This hilariously OTT French thriller makes previous classical music dramas such as Un Coeur en Hiver seem sensible, via rampant misogyny, a secret affair and a potential murder

If I am reborn as a woman, I want to come back as Hélène Barizet. Imagine a musician as brilliant and scary as Nadia Boulanger, but with a pearl-handled Beretta in her top drawer. We first see Hélène (Marie-Sophie Ferdane) strutting to baggage reclaim. She picks up a case, swivels 180 degrees and marches imperiously to the taxi rank, pouted lips, straight back, scarf (Hermès, possibly), red leather jacket (Agnès B, probably) high heels (Louboutin, most likely), expression by sucked lemons. This being Paris, no one shouts: “Oi, missus! That’s my suitcase, you donut!”

She is on a mission. Back home after conquering New York, she has been hired to replace the former conductor of a Parisian orchestra. She wants to make French classical music – there is no easy way to say this – relevant. Sadly, the subtitles couldn’t keep up with her. “She wants to democratise music,” explains someone in French during a meeting. “She wants to generalise music,” goes the English subtitle. Which means, literally, nothing.

I love Philharmonia, the latest subtitled Euro-posh from Channel 4’s offshoot Walter Presents, for all the wrong reasons. “The maestro says it’s Mozart,” sang Leonard Cohen on Waiting for the Miracle, but it sounds like bubblegum. Its genius is to make bubblegum from Beethoven, whose Pastoral Symphony takes a hit in the first episode. Apart from the death of Little Nell, there is nothing quite as unintentionally funny as Hélène rehearsing how she will conduct the storm sequence from Beethoven’s sixth. She writhes decorously in silhouette before hurling herself on the bed, all passion spent. Christ knows how the orchestra is going to play it. 

Philharmonia makes previous classical music dramas such as Un Coeur en Hiver and The Piano Teacher seem sensible. The blurb says it is Black Swan for orchestras. It is more like Acorn Antiques with subtitles or Mean Girls with pretensions.

The weaselly, misogynistic orchestra manager, Léopold Saint-Just (boo!), tells staff he hopes Hélène will be out before you can say: “Je suis venu te dire que je m’en vais.” And he is not alone. Here comes another pale, male and stale bloke, Julien (boo!), shouting. Not sure how he got into the meeting, but he seems angry about something.

“Karajan! Bernstein! Masur! Prêtre! If a woman could conduct hundreds of musicians in Wagner or Strauss, we’d know it!” Julien, mate, it is 2020. Maybe dial down the misogyny?

Hélène alienates her musicians by ousting sweet old Vladimir, the increasingly hard-of-hearing first violin, and installing the talented upstart Selena (Lina El Arabi) in his place. Then Hélène visits her dad, a violin maker, in his Instagrammable workshop. He has finished a new violin and his daughter knows just who must play it. She hands over the violin to Selena who – without tuning it, mind – saws away with gusto. The camera dollies back to reveal Selena small in the city of love. It is as if Selena is expressing her long-nurtured ardour for Hélène through Vivaldi.

But she is likely to be disappointed in love, as we have already seen Hélène having it off with her formerly estranged husband, Peter, on the 1953 Érard grand piano that he thoughtfully installed in her hotel suite. “You’re an artist, Peter,” she tells him, postcoitally. I am going to go out on a limb here and call BS on that. Those few bars he tinkled on the piano? Tripe.

Peter tells Hélène that he plans to make her pregnant, finish his masterpiece and raise their child while she returns to frontline conducting. He doesn’t know about her secret – the mystery gene that did for Hélène’s mother’s sanity and may do for the mother of his child, too. 

And Hélène doesn’t seem to know about Peter’s on-off thing with Agathe, the French horn player. But we do. Just before Hélène’s debut concert, Agathe sneaks into her changing room and glues together the pages of the score. On the podium, Hélène tries to open the score, but can’t. Can she conduct from memory? Oh, have a freaking guess. Her debut proves a triumph.

But, as Paris basks in Beethoven, Hélène’s dad is summoned to his wife’s death bed. But how did she die? There is lipstick on a cup at the bedside. DNA testing will surely confirm Hélène put it there. Maybe the maestra is a matricide and Hélène is not all that she seems. In episode two, I am fully expecting Agathe to wake up in bed and find her fingers superglued to her French horn. That would teach her.

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