PARIS (AP) – French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has forbid members of his government from participating in a new reality TV show, a newspaper reported Saturday.
That could mean the show, announced with fanfare last week, may never make its fall preview, Liberation reported.
The show, tentatively titled “36 Hours,” is to spotlight the daily routine of French families with a live-in government official or other politician in tow.
Government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope was to be the star of the first episode, set for October.
The show’s entree into the fall TV lineup of the leading private channel TF1 generated surprise, scorn and interest across the political spectrum.
However, Liberation reported that the center-right prime minister learned of the show only via the media. His communications chief, Dominique Ambiel, encouraged ministers to participate but failed to advise his boss, the paper reported.
According to Liberation, Raffarin visited the office of his communications chief late Thursday night and watched a few minutes of a pilot before refusing to allow his ministers to participate.
The pilot, not for public viewing, featured a deputy justice minister who spent two days with a midwife from a Paris suburb. He accompanied her to work and tagged along for drinks and a pizza dinner with her friends.
Even Ambiel, who has produced television shows of his own in the past, concluded that “the show isn’t showable.”
“It’s not trash,” he told Liberation. “There is nothing to put into question the dignity” of participants. “But, very simply, it is not good.”
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