By gathering exactly 1,404,200 prime-time viewers, Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis renewed the success it had previously achieved on the big screen. When it was released in 2008, the film by actor and director Dany Boon sold almost 20 million tickets in French cinemas and 6 million in the rest of the world. This exploit was repeated on television on Sunday evening, with the film achieving an unprecedented 67.1 per cent total audience share and 76 per cent share of viewers age 4 to 14.
In the Nord-Pas de Calais village of Bergues, which has become a mecca for fans of the film, Sandrine Corman takes a look at the incredible success of Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis.
As mentioned in Backstage, the film’s TV broadcast was part of an evening that RTL-TVI devoted entirely to the “Ch’tis” phenomenon with presenter Sandrine Corman at the helm. Shown at 19h45, the programme Le phénomène Ch’tis gathered almost 851,000 viewers, a 46.7 per cent total audience share that is also a record figure for that time slot.
At 22:10, immediately following the blockbuster feature film, Planète Ch’tis, a documentary about the inhabitants of the Nord-Pas de Calais region gathered 448,000 viewers for a total audience share of 38.5 per cent. In summary, between 17:00 and 23:00, RTL-TVI achieved a record total audience share of 48 per cent.