Polar Park (2023)

Subtitles download link

I found this little gem on the ARTE channel's YouTube page. If you saw Gérald Hustache-Mathieu's 2011 film Poupoupido (a.k.a. Nobody Else But You), you'll quickly recognize Polar Park's opening scenes:  novelist David Rousseau, in a white convertible, speaks in voiceover as he drives to Mouthe, the reputed 'coldest place in France,' a place where he spent time as a child.

It's because Polar Park the six-part TV show is a reworking of the earlier film. But where the film was a vehicle for Sophie Quinton as a rural weathergirl/cheese label model whose life parallels Marilyn Monroe's life (and death), that character is reduced to that of the second victim of a serial killer. Instead, the series focuses on the team-up between the author and the gendarme in charge of the case, with Jean-Paul Rouve and Guillaume Gouix reprising their roles from the film of novelist and gendarme, respectively. 

The case begins when a child finds a severed ear at Polar Park, a sort of wildlife theme park with an educational aspect. Oh, and 'polar' is a pun, in French it means 'thriller,' 'whodunit,' or 'detective story.'  

Although Gouix's character in Poupoupidou was 'Brigadier Leloup,' in Polar Park he's 'Adjutant Louvetot.'

Incidentally, 'Leloup' is what Rousseau calls Louvetot in the fictionalized account he is trying to write during the Polar Park investigation. And 'Louvetot' is a pun on the French name 'louveteau,' which can mean cub scout.

I started working on the subs for Polar Park early last month, and am now on the sixth and last episode. I've been pretty committed to including full-ish SDH for episodes 1-5. However I'm not doing it for #6 because, franchement, the SDH was driving me crazy. I'll try to do an SDH version in the not too distant future.