What to see on television this weekend? Our recommendations

TF1 / Entertainment – ​​9:10 p.m.

Mask Singer
And nine seasons, for Mask Singer, this game mixing songs, crazy costumes and investigations. The voices of personalities hidden in stunning outfits and a few clues must guide investigators Kev Adams, Chantal Ladesou, Michaël Youn and Laurent Ruquier to unmask them. Who is hidden under the guise of the Vénitienne, the Cyborg, the Bouquet or the Caillou, four of the twenty-three new creations created especially for this edition?

Among the new features on stage, the performance of two international stars for one evening, foreign celebrities in the main competition and a person, dressed as a clown, who swapped their mask for different makeup each week! This year again, TF1 is announcing a breathtaking show.

Novo / Documentary – 9:10 p.m.

Marseille: hydraulic engineering
The Marseille city supplies water to more than a million inhabitants every day thanks to a vast hydraulic network. A feat, considering its dry climate and lack of resources. Since the creation of the city, the question arises, as the population grows quickly. Cisterns and aqueducts were designed to store water taken from the surrounding rivers, but were insufficient for the needs of the inhabitants. In the 19th century, following a dramatic drought and a cholera epidemic, the Marseille Canal was erected, a titanic structure which diverted the Durance, a river located 50 km from the city. The arrival of fresh water changes the lives of the people of Marseillais.

The documentary captures the economic, political, health and ecological issues that the city must face to preserve its blue gold, through a journey going from the flow of the canal to the treatment plant. It gives back a place to technicians and surveillance agents. Guardians who watch over its protection in the shadows. A downside: the images generated by artificial intelligence at each educational explanation and the epic music weigh down the message.

Our opinion: PP

Arte / Documentary – 8:55 p.m.

Charles I of England – From the throne to the scaffold
In 1649, the English beheaded their king, Charles I. An unthinkable act that scandalizes the other kingdoms. How did they get to this point? This classic British documentary goes back to the reign of James I, Charles’s father, to explain the causes of this very first European revolution. This, in fact, introduced the idea of ​​royal absolutism, alienating Parliament. Crowned in 1625, Charles I continued this authoritarian policy, while surrounding himself with Catholics, which revived the still latent religious conflict. Civil wars will bloody the kingdom for seven years. Even if no one then thought of abolishing royalty, the sovereign’s obstinacy in retaining all his prerogatives would gradually seal his fate.

The documentary then explains the consequences of this revolution: dramatic expedition against the Irish, birth of republican and democratic ideas, development of puritanism and colonial conquests… These upheavals have had international repercussions until today, and not only in Great Britain.

Our opinion: PP

France 4 / Film – 9 p.m.

This music doesn’t play for anyone
Mirrored cabinet physics and sinister faces: Jeff, Neptune, Jacky, Jesus and Poussin, dock workers who look like thugs, form a quintet that we wouldn’t dream of meeting on our route. But it’s a nice surprise that awaits the viewer in this film by Samuel Benchetrit. Starting on the basis of a disturbing thriller, this feature film digs an astonishing poetic vein beneath the virile exterior of these rascals, played by JoeyStarr, François Damiens, Bouli Lanners, Ramzy Bedia and Gustave Kervern.

From verses written for an unknown woman to participation in a play… Art, writing and celebration are featured in this story offering, in counterpoint to our companions, beautiful female figures.

Our opinion: PP

Arte / Documentary – 5:45 p.m.

Rodin and Michelangelo
Directed by the writer and documentary maker Jérôme Prieur (co-author with Gérard Mordillat of l’incomparable Corpus Christipublished in 1997 and 1998 and available on campus.arte.tv), this documentary essay is not a cross-portrait of Rodin and Michelangelo, but a poetic dive into their works, captured as closely as possible to the material to bring out their filiation, echoes and ruptures four centuries apart.

An intrusion into the workshop of the two masters of sculpture, with an astonishing archive: in 1915, Sacha Guitry mischievously filmed Rodin carving marble, which he never did (unlike Michelangelo), preferring to model earth, clay and plaster to give shape to the bodies, capturing the depths of the soul.

Our opinion: PPP

Arte / Documentary – 8:05 p.m.

Emilie Schindler – A list, a heroine
We cannot mention the name of Schindler without thinking of the success of Steven Spielberg’s film released in 1994, and of his “list” which made it possible to save nearly 1,300 Jews from the death camps. Director Annette Baumeister picks up the thread of this story and tells it through the prism of her wife, Emilie. (pictured below). Largely forgotten by the story, she nevertheless worked with strength and courage to save the Jewish workers of the factory of which she held the reins, while her husband enjoyed the worldly life in Krakow (Poland).

Without denying the importance of the latter’s action, the screenwriter depicts him as revelry and immature, preferring the arms of his mistresses to those of his wife. He left her destitute in Argentina, while he enjoyed, alone, the splendor of recognition.

Our opinion: PP

France 5 / Documentary – 9:05 p.m.

The Meloni case
She is like the Roman god Janus. She has two faces. » Historian Marc Lazar’s formula to qualify, in this documentary, the leader of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, could not ring more true. Because everything in his choices turns out to be ambiguous. On the one hand, she appears pragmatic since her accession to the presidency of the Council in 2022. While she has always railed against immigration and Europe, she has opened her country to foreign workers and dialogued with European states, because Italy, the oldest country on the continent, needs European labor and aid to save its economy.

On the other hand, she has not renounced her neofascist commitments. “Mussolini was a good politician. Everything he did, he did for Italy,” she said when she was a young activist. She also does not hesitate to undermine the separation of powers, intervening for example in the choices of public television. Thanks to excellent documentation and quality speakers – the President of the Senate, Ignazio La Russa, the anti-fascist writer Antonio Scurati – we discover here the fascinating portrait of this unpredictable, cheeky woman.

Our opinion: PPP