Christiane Lehérissey belongs to that generation of French directors who, from the late 1980s, made television fiction a field of expression in its own right — neither a minor genre nor a waiting room, but a true craft where week after week the direction of actors, the economy of the shot and the art of storytelling within an imposed format are tested.
A first short film, then entry through the TV movie
She debuts as a director in the late 1980s with a short film, Le Père Noël chez les Ramdam, which already says something about her tone — a taste for gentle offbeat humour, a kindly mood, social chronicle in half-tones. French television fiction is then in the midst of reconfiguration: privatised and public channels invest in popular prime-time series, and an entire body of expertise is built up on the sets at an industrial pace.
The major popular series (1995-2004)
Christiane Lehérissey establishes herself in French television fiction by directing several episodes of TF1's and France 2's major series:
- Docteur Sylvestre — seasons 1, 2, 4 and 5, from 1995 to 1998. The series, carried by Jérôme Anger then Pierre Vaneck, follows a country doctor and lays the grammar of a social fiction rooted in the territories.
- Les Cordier, juge et flic — seasons 4, 9, 11 and 12, from 1996 to 2004. A long companionship with one of the most-watched police series of the decade, with Pierre Mondy, Bruno Madinier and Charlotte Valandrey.
- Une femme d'honneur — seasons 7 and 8, 2003-2004 — with Corinne Touzet.
- Fabien Cosma — season 2, 2004.
The standalone films: a cinema of attention
In parallel, Christiane Lehérissey directs about ten standalone TV films, which perhaps form the heart of her work — it is there, in the ninety-minute format, that she can take time with her characters and give full measure to a directorial style attentive to gestures, silences and landscapes:
- La Vie à Trois (1996)
- Gardiens de la mer (1999)
- Une maison dans la tempête (2001)
- Un homme presque idéal (2003)
- Un prof en cuisine (2004) — for which she also wrote the screenplay
- Granny Boom (2005), with Fanny Cottençon, and its sequel Supergranny.com (2006)
- Le Caprice des cigognes (2005)
- The series La Basse Cour (2007)
A family of actors
As often in French television fiction, certain loyalties are forged through productions. Gérard Rinaldi, Fanny Cottençon and Roland Marchisio are among the actors she most directed — a recurring geography of performers that draws, beyond titles, the silhouette of a cinema of troupe and complicity.
34 boulevard de Clichy
Christiane Lehérissey's presence at 34 boulevard de Clichy is part of the cinematographic and audiovisual continuity of the address — from the opening of the Ciné-Vox-Pigalle on the ground floor in 1938 and throughout the following decades, when the main building and the courtyard-studio housed screenwriters, directors, editors and producers. With Frédéric Tellier, Fabrice Minier and several other contemporary figures, she extends this filiation, on the borderline between cinema and the small screen.