Mon Dieu! My fave French farce is a hit... in English

Call My Agent was the unexpected TV smash that saw us fall in love with sassy Parisian wit and style. Now the UK remake is here. And superfan Jan Moir says it’s magnifique

ON PAPER, it doesn’t look too promising. A French-speaking drama set in a Paris talent agency, where agents scramble to keep their clients happy and their business afloat? Yet millions of British viewers adored Call My Agent! (Dix Pour Cent), the hit Netflix comedy drama about showbiz agents and their roster of celebrity actors and actresses.

Why is it so alluring? Everything that happens at the ASK agency in central Paris is a delight; the cast, the macaroon-weight plots, the guest appearances by French stars of stage and screen playing themselves — and sending themselves up like crazy.

In one episode Monica Bellucci, once known as the most beautiful woman in the world, complains because ordinary men are afraid of her and she can never get a date. So she invites her terrified agent Gabriel (Gregory Montel) to her apartment for a mushroom risotto. ‘Poison mushrooms,’ she purrs.

In another, that great French actor Jean Reno, whose triumphs include the role of Leon in the eponymous film, is so depressed at having to play Santa Claus in a budget movie that he starts drinking pastis in bars at 10am.

In all scenarios their respective agents swoop in to soothe ruffled feathers, clinch deals and make things better — sometimes even succeeding.

After four series, it remains smart and funny, with a fizzing comic pitch. And it has been so successful that a much anticipated British version called Ten Percent — so named after the percentage agents traditionally take from their stars’ fees — launches this Thursday on Amazon Prime Video. It stars Jack Davenport as Jonathan Nightingale, one of the head agents at Nightingale Hart.

His senior partner is Stella Hart, played by Maggie Steed, the veteran actress whose long resumé includes EastEnders and Paddington 2.

What can I tell you? Both are terrific in their roles, while the show has been created by John Morton, who devised the muchloved spoof BBC comedy W1A.

Here, he has triumphed again, with a drama set in a London that Londoners will actually recognise, and imbued with a spirit that it is witty and quirkily British.

Fans of the original show will know that the breakout star was Camille Cottin, who played my favourite character, Andrea — the gay, tough and ruthless agent who looks after some of France’s biggest movie stars.

Via Andrea, we got a delicious glimpse of Parisian life. She bullied everyone while looking chic in sharp blazers, skinny trousers and always, always a fantastic pair of boots. But she was about so much more than her clothes.

‘Can I call you any day, any time? Will you do anything for anyone?’ she demanded of her new assistant. Andrea may be pitiless, but you’d want her on your team.

In the British version, her character is called Rebecca and is played by Lydia Leonard. Equally tough, equally gay, equally ruthless — but she swears more than Andrea and doesn’t dress quite so well. All of which seems true to type, given that she is a Londoner, not a Parisienne. You know it’s true!

Some of the structure, the characters and the plots remain similar, if not identical to the original.

The main difference is that the guest actors playing themselves are British stars who, if anything, enter the comic fray with even more gusto than their French counterparts.

Plotlines in early episodes include agent Dan (Prasanna Puwanarajah)

It’s imbued with a spirit that is witty and quirkily British

trying to shield Kelly Macdonald from the news that she has been turned down for a role because she looks ‘too old’.

Helena Bonham Carter and Olivia Williams are appalled when they discover that agent bumbling means they have both been offered the same role, while Dominic West turns up in episode three, playing himself as a pretentious, needy thesp.

He has returned to the theatre, darling, in a modishly updated version of Hamlet, complete with selfies and mobile phones and improved dialogue, because who is that guy Shakespeare anyway, right? ‘Poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio,’ says West’s Hamlet, shortly before storming off the modernist set.

When Stella sails in to provide ego balm and support, he is not impressed. ‘Ah my favourite client,’ she trills. ‘What happened? Did Jude Law die?’ he snaps back.

It is so delicious. In the eightpart first series, Tim McInnerny, who has been in everything from Blackadder to The Serpent, plays a recurring role as washed-up actor Simon Gould that is both heartbreaking and hilarious.

I hate to sound like a luvvie myself, but he brings such a major emotional charge to such a minor role that I almost cried — in a comedy! Indeed, the quality of the acting across the board here is first-class.

To be honest, at first I was resistant to the charms of Ten Percent. I missed the dash of Paris and the vivid characters who had established themselves over four series, and worried that the British versions were pale imitations. But

give it a chance and, like a pop-up book springing into glorious 3D, it grows into itself and takes on a life of its own. It helps that there is not a dud in the cast — even the dog is good!

Typically, agents are not a cherished or admired group of people. If they get called sharks instead of vultures, that is a good day, and they rarely emerge from behind the scenes.

Yet both French and British versions of the show have a strong undercurrent of sincerity, for despite their casual venalities when it comes to contracts and deals, the agents actually do care about art and about making good films.

It makes Ten Percent different from Ricky Gervais’s Extras because it is a comedy with a heart and a conscience — and there is nothing else quite like it.

At the launch in London this week, Maggie Steed told journalists that until she had played an agent herself it hadn’t crossed her mind that this person she phoned up regularly for career advice and emotional support had to do exactly the same thing for dozens of others. Davenport agreed.

Perhaps the art of being a great agent is making every self-obsessed client not only feel special, but also that they are the only one that matters. Ever.

‘I think you might have forgotten how good you are,’ says Dan to Himesh Patel, who is having a bad day on set with Emma Corrin in one episode. ‘Don’t forget that what you are doing is really difficult,’ says a soothing Rebecca to a fraught Corrin. ‘Yeah. I know,’ says Corrin. We shouldn’t really care about a bunch of dogged agents buttering up their spoilt clients but, somehow, we do.