AT Frenchies Return With a Book, a Friendship, and a Cross-Channel Mirror

France 24 has a neat little habit of turning a book launch into a transatlantic conversation. This time it brings back Alex Durand and Tom Carles, the duo known as AT Frenchies, to discuss Pardon Our French and the life they have built between France and the United States.

The programme, issued on 29 September 2026 and running 11 minutes and 17 seconds, centres on two childhood friends who later became an internet phenomenon. Their new book gives them a reason to reflect on growing up together, on friendship, and on the challenge of writing a book as a pair. That last part, one suspects, is where the real diplomacy begins.

Durand and Carles also talk about their transatlantic journey and their affection for both cultures. France and the United States are not treated here as abstract symbols, but as the two settings that shaped their story and their work. The conversation keeps returning to Paris as well, with the pair offering their take on what Parisians are like and why they continue to fascinate people.

The show is not trying to solve happiness, which is probably wise. It is interested instead in how two friends turned a shared background into a public project, and how that project now circles back to the familiar French-American comparison that never quite goes out of fashion. There is a certain economy to that. In a media world that often prefers noise to substance, a discussion about friendship, two cultures and one book can still feel refreshingly direct.

Written by Thomas Nussbaumer thomas.nussbaumer@alpineweekly.com