"Good night little ones" mourns its historical director, Michel Manini

Europe 1 with AFP 10:27 am, August 15, 2023

Michel Manini, the historical director of "Bonne nuit les petits", one of the best-known children's shows on French TV, died Sunday at the age of 86, his family told AFP on Monday.

A show that has marked several generations of viewers

Deceased in Arcachon, Michel Manini had directed several hundred episodes of this series, created by Claude Laydu and his wife Christine in the early 60s. This show marked several generations of viewers and entered popular culture.

First in black and white and then in color, "Bonne nuit les petits" was broadcast on the ORTF from 1962 to 1973, then on TF1 in a new version in 1976, and finally on France 2 in its latest version from 1995 to 1997. Concluded with famous pipe notes, each episode features the puppet characters of the Sandman and his assistant Teddy who, every night before bedtime, comes down from his cloud to visit the children Nicolas and Pimprenelle.

A complicated show to make

Michel Manini had succeeded Jacques Samyn as director after a first season (in 1962-63) during which the characters were not yet those who passed to posterity (the children were called Petit Louis and Mirabelle). In an interview with the newspaper Ouest-France in 2016, Mr. Manini described a program complicated to make.

"First, we had to record the voices of the actors. Then we shot with the soundtrack in playback. The cameras were perched at more than 1.70 m high, because the puppeteers were standing, holding the characters at arm's length," he said, explaining that "the great difficulty was to film without framing their heads".

"At that time, there was no control screen. The scenes could only be viewed once the films had been developed, 48 hours after filming. I was doing about one and a half shows a day. And a show lasted less than four minutes," he added.