols.
The series started in 1988 as Les Arènes de l'info (News Arenas). It originally did not follow the news of the day, being written weeks in advance, and was not very popular. With the 1990–91 season, the series took on the name Les Guignols de l'Info and began to follow the daily news. It then enjoyed a tremendous growth in popularity with its different coverage of the first Gulf War, and quickly eclipsed its rival, Le Bébête Show.
The structure of the series stayed constant throughout the years: a headline, a few quick stories, a pre-recorded video skit, an interview with a personality, then one last story. It rarely diverged from this layout, usually only doing so to drive points across further (e.g. replacing all news with a seven-minute interview of one of the Sylvestres during the 2003 Iraq War).
The Guignols have had a tremendous impact on French popular culture, in many cases introducing or popularizing phrases. For example, à l'insu de mon plein gré ("without the knowledge of my own free will"), repeated by Richard Virenque's puppet, is now attributed in jest to people who hypocritically deny having willfully committed attributed acts. The impact of political caricature in the Guignols is unclear, but some polls have shown that they have influenced voters.
The show also went far in how violently it challenged and portrayed public figures.
Official source
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