I loved this show. After our holiday in Paris at the end of January I wanted to keep the holiday magic alive. So I finally checked out French comedy Call My Agent/Dix Pour Cent (France Télévision/Netflix 2015–2020) several years after I heard the recommendation from TV critic Rhianna Dhillon. It’s so good I devoured all four seasons within a couple of months.

The show is set at a Paris talent agency, where established agents Andréa (Camille Cottin), Mathias (Thibault de Montalembert), Gabriel (Grégory Montel) and Arlette (Liliane Rovère) manage stars’ – mainly actors – careers, egos and dilemmas. We’re introduced to their world through Camille (Fanny Sidney), a young woman who has come to Paris to confront her estranged father and stumbles into a job as Andréa’s assistant.

This is a light, workplace comedy very much in the vein of W1A, the BBC comedy that satirises the BBC. Genuinely great actors with excellent comedy chops are placed in largely frothy and/or satirical storylines. The guest stars are actual, mostly French, celebrities playing themselves. (Which I admit I did not realise for the first few episodes as I did not recognise the names of the early guest stars. I guess huge celebrity in France does not necessarily mean huge international star.)

The celebrity stories tend to satirise that particular star in a goodhearted manner. Real-life mother-and-daughter actresses Nathalie Baye and Laura Smet, for example, have to confront whether they really mean it when they say they’d love to make a film together. They’re offered dream roles in a two-hander by a director they admire. Both of them fear acting as a mother and daughter at each other’s throats in an intense, remote shoot will risk their actual relationship. But neither is willing to admit this to the other, so instead they both tank their auditions. Which gives their agents a mess to untangle.

Call My Agent works because the cast is good but also because behind the silliness of the celebrity-a-week stories, there is a base of more relatable stories about the relationships between the staff at the agency. We quickly get to know the agents, their assistants, the receptionists and some of their non-agency significant others. The show touches on – very lightly – ageism, homophobia and racism, while giving more time to problems of sexism in the workplace and specifically the film industry.

There is a third layer of storyline, which is the fate of the agency itself. In episode one, the agency’s founder and owner dies. Thereafter for all four seasons the business is never quite secure, with various plots about buyouts coming and going. This thread I found less interesting than all the rest, but it gives a reason for characters to be competing or plotting against each other one season and then rock-solid partners the next. As well as for some new characters to join the main cast in later seasons.

There are so many details about this show I love. The agents are all very different in temperament and yet all excel at their jobs (most of the time). Gabriel is a sweet chaotic idiot pushover. Andréa is fierce and all-business (or all-night partying). Mathias is scheming and smooth-talking. Arlette is practical, has been in the business forever and always has time for a story about the old days. Some of her backstory is Liliane Rovère’s real-life history, such as her having had a relationship with jazz legend Chet Baker in the 1950s.

I found it interesting looking into the main cast that the most celebrated, award-winning among them is Laure Calamy, who plays Mathias’s assistant Noèmie. In the first season I found her character a little two-dimensional, the cliché of the ultra-competent assistant in love with her boss. But in later seasons Noèmie’s role gets more complex and Calamy gets to flex her acting chops. Having watched Call My Agent to the end I can see how Calamy has won acting awards from the Césars, Sundance and Venice Film Festival and I’m curious to check out some of her film work.

Although season 4 gives all the characters an ending of sorts, Call My Agent was renewed for a spin-off film and fifth season in early 2021. However, there has been no further update that I could find. No doubt the COVID pandemic was partly to blame for delays. And at least one of the lead actresses gave birth in 2021/2022 which would have ramifications for scheduling. Perhaps the producers were also distracted by helping launch the several international remakes that have popped up since 2020. While I would love to revisit these characters and learn where their lives go next, I imagine each year that passes makes it harder to pick the project back up. I’ll just have to rewatch the original run.