Les Guignols (French pronunciation: [le ɡiɲɔl], The Puppets), formerly Les Guignols de l'info (French pronunciation: [le ɡiɲɔl də lɛ̃fo], The News Puppets), was a daily satirical latex puppet show broadcast on the French television channel Canal+. It was created in 1988, inspired by Le Bébête Show (1982–95) and for the puppets form by the British Spitting Image (1984–96). Using the same structure as a news programme, the show satirized the political world, media, celebrities, French society, and international events.
Throughout the years, it usually aired at 7:50 p.m. as a segment of other Canal+ shows, such as Nulle part ailleurs or Le Grand Journal. A weekly back-to-back replay of the week's five broadcasts was aired on Sunday afternoons, as La Semaine des Guignols.
The series started in 1988 as Les Arènes de l'info (News Arenas). It originally did not follow the news of the day, being written weeks in advance, and was not very popular. With the 1990–91 season, the series took on the name Les Guignols de l'Info and began to follow the daily news. It then enjoyed a tremendous growth in popularity with its different coverage of the first Gulf War, and quickly eclipsed its rival, Le Bébête Show.
The structure of the series stayed constant throughout the years: a headline, a few quick stories, a pre-recorded video skit, an interview with a personality, then one last story. It rarely diverged from this layout, usually only doing so to drive points across further (e.g. replacing all news with a seven-minute interview of one of the Sylvestres during the 2003 Iraq War).
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