With "Les Grands Replacatifs", Radio Nova has found its Saturday night troublemakers

Since the announcement of the end of Floodcast, the podcast presented for ten years by Florent Bernard and Adrien Ménielle, loyal listeners have been in mourning and looking for a new rare gem.

Djamil the Shlag and his band of Great Replacements may be the cure for this gloomy period. It must be said that they're already starting with a solid foundation.

Before becoming a show broadcast live on Radio Nova since the beginning of April, every Saturday from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m., Les Grands Replacants was first a podcast.

You might think that switching from one to the other, with the constraints of advertising and duration, would be difficult. But for Djamil le Shlag, comedian and host of the show, it's a liberation.

"Before, we had to manage the entire show production, sound, microphones, etc. In the end, it was a big burden and we spent more time on it than recording."

From now on, the team focuses on the essentials: humor and camaraderie. Described as "a big, fat mess" in their press release, Les Grands Replacants embraces its improvisational side.

"It's total freedom. We can talk about any topic, even if it doesn't fit into our current themes. We're here for the laughs." This freedom, very rare in the French audiovisual landscape, appeals to an audience in search of authenticity.

The recipe for "organized chaos"

Les Grands Replacants presents itself as a traditional anti-show. There's no rigid script or imposed topics, just a group of comedians who debate, tell anecdotes, and offer offbeat insights.

The idea? A round table discussion featuring improvisations, jokes, and digressions, all sprinkled with references to pop culture and current events.

"The idea is for the listener to feel like they're in the studio with us," the show's host sums up. With commentators of different ages, Les Grands Remplaçants plays on generational gaps.

"Sarah Lélé is 23, I'm 42. When I talk about Doc Gynéco, she looks at me as if I came from Mars, and she talks to me about Squeezie," laughs Djamil le Shlag.

Yet, there's no split. Humor serves as a universal language. The team, described as a "gang of friends," even meets on Friday evenings for an editorial meeting... "around a shisha" at République. "It's like a run-in or a run-in; we test our subjects while laughing."

A method that works for Radio Nova, which has increased its number of listeners by 131% in one year, notably thanks to new programs, such as Les Grands Replacatifs .

The name of the show, Les Grands Remplaçants , is a snub to conspiracy theories. "It's a way of reversing the stigma and reclaiming the term," explains Djamil le Shlag, who also embraces his pseudonym, inherited from a "committed" image that he now wants to embody with lightness.

Assumed provocation, uninhibited humor

The show doesn't hesitate to tackle sensitive subjects, always with the same humor and intelligence. The only limit? "It must not exceed the limits of the law, so no incitement to hatred or defamation (...) Everything else is free , they can go for it."

A freedom of tone that sometimes earns them some enmity, notably from the identitarian site Boulevard Voltaire. "As Moubala Soumahoro(1) would say, being insulted by the extreme right remains, for me, an honor."

Like their comrades on the show La Dernière , the Grands Replacants team is considering live shows to prolong the studio's energy. "Not every Saturday either, otherwise it'll end up costing a lot," jokes the show's host.

In an often formulaic radio landscape, Les Grands Remplaçants stands out as a refreshing UFO. With its format as fluid as it is iconoclastic, the show redefines the codes of the talk show and proves that humor rhymes with kindness, and that you can be biting without being cruel.

Saturdays from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Radio Nova.

1. Lecturer in American civilization, member of the National Committee for the Memory and History of Slavery.