Paying and powerful, “surface” by Olivier Norek is available in series from Monday on France 2, with a fantastic touch and Laura Smet in the title role.

Paying and powerful, the thriller from which the six episodes are drawn, appeared in 2019 (ed. Meanwhile, Michel Lafon). Meanwhile, Big bookstore success. Similarly, its central character is the Parisian policeman Noémie Chastain, seriously injured in the face after a shot in the head. Similarly, Her hierarchy puts her on the closet by sending her to Aveyron in a village without stories.

But the waters of the lake at the bottom of which was drowned the old imaginary village of Avalona bring. For example, back to the surface a barrel containing the skeleton of a child who disappeared twenty-five years earlier.

The police captain has no choice but to tackle the investigation, which will also be his redemption. Meanwhile, Laura Smet plays Noémie, dark and dyed, half the ravaged face. However, No need to force the line: “The fault is apparent,” paying powerful, “surface” olivier norek said the actress at a press conference in June. Similarly, She is surrounded in Théo Costa-Marini in particular in the role of the colleague jostled by her arrival. and Tomer Sisley in that of the diver of the river brigade, obstinate and sensitive.

The team of the local police station is particularly endearing. with the trio Otis Ngoi, Quentin Laclotte Parmentier and Pauline Serieys. Co-Scenarists Marie Deshaires. Catherine Touzet had to make radical choices to keep the plot in six times 52 minutes, and captivate the viewer. Olivier Norek, himself a screenwriter in his spare time (“gears”, “the invisible” …). should not have written this adaptation himself: “The job is to explode the book and take all the games to rebuild”.

“What interests me is to see the vision of someone else: writers. director, actors and actresses”, confides the writer whose last novel published in 2024, “Winter Warriors” (ed. Michel Lafon) on paying powerful, “surface” olivier norek the war between Finland and the USSR in 1939-40, will be carried on the big screen.

In “Surface”. the Slimane-Baptist director Berhoun, already at the helm of the series “Vortex”, added a hypnotic or even fantastic dimension to the series. The underwater images are stunning. “It was our challenge: getting to tell this story in a engulfed setting that had to evolve as you go. ” he said.

The series was shot in a giant swimming pool in Brussels. and between the Tarn and Hérault departments, not far from Aveyron that Olivier Norek likes.

Even if the character of Noémie immerses himself backwards. the rural world is portrayed without caricature, as in the book where Olivier Norek wanted “not to give the impression that it is the city that looks at the campaign”.

His novel, which sold 500,000 copies in French, was published in six languages.

An English translation is being negotiated, and the book paying powerful, “surface” olivier norek must be republished on August 21, the day of the series online. Norek. a former police officer himself and a follower of a realistic vein, specially attached himself to the intimate reconstruction of the investigator.

“She wants to hide but will have to go to people, reveal herself.

It is this path, much more than the police intrigue, who interested me, “he said. A character with whom Laura Smet got in tune:” This scar, I know her. She speaks to me, “she said.” Noémie is someone extremely whole, who is thirsty for justice. It’s a warrior “, describes the actress who, at 41, admits having” the impression of having spent (s) life in a ring “.

The daughter of Johnny Hallyday. Nathalie Baye is broken to transformations, since her first role in “The impatient bodies” by Xavier Giannoli in 2003, where she appeared her head shaved. She assures that it was “difficult” to paying powerful, “surface” olivier norek “leave” the character of Noémie.