Francis Durbridge

and France

Whilst the Paul Temple radio serials were widely produced across Europe, it was thought that France was the exception until very recently when it was discovered that a local production of Paul Temple and the Gregory Affair was broadcast on the Paris Radio channel every Sunday during the summer of 1947. Radio Lille also broadcast a remake of the same serial in in the autumn of 1953.

Yet Francis Durbridge’s first exposure in France was with the publication of La Bande des Oiseaux Noirs which was based upon Paul Temple and the Front Page Men. This was published in 1941 by Editions R Simon of Paris and quite how a young British author came to be published in Paris in the middle of wartime when Paris was occupied by German military forces is a bit of a puzzle. No records exist of a licence so maybe this was just done opportunistically without a contract. However it surely would have been subject to censorship by German military censors so perhaps it is also an early indication of the appeal of his mysteries to Germans.

His popularity in France mainly stems from the local production of seven of his television serials between 1966 and 1975. The first television serial produced in France was The Scarf (L’écharpe) and followed upon the earlier great success of this serial in Germany, Italy, Sweden and Finland. It was directed by Abder Isker (1920-2010) who also translated it with Yves Jamiaque. Abder Isker then translated and directed six further television serials forging the sort of association with Francis Durbridge as did Alan Bromley at the BBC. Of these The World of Tim Frazer proved particularly popular as it had in Germany.

All of these serials were also published as novels in France as were also some of the novels based on earlier BBC serials that had not been produced in France.