‘Chroniques d’en Haut’: A public TV programme spotlighting the lives of French residents living on higher ground
TV presenter Laurent Guillaume journeys through France’s highlands to chronicle the lives of those who call them home. We join him behind the scenes before the cameras roll.
After a bumpy drive through a colourful larch forest, we pull over to fit snow chains on the wheels of our four-wheel drive before tackling the final stretch to our destination, 2,300 metres above sea level. “I’m passionate about the mountains but I’m no adrenaline junkie,” says Laurent Guillaume, a little nervous. We’re in the ski resort of Serre Chevalier, high above the town of Chantemerle. The TV presenter and his crew are here to visit a Canadian-style sugar shack just off the slopes, where guests can try their hand at axe throwing and taffy making using locally sourced honey. The duo behind the business, Sandrine Sucette and David Crockett, are preparing to open the shack for the upcoming season.
When we arrive at the cabin, our hosts are dressed in checked lumberjack jackets. They welcome Guillaume with a shot of a berry-infused spirit served in a glass made from ice. Guillaume empties his frozen cup and carries it to a custom-built catapult designed by Crockett, with which patrons are invited to launch their drinkware at a target a few hundred metres away. After several attempts, Guillaume hits the mark. “This is brilliant – no washing up,” he says. “Thank you and I wish you a great ski season,” he tells Sucette and Crockett, before turning to the camera with a smile. “And thank you for watching this programme. As always, I’ll see you next week.”
Today’s scenes are part of the 745th episode of Chroniques d’en Haut (Highland Chronicles), a show on TV channel France 3 in which Guillaume travels around the country’s mountainous regions to meet their inhabitants, or montagnards. “I’ve always been fascinated by small mountain hamlets,” says Guillaume, who has been presenting the show for 28 years. “The local customs and architecture speak volumes about the climate and the way of life here. I find the adaptation of mountain people to their environment remarkable.”
During our visit, filming takes place near snow-capped peaks but the programme tends to focus on areas further down the mountain, where communities live year-round. “I love the inhabited areas the most – little chalets lost in the snow with smoke coming out of the chimney,” says Guillaume. Today’s episode takes place in the Guisane valley – a corner of the Hautes-Alpes department that is famous for its forests, which in autumn are ablaze with amber and deep-orange hues. Monocle follows the presenter as he meets a former athlete-turned-environmentalist, a mountaineering storyteller and four brothers who run a local distillery.
Born in Lyon, Guillaume started his career as a reporter at local station Télé Lyon Métropole but soon realised that he wasn’t suited to the news. As a child, he had fallen in love with the mountains on visits to the Valloire ski resort so he transitioned into a role as a weatherman on France 3, which allowed him to “be in the right place at the right time” – in the mountains when it was snowing.
In 1998, Guillaume pitched Chroniques d’en Haut to his boss. “Though there was a programme about climbing, I realised that there wasn’t one telling the story of the French mountains and its inhabitants,” he says. The show hasn’t changed much since it launched, aside from its use of drones and the size of its cameras. France 3 is publicly funded so it can prioritise programmes’ cultural and social values over ratings. “We’re trying to make something that makes people feel good,” says Guillaume.
Though climate change, depopulation and the challenges faced by rural communities regularly come up in conversation, the point of Chroniques d’en Haut is to celebrate the beauty of mountain life. “This is a regional channel, which gives us a different perspective from those who are producing national shows in the capital,” says Guillaume. “Local connection really matters because everything in France is heavily centralised in Paris.”
A few months ago, Guillaume became a montagnard, moving from Lyon to Valloire. “Finding snow on the ground feels like you’ve arrived after the party. You really have to see it falling,” he says. Guillaume has even installed special lights in his garden for this purpose. “Being in a cosy room and watching the snow fall outside – that’s the best feeling in the world.”
