Why many French have come to like “Emily in Paris”

When Netflix released the first season of “Emily in Paris” in 2020, French critics ridiculed the American-made drama for its Instagrammable clichés and vacuous plot. The series was “a fantasised vision disconnected from reality”, sniffed Le Parisien, a newspaper. “No cliché is spared,” wrote Première, a film magazine, including that “the French are all mean and all lazy” and “incorrigible flirts”. A critic for Le Monde, Parisians’ highbrow bible, finished viewing the first season feeling queasy, “as if I had eaten all the macaroons in the box by myself”. In America “Emily in Paris” was nominated for Emmy awards and Golden Globes; there were no such accolades in France.