Series Five of Doctor Who continued on France 4 on Saturday, featuring Le Seigneur des Rêves and La révolte des intra-terrestres (1+2). The shows achieved 295,000 viewers, a drop of 80,000 since the previous week. This was also reflected in the audience share, down to 1.3% of the total audience.

This week's audience figures for Saturday can be viewed at Premiere, which showed Doctor Who second-from-bottom in the ratings for the thirteen listed channels - Danse avec les stars on TF1 continued to dominate the evening, with some 5.385 million viewers (25.6%) of the audience.
Next week will see just two episodes broadcast:

France 4 have released a new trailer for this Saturday's episodes, Le Seigneur des Rêves and La révolte des intra-terrestres (1+2); they will be broadcast from 8:35pm (local time).


You can follow France 4 via their Facebook page and Twitter feed.

Series Five of Doctor Who continued on France 4 on Saturday, featuring Le labyrinthe des Anges (1+2) and Les Vampires de Venise. The shows achieved 375,000 viewers, 2% of the total viewing audience at that time (8:35pm onwards). Whilst this is a drop in the total viewers from last week (453,000), the audience share has remained the same.

The evening also saw a repeat of Torchwood: Les Enfants de la Terre on NRJ 12 in the same time slot - the five episodes achieved a rating of 219,000 viewers (1%).

Audience figures for Saturday can be viewed at Premiere, which shows that Danse avec les stars on TF1 was once again the highest show on French television that day.


The first three episodes of Series Five - Le Prisonnier Zéro, La bêtes des bas-fonds and La victoire des Daleks - are repeated on Tuesday evening, from 10:00pm (local time).

France 4 have released a new trailer for this Saturday's episodes, Le labyrinthe des Anges (1+2) and Les Vampires de Venise; they will be broadcast from 8:35pm (local time).



You can also follow France 4 via their Facebook page and Twitter feed.

Matt Smith debuted as the Doctor in France last night, with the first three episodes of Series Five broadcast on France 4

Le Prisonnier Zéro, La bêtes des bas-fonds and La victoire des Daleks were shown together during the evening and achieved a rating of 453,000 viewers, representing 2% of the audience watching television in France (viewing figures for the evening as a whole may be seen via Ozap).

Series Five has started off well, gaining more viewers than David Tennant's swansong, La Prophétie de Noël, which achieved 416,000 viewers over Christmas Day (but was pipped to the post by La Conquête de Mars with 504,000 viewers in October).

French viewing for the rest of the month consists of Le labyrinthe des Anges (pts 1+2) and Les Vampires de Venise next weekend, and Le Seigneur des Rêves and La révolte des intra-terrestres (pts 1+2) on the 26th.





(we leave our readers to enjoy translating the French titles!)

The French Doctor Who fansite Beans on Toast have published an exclusive audio interview with David Manet, the former French voice of the Doctor.

Entitled "The End of an Era", the Belgian voice artist - who portrayed the Doctor's voice throughout his Ninth and Tenth incarnations - talks candidly about his interpretation of the role, and also of his career in dubbing.

In a translated extract below, Manet talks of his best memory of dubbing Doctor Who:

The full interview was recorded in Belgium on the 1st February, and is available to listen to in French from the Beans on Toast website, alongside photos of Manet receiving some special gifts to thank him for his work at the end of the interview.

You can also read an interview with the actor from 2009 on site here.

Matt Smith's first full series as The Doctor comes to France 4 next month when the channel begins showing the 31st series of the show, starting with Le Prisonnier Zéro (The Eleventh Hour) on February 12, at 8:35 PM.

Viewers in France got to see the end of the Tenth Doctor last Christmas day when France 4 showed La Prophétie de Noël.

The series will continue with Épisode 2 — La Bête des bas-fonds and Épisode 3 — La Victoire des Daleks.


In addition French-speaking Doctor Who fansite Beans On Toast has revealed that series 4 of Doctor Who will be released on DVD in French.

The news has been confirmed by France Television Distristribution, the DVD editor in charge of the DVD releases of the first three series in France. French-speaking fans have been campaigning for a DVD release of the series with Beans on Toast launching an online petition in August 2010.

Series 1, 2 and 3 are also to be re-released on DVD, and this time, the series 3 boxset will include the original English version with French subtitles. The current DVD edition only offers the French dub.

For discussion on this news see the Beans On Toast Forum.

French Doctor Who fans are petitioning the French DVD distribution company to release Series Four of the show in the republic.

Organised by the website Beans on Toast the petition calls on France Television Distribution, not only release the series in the French language but to ensure the DVD release is of high quality.

Series 1 - 3 have all been released, dubbed into French, but with none of the extras familiar to English speaking viewers included. The first two series had the English versions of the soundtrack included with French Subtitles, but this was not available for Series Three. There are currently no plans to release Series Four in any form.

The first week in March saw the recording of the French translation of David Tennant's final adventure, The End of Time. The recording took place at the Dubbing Brothers studios in Brussels, Belgium, with dialogue written by François Dubuc, and the session directed by David Macaluso.

The role of the Doctor was assumed by David Manet, who has played both the Ninth and Tenth Doctors throughout the series' return. However, the Eleventh Doctor finds a new 'voice' in the form of Belgian stage actor and dubbing artist Marc Weiss. Similarly returning is Franck Dacquin as the Master - he has been John Simm's 'alternative' since Life on Mars.


There is currently no information as to when The End of Time (or its predecessor The Waters of Mars) will be broadcast in France.

Last year's Easter special, Planet of the Dead, made its debut in France earlier this week where it was watched by 423,000 viewers.

The episode, called Planète Morte, was dubbed into French and shown on France 4 at 8.35pm. David Manet provided the voice of Le Docteur with Maia Barar playing Christina, Monique Clemont playing Capitaine Magambo, Oliver Cuvellier playing Malcolm and Yeves Degen playing Chauffeur de bus.

You can read more about the process of translating the show into French here, and you can discuss the translation here.