Club Dorothée

I mean it, every time I ask a Belgian or French person from around my age whether they remember this show, there's instant recognition.

It wasn't very special, they just filled hours of every day showing a slew of cheap Japanese cartoons between self-made sketches and game shows. It had something for everybody so everybody watched it (the fact that it was on almost every time you turned on the TV helped too). As a result everybody remembers different things, and when I ask them people will name shows that I have forgotten all about as their favorite.

I watched other cartoon slinging morning- or afternoon filling shows, but this one stuck with me because of the anime. First of all it was the golden age of Japanese cartoons, a lot of them are iconic classics by now. Secondly the others all showed the same American stuff. Thirdly my mother hated the violence in a lot of them (they even played hokuto no ken for 2 weeks until they had to stop it due to complaints, but it had already left a lasting impression on our playground). The Japanese manga and anime industry have a lot to thank these people for, thousands upon thousands of manga and anime lovers got the virus directly or indirectly through Club Dorothée.

Club Dorothée was the greatest kids show on earth. Not only was it the vehicle for the love towards manga in the Benelux and France, it's production house also co-created/financed some of the most iconic ones.

It was on the ear 7 days a week and on it's highest point had over 26 hours of the weekly airtime (over 40 hours during school holidays) and reached up to 86% of general audience in France. Those are still world records.

They were not scared of serious items and catered for all young audiences from 8 to 18, boys and girls. They treated kids like young adults and remain loved to this day. When they did a 30th aniversary show no one realised just how big their show still meant for so many people after that many decades. When Ariane and Jacky died the world stopped in France and Belgium for a few hours.

AB productions were so crazy with this show that the entire studio and sets were built around this show with interior and exterior sets and they even added a real house on the roof that was used to shoot the first french teen sitcom Héléne et le garçons. Even the biggest US tv producers didn't go this far for one show and if they wouldn't have started their own TV channels the show would have continued a good few years more. This is one of the few shows on earth that has memories for young GenX and older Millenials alike. And each sunday it was PPPC (Pas de Pietié pour les Croisants or No Mercy For the Croisants) in which they did scetches around a theme but also improv as most was broadcast live. For 10 years they were on tv every single day, their holidays were broadcast from wherever they were, even China allowed them to do live daily broadcasts, which was no mean feature in the 80's and 90's. On many levels this show still holds the highest bar of childrens entertainment and it will probably never be surpassed, neither in reach nor production value or airtime. It's the Riverdance of children's television!

There is also a link between Club Dorothée and the original Final Destination movie. Final Destination is inspired by flight TWA800 and the group of students that was lost. But as Club Dorothée finished their special summer holiday shows from the USA they were scheduled on flight TWA800 but at the last minute the producer insisted to change flights as TWA800 was a non smoking flight. So at the 11th hour the whole team and crew were put on a flight that allowed smoking and as such escaped the disaster. (A few claim that the delay of flight TWA800 was due to this incident as the lugage was already checked in and had to be redirected, though no real proof has ever been brought forward to this claim.) Yet it was part of the inspiration for Final Destination as the team "escaped" the disaster.