Four friends - Bilal, Romane, and brothers Sam and Victor - are preparing to begin high school. It is Bilal's birthday, and to celebrate the event the quartet plan a secret late night get together. Their chosen venue: an abandoned bunker deep in the local woods. This is far enough from town that their music won't be heard; which is a good thing since Victor snuck a bottle of champagne out of his parent's collection for the event.
In the middle of this shindig, however, just after Sam finally confesses his feelings for Romane and the two are about to have their first kiss, the lights flicker and die. In the darkness, Victor and Romane vanish, and Bilal is mysteriously replaced with an adult version of himself - though one who does not remember anything that happened after this event.
What caused all this? Where are Victor and Romane? Can Bilal be restored to his younger self? These are all questions which Sam may have to answer more or less by himself, because as you might imagine, it seems unlikely that anyone will accept the story "Bilal became an adult overnight". It's hard enough for Sam to accept, and he was there when it happened.
And what about Romane and Victor? Have they simply vanished from reality, or is something much more complicated going on?
Well, the title of the show is probably something of a give-away, in that regard!
This French science fiction show as produced for Disney and is available on their streaming service in France, the US, and various other markets. It runs six episodes of roughly forty minutes each, making it functionally about the same length as a typical film. I think this is pretty much the sweet spot for the scenario it presents, allowing time for the characters and events to develop, but not at any point feeling like it is dragging things out.
The show is helped a lot by a likeable cast. I'll particularly call out Naidra Ayadi as Bilal's mother, Sofia, and Guillaume Labbé as the police Lieutenant assigned to the apparent disappearance of Bilal, Romane and Victor. Both are very engaging in their roles. They probably profit from not having to share there parts, of course: of the four "kids" at the heart of the story, only Sam is played by the same actor throughout the show. All the others have two different actors portraying the roles at differing ages.
The character writing is also solid. The main cast all feel multi-faceted and fleshed out, with their own foibles, strengths and weaknesses. All the "good guys" live up to that moniker, being generally well-intentioned, but they're still flawed enough to make mistakes, and they sometimes succumb to fear or frustration. When they do succumb, however, those failures feel well-justified by the situation. I never got the sense that a major character was acting in a counter-productive way simply because the script needed them to do so in that moment.
This is a solid show, and well worth watching if untangling a strange science fiction mystery seems at all in your wheelhouse.
If you do decide to watch this show, I strongly recommend doing so with the original French dialogue, even if you only speak English. The dubbing is cut from the same lifeless, anaemic mould as I've experienced from European Netflix shows - about thirty seconds of it was enough to send me scrambling for the app settings to change to subtitles.
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