Les Guignols (, The Puppets), formerly Les Guignols de l'info (, The News Puppets), was a popular satirical latex puppet show on the French television channel Canal+. The show, which ran daily, was created in 1988 and drew inspiration from the French program Le Bébête Show (1982–1995) and the British puppet satire Spitting Image (1984–1996). Using a format similar to a news broadcast, 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 (TV program) or Le Grand Journal. On Sunday afternoons, Canal+ aired a weekly recap called La Semaine des Guignols, featuring a back-to-back replay of the week’s episodes. The show began in 1988 as Les Arènes de l'info (News Arenas). Initially, it did not cover current events in real-time and was less popular due to being scripted weeks in advance. However, in the 1990–91 season, the show rebranded as Les Guignols de l'Info and shifted to daily news commentary. 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).

Impact on popular culture

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 show also went far in how violently it challenged and portrayed public figures. Some sketches displayed for example Raymond Barre, a former Prime Minister in a homosexual gonzo pornographic scene, Philippe Séguin (then candidate for Paris Mayor) in sadomasochist performances, President Jacques Chirac and his team in a Pulp Fiction–like destruction race to eliminate their competitors or the then-Minister of Interior Department Nicolas Sarkozy and foreign affair minister Dominique de Villepin as head of rival criminal gangs in a Sin City and in a Gangs of New York parody. The show also used horror movies to spoof politicians. President Jacques Chirac was represented as Leatherface chasing environmentalist politicians Antoine Waechter and Brice Lalonde in a parody of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, as Jack Torrance in a Shining parody where he was assaulting Jacques Toubon in a bathroom with a giant fountain pen after he had read the single sentence in the book he was writing, and as Ash Williams in a parody of Evil Dead where a Kandarian Demon spoke with the voice of the late president François Mitterrand. President François Hollande appeared as a Catholic priest in a parody of The Exorcist where (then presidential candidate) Lionel Jospin was possessed by a demon. The dead were raising from their grave on Election Day to cast votes for Jean Tiberi (then Paris mayor) in a parody of Night of the Living Dead. Environment Minister Ségolène Royal was shown as victimized by an electric car named Corinne in a parody of John Carpenter's Christine. The rival program of TF1 Le Bébête Show was spoofed in a parody of Freaks in which Étienne Mougeotte (head of programming at TF1) was captured by Kermitterrand and his friends and turned into another (duck-like) puppet for trying to cancel the show due to its low ratings. Besides horror movies, works by Quentin Tarantino were also parodied. One controversial parody (Inglorious Cathos) showed the Pope Benedict XVI hiring (in a scene more reminiscent of The Dirty Dozen) a commando of 3 bishops (a paedophile, a Holocaust denier, a radical traditional catholic) to fight the infidels. One South Park parody, used instead of puppets cartoon characters drawn in the style of Eric Cartman (with the voice of Philippe Séguin), Kyle Broflovski (with the voice of Nicolas Sarkozy), Stan Marsh (with the voice of François Bayrou) and Kenny McCormick (with the voice of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing). At the end of the skit, Kenny was getting killed and the other congratulated each other for doing a good thing together. The Guignols have generally displayed a left-leaning political outlook (although being tough on whoever is in power). While they generally focused on French politics, they also often riffed off of international events, a key focal point being United States foreign policy in general, including Osama bin Laden, the Iraq conflict and Saddam Hussein. These spoofs on international events were usually presented in an anti-Bush manner, portraying the fictional "World Company" (see below) as being the true leaders, not the president himself. They also regularly called out and mocked their own TV channel, Canal+, and its executive staff, especially during its 2002 crisis.

Political influence

The impact of political caricature in the Guignols is unclear, but some polls have shown that they have influenced voters. According to Ipsos (2002), the show had a good reach within the younger 18-32 audience segment. The popularity of Chirac's puppet has undeniably played a role in his 1995 election as Les Guignols had become a major broadcaster of biased political opinions. The show had created an electoral slogan for Chirac ("Mangez des pommes") that the candidate reused publicly during his campaign. The French journalist Hugo Cassavetti criticized how the show evolved from a political goof for everyone to a partisan show with a political agenda, turning Canal + into a leftist political hub. Bruno Gaccio reminded that Les Guignols “aren’t real, it’s fake news-it’s just comedy”, and also said "if American audiences could get a brief dose of Guignol humor, their perceptions would never be the same again." Les Guignols created mixed reactions regarding their provocative coverage of the September 11 attacks, for example when they portrayed Osama bin Laden triumphantly singing "It’s Raining Planes", or by depicting George W. Bush as mentally challenged. By 2002, 3.5 million viewers watched the show everyday, including 25% of the 15-25 segment.

Catchphrases

Some catchphrases are recurrently used during the show.

Famous characters

The characters appearing in Les Guignols are based on real personalities of the political, economic and artistic worlds; generally, anybody deemed newsworthy. The show also had a few dozen anonymous puppets at its disposal. In recent political history, the Guignols have also regularly portrayed:

Visual identity

Criticism

The Guignols have been criticised for being leftist and populist, and for presenting a cynical and over-simplified version of reality and politics. The show's authors have admitted leftist leanings. Erik Svane has accused the show of being anti-American. After the departure of two of the original authors in the late 1990s, the show has been criticized as lacking wit and freshness and having become too overtly populist and partisan. Some critics claim that the show is in decline. The show's treatment of Nicolas Sarkozy has been criticized as biased. Bruno Gaccio, prior to the French presidential election of 2007, was said to have admitted that he meant the Guignols to openly campaign against Sarkozy, but later stated that he had been misquoted. In 1997, Peugeot sued the show for the distorted use of its brand name, but also because of how the show characterized its CEO Jacques Calvet. François Bayrou, who was depicted as a weak childish man who could sometimes throw a tantrum, said "The image, very demeaning, hurts. My puppet has nothing to do with who I really am."

Cancellation

Following the dismissal of the main four writers in July 2015, the channel's new executives decided to move the show to the encrypted, non-free time slots. This decision was brought into effect the following December (the show returning months late after the executive shakeup), although the show was made available to the general public as a Dailymotion stream after being broadcast on air ("La Semaine des Guignols", the weekly roundup of the show, continued to be broadcast free-to-air on Sundays ). This change, as well as many other creative changes, brought about a decline of the programme, until the final episode was broadcast on June 22, 2018.

Elsewhere

Programs of the Guignols family exchange latex moulds, and puppets representing foreign celebrities can be used as "normal people" in countries where those personalities are not well-known. In September 2020, U.S. broadcaster Fox greenlit an adaptation of the series, Let's Be Real, with plans to air a one-off special on 1 October themed around the 2020 United States presidential election. Robert Smigel (the creator and voice of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog) served as executive producer.