Detective fictions are on the rise. A week after the Syndrome E finale, TF1 is unveiling its new I3P mini-series this Thursday, October 20 from 9:10 p.m. Split into six episodes of 52 minutes each, this soap opera imagined by Jean-Christophe Grangé and directed by Jérémy Minui plunges viewers into the heart of a place full of mysteries: the psychiatric infirmary of the police headquarters in Paris.
At the heart of this structure, Marc Lavoine embodies Mathias Bernardt, the team leader of the psychiatric infirmary playing a key role for the police. Its power: to examine the arrested individuals and formulate a diagnosis according to their profile. Amnesia, crisis of delirium or prone to visions, each mental disorder is scrutinized in less than 24 hours.
To understand the role of this whimsical character, his interpreter Marc Lavoine explains it to a couple arrested the night after an argument at the Gare de l’Est. “I can either have you hospitalized or put you in police custody”, warns the hero in the first minutes of the series that Planet was able to watch. Helped by his fellow psychiatrists, played by Claire Tran, Walid Ben Mabrouk and Mikaël Chirinian, their decision will have an impact on the life of each patient.
Based on each testimony from a patient brought to their center, Mathias Bernardt’s team will conduct the investigation to shed light on each case. Facing them, Barbara Schulz plays the role of Nathalie Fontaine, a police commissioner with a strong character. Together, the two characters form an amazing duo that should please viewers.
In the I3P series, Marc Lavoine and Barbara Schulz play two characters with very different temperaments. On the one hand, the singer and actor portrays a perched and whimsical psychiatrist. On the other, the famous sacred actress of a Molière embodies a hot-blooded commissioner. “She is more in the action than in the introspection”, underlines the actress with Télé 7 Jours.
Quite the opposite of his playing partner Marc Lavoine. “He is more calm, more observant… He has something that the others don’t have,” says Barbara Schulz. As for the famous judge of The Voice, “this game of dog and cat with the character of Barbara allows you to breathe a little. I really liked this relationship between our two characters. The commissioner is authoritarian, and at the same time, she listens this psychiatrist”, he assures the newspaper Le Progrès.
This is not the first time that Marc Lavoine and Barbara Schulz give each other the answer on the screen. In 2009, they played under the direction of Elie Chouraqui at the cinema in Celle que j’aime. “I loved shooting with him and I was happy to find him,” assures the actress to our colleagues from the weekly magazine. “When I was offered this series, his presence in the casting was one of the reasons why I accepted the project,” she says. Together, they spent several months filming in a setting that was foreign to them.
The filming of the I3P series took place in two stages, as the channel informed us in a press release in the summer of 2021. First from July 8, 2021 to September 17, then from October 18, 2021 to November 9. in a second time between Paris and its suburbs. From the gardens of the Palais Royal to the districts of Montmartre, as we can see in the first episode, many scenes were shot day and night.
As for the psychiatric infirmary of the prefecture of Paris, did this structure really exist? Affirmative answer. This building, formerly called the special infirmary of the depot, was built in 1872 in the 14th arrondissement of Paris. Located on the second floor, 3 rue Cabanis, named after a famous French politician and doctor in the 18th century, access to it is kept secret and limited.
“I discovered this service, I did not know that the I3P existed, and I found it interesting that the public could discover this link between the police and the doctors”, told Marc Lavoine in Le Progrès.To find out more about the structure, Doctor Vincent Mahé revealed in Le Parisien. “We work at the heart of the Parisian healthcare system. Our role is to receive psychiatric emergencies of a forensic nature in Paris”, assures the director of the medico-police structure since last June.
