Flora Watkins

The return of bad dubbing

  • From Spectator Life
Lupin, Image: Netflix

Just a few minutes into watching the latest Netflix sensation Lupin — its biggest-ever French show — and I was giving some serious Gallic shrugs.

It’s hugely popular: it has been no. 1 in the US and was the first French series to break into their top 10. Elsewhere, Lupin is vying for Bridgerton for the number one streaming spot.

Inspired by Maurice Leblanc’s stories about the gentleman thief, Arsène Lupin, the show’s success has prompted fresh print runs of the books, first published in 1905. (Some had sold out on Amazon when I checked last week but have now been restocked.)

But watching the show is a strangely dislocating and downright weird experience.

Omar Sy, the César-winning French actor, plays a thief called Assane who’s obsessed with Lupin. He’s in Paris planning a heist, musing on the Mona Lisa, strolling across the Seine. So why is he jabbering dix-neuf to the dozen to his co-conspirators, his son, his estranged wife in rushed, robotic English?

‘I’M A JANITOR AT THE LOOV’ he booms, in a generic American accent. It’s like being shouted at by the voiceover man who does the cinema trailers (remember them?). ‘They thought it was just an ordinary day… but it turned out to be DAY FROM HELL!’

It took me a few minutes to realise that the show is dubbed. None of the gushing reviews (97 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes) mention this fact, which is extraordinary when you think how unusual this is — for the UK market, at least. The only dubbed show I could think of was Monkey, the 1970s Japanese series.

We aren’t used to dubbing in this country. That’s partly because of the hegemony of English, but also, because dubbing is considered naff — synonymous with martial arts movies and Spaghetti Westerns.

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