With Historical Docs and Blockbuster Series, France’s Normandy Takes the Stage

Dotted with history and marked by weathered beauty, the Normandy coast will stay carved into the TV landscape long after buyers depart this week’s Unifrance Rendez-Vous in Le Havre.

With this year marking the 80^th anniversary Operation Overlord, the coast will play an evident starring role in historical docs from across the globe, all while local and international productions continue to embark with an eye on rugged locations.

Produced by Mediawan shingle CC&C and sold by France TV Distribution, the long-running “Apocalypse” doc brand marked this 80-year occasion with “Apocalypse: D-Day,” a two-part series that brought archival material to life in vivid color.  The production outfit used tools developed in-house to colorize and remaster black and white footage, mixing manual processing with AI assistance to lend the footage an awesome impact.

“You can’t just put pretty colors everywhere,” says France TV Distribution’s Julia Schulte. “Everything was linked to historical research, to knowing the exact color of the uniforms, the precise color of the tanks. We’ve always lived with this story in black and white, so seeing these images was almost destabilizing. It looked like more like reality, like it could have been shot yesterday. You felt as if you were really there on the beaches of Normandy.”

Supported by audiovisual commission Normandie Images, series like political thriller “Haven of Grace” and the ARTE broadcast art doc “1874, The Birth of Impressionism” have put radically different side of Normandy to the screen.

Meanwhile, international productions have also keyed into the coastal region’s post-apocalyptic potential, with AMC’s “The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon” making the most out of otherworldly locations like Omaha Beach and the iconic Mont-Saint-Michel.

Not ready to let the American’s have all the fun, France Television is now readying its own genre-defying blockbuster about a sea monster wreaking havoc in where else but that very same region.

Produced by Mintee Studio and Thalie Images, “Sea Shadows” mixes Spielbergian fantasy with a detective thriller tone as it follows as an oceanographer investing mysterious attacks in her coastal hometown. Aiming at younger, digitally-savvy audience the project accents high-end production value and spectacle, and for that very reason the striking rock formations and high cliffs of Normandy became essential tools.

 “[Those locations] helped us bridge the gap with similar English-language and Nordic productions,” says Schulte. “The audience expects darker environments and colder light, and we were able to do just that, and to give this series a real French identity by looking to Normandy’s incredible landscapes.”