Arte’s hugely successful comedy series Polar Park has today picked up the prestigious Vidocq Prize 2024 at Series Mania in Lille. To coincide with the win, Newen Connect, the show’s international distributor, also announced that Max had picked up second window rights to the series and that the show will be available on the platform in France and Belgium.

Polar Park tells the story of David Rousseau, a best-selling novelist with writer’s block, who returns to his hometown of Mouthe to unravel the secrets surrounding his birth – and hopefully find inspiration for his work. Meanwhile, it looks like the town may have an art-loving serial killer who’s staging dead people to look like paintings. Rousseau gets embroiled in the investigation, much to the annoyance of local police officer, Louvetot, with event staking a dark turn when he discovers that Aurélie, a victim who survives, is obsessed with him and his work. After a breathless chase through France and Switzerland, with lots of twists and turns, Rousseau finally discovers the truth about his father and his inspiration returns.

The 6×52’ series features a prestigious cast, which includes Jean-Paul Rouve, Guillaume Gouix, India Hair, Soliane Moisset. It was produced by 247 Max (now branded Scenario42), written and directed by Gérald Hustache-Mathieu and commissioned by Arte.

Polar Park aired on Arte from in October2023 and was a major success:

• The first three episodes of the comedy set a new record for TV series in 2023, delivering 1.814 million viewers (with a 9.6% audience share) during their prime-time broadcast on Arte on Thursday, 2 November.
• The three following episodes, released on Thursday, 9 November, garnered 1.276 million viewers (with a 6.8% audience share).
• Polar Park also enjoyed significant success on demand, accumulating an audience of 6.5 million video views on arte.tv.

The Vidocq Prize – now in its sixth year – is awarded to the best French police series by internal security professionals, and like the Quai des Orfèvres Prize in literature, recognises quality and credibility. To be eligible, the selected French-language series must be in its first season and have aired between April 2023 and February 2024.

Rodolphe Buet, CEO of Newen Connect: 

On top of the stellar results on Arte, I’m thrilled to bring additional good news on Polar Park. Both the award of The Vidocq Prize and the second window sale to an important platform like Max are testament to the quality of the cast and crew behind the production of the series and strengthen Newen Connect’s ambition to support and showcase high quality programs on both the domestic and international stage.

This is the second year in a row that a series distributed by Newen Connect has won this award:
last year, Syndrome E won Vidocq Prize at Series Mania.