The two men’s beginnings were different. Trump’s father was a real-estate mogul who effectively launched his son’s move into the business world. On the other hand, as Class Act – with its punning title – makes clear, life was much more of a struggle for the Frenchman growing up in a humble working-class suburb in Paris’s 20th arondissement. But what they have in common is far more telling, pointing to their shared need for not just public attention but admiration. Like the former host of The Apprentice on American television, Class Act’s Tapie always wanted to be a star. And even if he’s depicted more sympathetically than Trump has ever been, he’s afflicted by the same inflated sense of self. “France’s tomorrow is me,” Tapie arrogantly boasts to a prospective business partner. And, in its way, the series is an account of how Tapie is able to exploit his country’s deficiencies just as Trump has his.

After a brief introduction that takes place in 1997 as Tapie is being locked up for yet-to-be-named crimes, an extended flashback returns us to 1966, where he’s surrounded by family and friends. They’ve all come together in his parents’ living room to watch his appearance on a TV singing contest and to celebrate his victory.

Having adopted the surname of Tapy – “Because his record company thinks it’s more American,” his wife Michèle (Ophélia Kolb) explains – he is, he thinks, about to become a pop star. “See you next year at the Olympia,” he modestly tells the gathered throng after the show is over.

From there, the series travels across the years tracing his rise and fall and taking in highlights of his career: his apprenticeship as a TV salesman; his dream of beginning his own electrical store in partnership with a shady businessman, Marcel Loiseau (Fabrice Luchini); the life-changing encounter with Loiseau’s personal assistant, Dominique Damianos (Josephine Japy); his momentary loss of confidence and his recovery of it; and his move into the business world where he makes his fragile fortune by buying up failing businesses and selling them off at inflated prices. He might not be in real estate, but there are clear parallels.

Along the way, he gathers admirers. A fast talker who lives by his own rules and creates his own logic, he’s careless with others’ feelings and needs, and even when he comes face to face with the consequences – like those that follow his attempt to create an ambulance service without the proper resources – he presses on regardless.

Mixing John Travolta’s cocky self-confidence from Saturday Night Fever with something of the charismatic bearing of former Pakistan cricket star and ex-prime minister Imran Khan, Lafitte’s performance is a delicate balancing act that allows us to see Tapie simultaneously as a bargain-basement charlatan and a bewitching charmer. Such is his performance and Séguéla’s nuanced direction that you can see why people want to believe in him even while you know they shouldn’t.

It’s that way in his relationships with Dominique, his initially sceptical father (Patrick d’Assumçao), and his sage garage mechanic friend, Farid (Hakim Jemili). They initially appear as if they might provide him with some much-needed moral guidance but, finally, aren’t up to the task. Such is the power of the spell that he casts through the force of his personality and the misrepresentations of his successes that even those who know him better than he knows himself are duped.

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In its latter stages, Class Act deals with Tapie’s ill-judged move into politics as the urban affairs minister for President François Mitterrand (Samuel Labarthe) and with his double-dealings as the boss of the Marseille football club that eventually brought him undone. His vulnerability is finally fully revealed in a stunning 25-minute back-and-forth exchange in which he meets his match in the prosecutor investigating him (David Talbot), a scene that is one of last year’s TV highlights.

The series ends as it begins, with Tapie behind bars. In real-life, however, after his release, his quest for fame saw him back in the public eye, obeying the legal prohibitions on his business and political activities but still making his presence felt: acting on stage, playing opposite Luchini in Claude Lelouch’s Hommes, femmes, mode d’emploi (1996) – which makes Luchini’s casting in Class Act no coincidence – and playing the titular police chief in the TV series, Commissaire Valence (2003-2008). He died from cancer in 2021 at the age of 78.

Class Act is on Netflix.

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