“Fiasco” is a new French comedy series streaming on Netflix. Created by Igor Gotesman and Pierre Niney, it follows a sheepish film director whose debut film turns into a disaster after he starts losing control over his own set. It uses cringe humor like “The Office” did to follow the dysfunctional dynamic between its characters. Essentially, it is also a workplace comedy being shot by a documentary filmmaker. Earlier, it was an official selection at the Canneseries. Besides Pierre Niney in the central role, the cast also includes Leslie Medina, Géraldine Nakache, Louise Coldefy, François Civil, Igor Gotesman, Pascal Demolon, Juliette Gasquet, Djimo, Marie-Christine Barrault, and Vincent Cassel.
Spoilers ahead.
Fiasco (Limited Series) ‘Netflix’ Recap:
What is ‘Fiasco’ on Netflix about?
Created by Igor Gotesman and Pierre Niney, “Fiasco” is the new comedy show on Netflix. It follows a meek, inexperienced director who fails to keep his staff under his control. As a result, things start going wrong which affects his production process. While he tries to find a perpetrator, a documentary filmmaking team follows their crew everywhere we go. Gotesman calls it a ‘spoof of our favourite true crime shows’.
Episode 1: You’re the Boss
Netflix’s “Fiasco” follows Raphaël Valande aka Raph (Pierre Niney) a timid filmmaker working on a film based on his grandmother’s life. He casts his long-time celebrity crush, Ingrid Flaumenbaum (Leslie Medina), and Robin Jacomet (Vincent Cassel). But he doesn’t cast his close friend Tom (François Civil), who’s an aspiring actor. While Raph tries to make this movie, a documentary film team works on a behind-the-scenes film under the guidance of Slice (Igor Gotesman). Once the filming begins, Robin starts overriding Raph’s decisions. So, Raph struggles to assert his authority.
The film’s producer, Jean-Marc Torrosian (Pascal Demolon), tells Raph to gain back his crew’s trust through a motivational speech. But, while addressing them, Raph fumbles and makes some offensive remarks. He tries to explain that there is no room for any sort of bigotry, be it misogyny or racism. While doing so, he ends up insulting a Quebec stunt coordinator, Tatiana, for her different accent and makes lewd comments toward Ingrid. Later, Ingrid confronts him about it. He says he wanted to rile her up because she is too nice to play his rude grandmother.
Method Acting
Raph calls it a part of his method acting technique, inspired by Christian Bale’s style. Ingrid decides to use the same approach and be ruthless. Accidentally, she ends up insulting Tatiana. Soon after, Jean-Marc receives an e-mail with footage of Raph’s lewd remarks. The sender blackmails to make it public if he doesn’t receive money. So, Raph, Jean-Marc, Raph’s assistant director, Magalie (Géraldine Nakache), and the newly-hired, unpaid intern Gabrielle (Juliette Gasquet) try to figure out who the blackmailer is. Gabrielle suspects Tatiana might have done this because she was angry at Raph. So, Raph goes to apologize to her. While doing so, he takes out a remote necessary for her work and keeps it with him. Because of that, a woman performing the stunt breaks her leg.
Episode 2: Bad Bad Buzz
After a stuntwoman breaks her leg, her angry father makes some hefty demands. While Jean-Marc takes care of this issue, the crew gets annoyed by the bad breath of Ludivine (Louise Coldefy), the makeup woman. Ingrid embraces her method-acting approach and tells Ludivine bluntly that her breath smells terrible. So, she goes to Karim Mbras (Djimo), who runs their canteen, to check if that’s true. Karim can’t tell that because he lost his sense of smell and taste during Covid. But he doesn’t tell her or any crew member about it. Otherwise, he would lose his job.
Meanwhile, Raph admits to Jean-Marc and Magalie that the stuntwoman’s accident was his fault because he kept the remote away. Magalie asks him if there’s any footage that can implicate him. Tom helps Raph dispose of that evidence. Slice secretly shoots Raph’s interaction with Magalie despite Raph telling him not to shoot them for a while. Later on set, Robin tries to sabotage Ingrid’s performance in the scene. Out of nowhere, the lights on the set go off. The next moment, the video of Raph’s lewd remarks goes viral.
Episode 3: The After Buzz
In the email Jean-Marc received, the blackmailer told him to gather some cash within 58 hours. He wonders why the blackmailer used such an odd number. Magalie explains a possible issues with the typo. The blackmailer must have written ‘5’ instead of ‘4’. He meant 48 hours, i.e. 2 days. That’s why Jean-Marc was unprepared. Suddenly, Jean-Marc’s ex-wife, Nora, shows up in the office. Her money makes up a major chunk of Raph’s movie’s finances. So, while she questions them about the controversy, Robin stages a drama in front of her against Raph’s remarks.
Robin leaves the set in anger. Outside, he tells Raph that he staged that argument because he doesn’t want to hurt his public image with Raph’s offensive remarks. But, because of him, Nora plans to pull out her finances. Jean-Marc requests two hours to bring another actor to recover it. But no bankable actor agrees to join their project. So, Jean-Marc decides to replace Robin with Raph, and to also save their budget. Raph starts his performance awkwardly. But he returns to form after looking at Ingrid. With Jean-Marc and Magalie, he finds a new clue: the person who shot the video wears/owns a vermillion sweater.
Ludivine’s Revenge
Ludivine gets upset at Ingrid for telling her that her breath smells bad. So, she messes up Ingrid’s makeup. Because of this, Raph plans to make Ludivine leave. He tells her that she will get paid significantly less than what she was supposed to. Despite that warning, Ludivine decides to stay. So, Raph sticks a post-it note to make her leave. Meanwhile, he requests a popular TV journalist to interview them in order to boost his popularity and not lose his investment. During the interview, Raph, Jean-Marc, and Ingrid suffer from food poisoning. So, it turns into a disaster.
Episode 4: Time’s Up
In the wake of the disastrous interview, Nora stops financing the project. So, Raph comes up with an ambitious plan. He tells Tom to play a wealthy actor to help with his financial woes. Soon after, Tom shows up on stage as Barthabe and charms Jean-Marc. But he also overrides Jean-Marc’s authority and makes him feel powerless. He also builds chemistry with Ingrid, which gets on Raph’s nerves. Meanwhile, Raph learns that Ludivine is a cancer patient. So, he needs to rehire her to not ruin his reputation any more. Raph says he is financing her salary out of his own pocket.
Raph checks the CCTV footage and suspects Jean-Marc’s son, Elliot (Ethann Isidore), is behind it. He tries to convince Nora to finance her under the condition that Jean-Marc won’t speak with him again. On the set, Gabrielle tells Ingrid that Raph is dating Sarah from their crew. So, Ingrid thinks she can’t be with Raph. Later, Tom hosts a party as Barthabe and sleeps with Ingrid. Raph sees that and gets furious. Soon after, Raph realizes that Tom made Nora stop her financial support. Jean-Marc supported Barthabe because he believed they wouldn’t need Nora’s help in Barthabe’s presence. After hearing about it, Raph calls Nora to convince her to return. But it was already too late to bring her back.
Episode 5: In the Red
Raph gets furious at Tom for ruining his shoot plan. During their argument, he accidentally beats him. Once Tom loses consciousness, Raph puts him in a car trunk and parks the car in the woods. Jean-Marc starts panicking due to Barthabe’s absence. Meanwhile, the crew learns that their studio set is wrecked. So, they have to shoot some scenes in Raph’s grandmother’s house. Raph reluctantly agrees. Jean has to pay a significant amount to his grandmother to convince her to let them shoot there. Magalie eventually finds a serial number to the phone that leaked the controversial video. But their investigation hits a dead end.
Meanwhile, Gabrielle figures out that a laxative caused food poisoning during the TV interview. Karim tells Ludivine that he did that as revenge for her. Because of this, they become a couple. Desperate for money, Jean-Marc brings in a financer who wants his company’s food products to show up in a movie scene. But Raph finds it foolish, considering the scene featured the Nazi regime’s cruel treatment toward their victims. Raph’s grandmother, Haguette (Marie-Christine Barrault), tells him to be more assertive on set and around the financers.
Raph’s Past
When the shoot moves to his family farm, Raph starts looking through their house for an old letter he never sent. While doing so, he finds signs that implicate his grandmother being a Nazi sympathizer. Until then, he believes she acted against them. That’s why he tried to portray her as a person who opposed a fascist regime. After learning the truth, he gets furious at her during the shoot and tells everyone the truth about her. Suddenly, she suffers from a heart attack.
Episode 6: Truth or Dare
Tom gets out of the car trunk and patches things up with Raph. So, Barthabe returns to the set. Jean-Marc tries to get his money back from the Valande estate. Raph’s brother decides to throw the movie crew out of their estate. Low on cash, Jean-Marc looks for ways to cut costs. Raph tries to win Ingrid’s mind but fails at every attempt. Their bus breaks down, which makes the team look for the mole. Raph disrespects Barthabe, which gets on Tom’s nerves. Since they can’t leave the farm, Jean-Marc offers a set of Nazi prison camps for the crew to sleep. Predictably, they don’t accept that.
While forced to stay together, the crew plays a truth-and-dare game. Ingrid learns that Raph isn’t dating anyone. Raph says he will rewrite the movie’s ending to portray the truth of his grandmother. He and Ingrid clear their differences and kiss each other. Karim eats a wild berry and gains his sense of smell back. Meanwhile, in the game, Magalie reveals that Ludivine lied about having cancer. The crew starts arguing with each other. Barthabe ends up revealing his friendship with Raph. The crew learns that they have lost their finances, and the movie can’t be made. The next morning, they abandon the movie and leave the farm.
Episode 7: Dotting the I’s
Slice’s behind-the-scene documentary series gets financed by Netflix. Before its premiere, Raph hands over a check for the money Jean-Marc lost. For that, he sold a copy of Mein Kampf. While they patch up, Jean-Marc is still angry at Tom. During the premiere night, Raph realizes that Ingrid is dating Magalie’s ex. Raph’s sister praises his script, but his brother still refuses to appreciate his skills. Raph decides to use the premiere night as an opportunity to meet them again. By then, he noticed a peculiarity in the blackmailer’s behavior; the mole wrote ‘i’ with a rounded circle on the top. So, he tries to get every crew and cast member to write something in a diary.
Fiasco (Limited Series) ‘Netflix’ Ending Explained:
Who was the mole on Raph’s set?
During the premiere night, Raph’s diary accidentally gets on fire. So, it ruins what he had planned. Later, the documentary uses him for laughs and makes fun of his incompetency. After the film’s premiere, Raph looks at Slice’s writing style in his signature. There, he notices the rounded circle that he was looking for. He realizes that Slice is the mole/blackmailer. So, he starts running after Slice. Tom helps Raph during this chase. Eventually, Raph catches Slice and confronts him.
Slice says that Raph was the actual problem, and he only documented the truth despite poking it now and then to create drama and suspense. By then, Tom and Jean-Marc kiss each other, and Magalie gets back with her ex. While their relationships begin, Raph addresses everyone and admits his flaws and insecurities. After his awkward speech, he kisses Ingrid. Slice takes the camera to shoot their kissing scene. But, while sitting in the corner, he accidentally falls down a few floors. So, at the end of the Netflix series, Slice dies making a documentary about Raph’s failures.
Read More: Everything Coming to Netflix in May 2024
Fiasco (Limited Series) ‘Netflix’ Trailer
Fiasco (Limited Series) ‘Netflix’ Links: IMDb, Wikipedia
Fiasco (Limited Series) ‘Netflix’ Cast: Pierre Niney, François Civil, Igor Gotesman, Géraldine Nakache, Louise Coldefy, Leslie Medina, Pascal Demolon, Juliette Gasquet, Djimo, Marie-Christine Barrault, Vincent Cassel
