Au service de la France

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Au service de la France DVD cover.

TV Series (2015 and 2018)
German title : Frankreich gegen den Rest der Welt
English title : A Very Secret Service

Starring:
Hugo Becker (André Merlaux)
Wilfred Benaïche (Colonel Maurice Mercaillon)
Christophe Kourotchkine (Georges Préjean alias "Moïse")
Marie-Julie Baup (Marie-Jo Cotin)

A totally crazy comedy of espionage that portrays the adventures of incompetent secret agents struggling with the geopolitical crises of the sixties.

Season One

Boeing 707-328

Ep. 02 Il y a Allemand et Allemand.
Boeing 707-328 of Air France.
Background (left to right) : an anachronistic Lockheed L-100 Hercules (production started in 1964 but action is set in 1960) alongside another Boeing 707-320B of Pan Am-Pan American World Airways and a Douglas DC-8-30 of JAL-Japan Air Lines (if the tsurumaru logo was created in 1958, it was not applied on airline's DC-8s until the late 1960s).

Sud Aviation SE 210 Caravelle I

Ep. 02 Il y a Allemand et Allemand.
Just the tail seen through the low window on the left of characters.

Unidentified Aircraft

Ep. 04 L'Algérie, c'est la France.
Supposedly the interior of the Caravelle flying to Algiers, but the windows are not the characteristic (triangular) ones of the famous medium-haul aircraft of the 1960s. What's more, the cabin had 5 seats abreast, but the left-hand row had only two (here, Merlaux and Jacquard have an unoccupied seat separating them).

Sud Aviation SE 210 Caravelle I

Ep. 04 L'Algérie, c'est la France.
Reg. F-BHRA Sud Aviation SE 210 Caravelle I s/n 1 of Air France which christened her Alsace.
Flight career from March 1959 until end of 1975 with a two month long upgrade to modify her into a Series III (February / March 1961). Once grounded, she was used in the Air France mechanical instruction center at Vilgénis (near Paris, France) from 1976 until 2006. Sold in 2011 to a Dutch collector and display at Baarlo, Limburg, Netherlands.
Same aircraft in other works at IMPDb: Frequently Seen Aircraft (Civil Fixed-Wing).

"Gift for your first flight".

(S1E05-12 under analysis ... coming soon !)

Season Two

Chrysler Mercury Redstone

Ep. 04 Le singe est dans la fusée.
Takeoff on January 31, 1961 for the flight of the Mercury-Redstone #2 mission with the chimpanzee christened Ham for a suborbital fight.

Sud Aviation SE 210 Caravelle I

Ep. 09 Tovaritch Merlaux.
Reg. F-BHRA Sud Aviation SE 210 Caravelle I s/n 1 of Air France. Footage already used for S1E04.

Boeing 747SP-86

Ep. 09 Tovaritch Merlaux.
An unwanted background as the Boeing 747 first flew only eight years after the action set on August 1961; and more over 1976 for the SP.
Director tried to shot the scene in order to hide the cockpit and let think it's just a Boeing 707.
The livery correspond to an ex Iran Air airplane.

Ilyushin Il-14P

Ep. 09 Tovaritch Merlaux.
Fictitious registration : CCCP-0613 / SSSR-0613 is too short.
But an Ilyushin Il-14P reg. СССР-06132 s/n: 146000709 is displayed in an open air museum at Ulyanovsk, Russia. This aircraft has a red/orange fadding band enclosing her windows and Aeroflot title is slighty different.

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See also

• Au service de la France at IMDb
• A Very Secret Service at Wikipedia
• Au service de la France at IMCDb