What can fiction do? According to a fascinating and highly documented book recently published by Editions de l’Aube, dedicated to the effect of TV series on French viewers, a lot. In “Des séries qui comptent – sociologie d’un goût contemporain” (1), the great strength of the work carried out by Hervé Glevarec, Clément Combes, and Thibaut de Saint Maurice is not to be limited to the textual analysis usually carried out on a fiction, which focuses on the production of stories and meanings. Here, the authors give importance to reception, specifically focusing on the viewers, on how they receive, understand, and digest the watched fiction. To achieve this, their work is based both on data from major surveys on French cultural practices and a specific qualitative survey, “SÉRIES 2022”, directed by Sandra Laugier. The whole constitutes a material of rare and precious richness. I draw three major lessons from it.
Firstly, the quantitative data shows that watching series has become a common cultural practice, widely predominant. In 2022, more than two out of three French people (68.5%) say they watch an episode of a series at least once a week.
