‘The Serpent’ Director Hans Herbots On ‘This Is Not A Murder Mystery’, A Whodunnit Series Featuring René Magritte & Salvador Dalí
- "This is Not A Murder Mystery" is a new series produced by Belgium-based indie Panenka, featuring iconic artists like Rene Magritte and Salvador Dali in a surreal whodunnit story.
EXCLUSIVE:Art becomes fiction as René Magritte, Salvador Dalí and their peers give the whodunnit genre a surreal makeover in This is Not A Murder Mystery . Deadline can share an exclusive new image from the series, which is produced by Belgium-based indie Panenka.
Hans Herbots, whose directing credits include The Serpent and Paris Has Fallen helmed all six eps. “We wanted to elevate the genre and give it a twist,” he tells Deadline. “This story, this universe, offered a lot of a lot of opportunity to do that.”
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“This is not a pipe” is the wording below Magritte’s famous 1929 picture ‘The Treachery of Images’ and This is Not A Murder Mystery features the iconic Belgian artist and several of his surrealist peers.
In fact, the series absolutely is a murder mystery – as Series Mania attendees will see, with the drama in the Coming Next From Belgium section. It was commissioned by VRT, RTL & Proximus in Belgium and made as a copro with the powerful alliance of Euro pubcasters New8 and Deadpan Pictures. Studiocanal is distributing internationally.
Set in the mid-1930s, it follows a young René Magritte (Pierre Gervais) after he is invited to participate in a private art exhibition at an opulent English estate owned by the flamboyant Lord James, an event that actually happened.
Fellow guests include Salvador Dali (Iñaki Mur), Lee Miller (Florence Hall), Man Ray (Frank Bourke), Max Ernst (Mike Hoffmann) and Gala Dali (Regina Bikkinina). After a wild night, Magritte wakes up beside the body of performance artist Sheila Legge (Lauren Versnick). More bodies drop and Scotland Yard’s DCI Thistlethwaite (Stephen Tomkinson) and DC Quant (Donna Banya) are dispatched to investigate
“We wanted to translate art surrealism into the visual side of the story,” Herbots explains. “That allowed us to make it much more fun, to do things that we otherwise could never do. We could bring in colors and go all the way with the art direction and even the tone.
“We were able to lift up the performances a little, make them larger than life, and sustain that with the music and the camera moves.”
Set in England and filmed in Ireland and Belgium, the show is predominantly English language. The drama was created by Christophe Dirickx and Paul Baeten and based on an original idea by Matthias Lebeer – who also co-directed episodes 3 and 4. It was one of the shows selected in 2022 to be pitched the Co-Pro Series event, part the Berlin Film Festival’s TV activity.
“It’s whodunnit for a very broad audience, but with a twist, because you play with real characters, and you play with art from real artists,” says producer Kristoffel Mertens. “These artists are more popular than ever because it’s surrealism and that’s cool and it’s very visual and striking. So, if you go back to the title, This Is Not A Murder Mystery , it’s playful. In the same way that we play with the genre, we play with the [characters of the] artists.”
The program-makers had to get the green light from various artists’ foundations to use their characters and feature some of their work, adding to the complexity of making the series.
“That was done as parallel process with the development of the series; getting all the rounds of feedback on the scripts,” says producer Kato Maes. “They all loved the pitch, but, of course, coming from Flanders and being a small producer with such a big concept, we had to dig deep to get that part done.”
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