Our TV favorites from August 27 to 31

Sunday August 27

It is a sensitive report offered by Jour du Seigneur and Présence protestante, in the series Chemins de la foi. By meeting Bernard and a few other people welcomed to the palliative care unit of Marlonges in Seine-Maritime, the whole questioning of support for the incurable disease and the end of life is described with delicacy. Over the course of the discussions with the healthcare teams, with the family, it is also the request for euthanasia of certain people that is addressed. Accepting that you can no longer be cured does not mean that there is nothing left to live for. “Another perspective then opens up,” says one of the accompanying doctors. The accompaniment also passes by that of the carers within the family framework. How can we offer relief from the suffering of sick people? “Make sure that people are as comfortable as possible for as long as possible”, shares the accompanying doctor who also sometimes takes the time to play the guitar in the room of the people visited. “A job that is beautiful,” said one of the caregivers moved, referring to the support of a recently deceased person. Dominique Lang

This back-to-school novel slips into Ian Flemming’s heavenly lair: Goldeneye, his villa on the north coast of Jamaica. It was here that the British journalist gave birth to the most famous secret agent: James Bond. The guardian of this memory of the places, who transformed them into a vast estate for wealthy tourists, is none other than Chris Blackwell, 87, famous music producer and discoverer of Bob Marley. The private tour of this bubble of elegance is richly complemented by an interview with Flemming (on the origin of the name of his hero) and the confidences of Jamaicans on their way of life and the secrets of filming on the island, at 60 years apart, of the first and final adventure of agent 007. Marie-Hélène Servantie

Why such an unpopular pension reform project? How to explain such solid resistance, at all levels? It is that the power has never opened a real dialogue with its opponents. This is what this film by Cécile Amar and Stéphane Benhamou brilliantly demonstrates. The social and political crisis of winter and early spring 2023 is told like a soap opera, giving pride of place to the opponents of the text, even if it also gives voice to those who defended it. There are the roaring – the LFI and RN deputies -, the mad union leaders – especially, for the CFDT, Laurent Berger who appears as the modest “star” of this dramaturgy – and of course anonymous people, among the hundreds of thousands who marched to defend their rights. Romain Mazenod

Tuesday August 29

In Japan, man has always bowed to the power of nature. Yet, as elsewhere, the obstacles it has erected, as well as its activities and the disturbances they cause, require wildlife to adapt in order to survive. If the friendly tanuki – a kind of raccoon – has learned to live with bipeds in town, the sika deer, little by little domesticated, has become dependent on the men who feed it. In this territory with a particularly high human density, the highest mountains prove to be the refuge of black bears… but the snow macaque, for its part, knows no respite. To take advantage, away from any human presence, of the hot springs where this monkey has enjoyed bathing for thousands of years, it is gradually becoming nocturnal. This slow and poetic documentary reveals through patiently captured scenes that more and more animals in the archipelago are forced to reverse their rhythm of life so as not to be disturbed. In a decade, the nocturnal mores of animals have increased by nearly 70% across the planet. A wild new world is shaping up before our eyes. Timothee Duboc

Wednesday August 30

During their exile, dance is revealed as an outlet. In the Spanish enclave of Melilla, on the border with Morocco, a group of Moroccan miners in search of a better life are introduced to this art with an invested teacher. Far from their family, they lend themselves to the game. Until they hope to participate in the Incredible talent telecrochet in Madrid to assert their dexterity and, above all, tell their story. We therefore find them under the spotlight, acclaimed by a jubilant crowd, a waking dream for them. “I’m ashamed of my country”, then slips one of the jurors. Because the return to reality is difficult after this extraordinary parenthesis. The lonely teenagers are now trying out a new choreography. That of choosing their destiny: to stay or to leave? Rachel Notteau

Thursday August 31

In France, 42,000 children live in a car, a caravan or a squat… In the Lyon metropolitan area, there are 250 homeless students. Here and there, Arte regards has followed these teenagers or pre-teens from the Traveler community or from low-income families. They are victims of the incoherent legislative framework which wants school to be compulsory for the little ones, but the right to housing conditioned on the administrative or social status of their parents. These moving situations challenge the teachers who take initiatives that are sometimes personal – such as this kitty to pay for a few nights in a hotel for a family –, or more global, through their commitment within the Never Without a Roof, a collective that aims to find more lasting solutions. Eyoum Nganguè

After Kenya in 2021 and Norway in 2022, the 2023 season also ends with an unprecedented double: Argentina, whose area corresponds to that of France, increased by a third. In the 1920s, its rail network was considered one of the most extensive in the world. Philippe Gougler devotes the first episode of his stroll to the south of the country, from the mountains of Patagonia to the famous glaciers which constitute the 3 rd largest mass of ice after Greenland and Antarctica. Along the way, he climbs aboard the “Trochita” (a mythical steam train), then makes us discover the particularities of “Gauchito Gil”, a typical Argentinian patron saint. The second section on the North begins at an altitude of 3,500 m in the Andes Cordillera, in an astonishing pick-up-train devoted to rail maintenance. But his frequentation of ordinary trains will, as always, give the globetrotter the opportunity to discuss with the population, about mate (the traditional drink) or the constant instability of the peso (the national currency). Among the incongruities of this journey, the meeting with the faithful of a Church whose god is… Maradona! Marie-Helene Servantie