The Best TV Shows on ORTF Télévision

Odysseus' journey, told in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. After fighting in the Trojan War, Odysseus spends years trying to return home to Itaka.

Le Grand Échiquier is a French variety television program created and presented by Jacques Chancel. It aired at 8:30 pm on the first channel of the ORTF from January 12, 1972 to July 12, 1972, then on the second color channel of the ORTF from September 1972 to December 1974, and finally on Antenne 2 from January 1975 to December 21, 1989. The program returned to France 2 on December 20, 2018 and is hosted by Anne-Sophie Lapix.

Arsène Lupin is a French TV show which was co-produced with German, Canadian, Belgian, Dutch, Swiss, Italian and Austrian TV stations. It was only loosely based on Maurice Leblancs novels. Georges Descrières' portrayal of Arsène Lupin showed more similarity to Graf Yoster than to Maurice Leblanc's original. He behaved in the first place as a perfect gentleman who never got angry. He was always relaxed, because whatever could possibly had bothered him in daily life was taken care of by his butler. It wasn't questioned how he had come to his financial independence although the series sometimes discreetly implied that he was a professional criminal. Besides rescuing damsels in distress Lupin took on criminals, competing with their wit and intelligence. Either he stole paintings from rich people who had to be considered white-collar criminals or he acted as a detective who derailed criminal schemes. However, when he was attacked, he could defend himself effortlessly by using elegant jujutsu methods. Among the guest stars were German actors such as Günter Strack and Sky du Mont. Jean-Paul Salomé said in his commentary on the DVD version of his film Arsène Lupin he had like this series as a child. German TV, one the investors, would broadcast the show eventually between 18:00-20:00 o'clock because it was only allowed to show commercials within that very timeslot. For them to get a financial return on investment the show had to be appropriate for families and also for children who would watch it alone. Subsequently it was nearby to ask to defuse and flatten some of Leblanc's plots in order to avoid possible complaints that could force the station to broadcast the show beyond the "Vorabendprogramm".

At Theater tonight is a TV show broadcasted from 25th August 1966 to 21st September 1985. The show is broadcast plays recorded in two or three days, during public performances at the Théâtre Marigny on the Champs-Élysées, or sometimes Edouard VII theater.

Les Shadoks is an animated television series created by French cartoonist Jacques Rouxel which caused a sensation in France when it was first broadcast in 1968-1974. The Shadoks were bird-like in appearance, were characterised by ruthlessness and stupidity and inhabited a two dimensional planet. Another set of creatures in the Shadok canon are the Gibis, who are the opposite to the Shadoks in that they are intelligent but vulnerable and also inhabit a two-dimensional planet. Rouxel claims that the term Shadok obtains some derivation from Captain Haddock of Hergé's The Adventures of Tintin and the Gibis are essentially GBs. The Shadoks were a significant literary, cultural and philosophical phenomenon in France. Even today, the French occasionally use satirical comparisons with the Shadoks for policies and attitudes that they consider absurd. The Shadoks were noted for mottos such as: ⁕"Why do it the easy way when you can do it the hard way?" ⁕"When one tries continuously, one ends up succeeding. Thus, the more one fails, the greater the chance that it will work."

The adventures of Barbapapa and Barbama and their seven children, where they search for their place in the world, while helping humans and animals.

Inspired by the book The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects by painter Giorgio Vasari, this historical soap opera, in which betrayals, kidnappings, murders and police investigations are interwoven, relates the discovery by the Italians of the secret of Flemish painting around 1470.

Graf Yoster gibt sich die Ehre [French title: Le comte Yoster a bien l'honneur] is a TV series which followed the adventures of the title’s amateur gentleman detective. It was a success in particular in Germany and in France. Originally the show was a German production in black-and-white but it evolved into a European co-production in colour.

French children's television series inspired by Sesame Street featuring Casimir, an anthropomorphic orange dinosaur with yellow and red spots.

Les Cinq Dernieres Minutes is a crime based French television series

Hector's House is a children's television series using hand puppets. Like the better known The Magic Roundabout it was actually a French production revoiced for a British audience. A gentle, rather than subversive or outright bizarre, series, it was first broadcast in 1965. Its French title was La Maison de Toutou and the French version was written by Georges Croses. "La Maison de Toutou" translates as "The House of the Doggie" and in the French version, Zsazsa is known as ZouZou. In the UK, it was screened in the late 1960s and early 1970s for its 5-minute-long screenings on BBC 1 at 5.40 p.m. before the News. The main characters, affable Hector the Dog and cute Zsazsa the Cat, live in a house and beautiful garden. Kiki the Frog, dressed in a pink smock, is a constant and at times an intrusive visitor, through her hole in the wall. Despite Hector's willingness to endlessly help them out, Kiki and Zsazsa often played tricks on him to teach him a lesson, leading him to say his catchphrase at the end of the episode, "I'm a Great Big [whatever he was] Old Hector. Hector's voice was performed by Paul Bacon, who died in 1995. The voice of Kiki was by Denise Bryer, who also had roles in Noddy, Terrahawks and Labyrinth. The voice of Zsazsa was supplied by Lucie Dolène. About 78 episodes were made, each of 5 minutes' duration. A DVD featuring some of these episodes has been released.