Someone has put 6 movies into the system for "Architectures", but these are just DVD releases of the TV series from the European ARTE network. May I ask for them to be deleted?

Thanks for the heads up. I removed the six volumes and one random episode.

I've hunted all over the internet and there is no original broadcast data for this series that has been made public.

I took care of it. Between the promo material and the Arte Magazine archives, I confirmed most of the original Arte air dates.

Best documentation of the 67 episodes they have produced so far is here on their B2B site: https://sales.arte.tv/fiche/698/ARCHITECTURES

One of the earlier episode, Maison à Bordeaux, is missing from the list. And L'irrésistible construction du musée de Picardie was produced in 1993 for/with France 3, according to the production company. I'm fairly certain it wasn't part of the Arte TV collection: http://download.pro.arte.tv/archives/fichiers/01677955.pdf

Sorry to reopen, but I just had to say to Banana: Nice job on updating this one! (I forgot to let you know when i first got the email notice.)

I'll double check against the DVD's which arrived in the post a few weeks ago (still shrink wrapped!) and tweak if I spot any issues. Especially regarding the last notes you left at the end of your post above. There may be printed material in the box (i got the big box set) that fills in some missing blanks...

I'm also looking forward to watching this excellent series over the next weeks!

Hey, just circling back to this.

I've hunted all over the internet and there is no original broadcast data for this series that has been made public.

@banana_girl said:

I took care of it. Between the promo material and the Arte Magazine archives, I confirmed most of the original Arte air dates.

Sadly, i fear the episode orders are still mixed up

One of the earlier episode, Maison à Bordeaux, is missing from the list.

I have some data on "Maizon a Bordeaux", but see below. The whole episode list needs to be re-factored.

And L'irrésistible construction du musée de Picardie was produced in 1993 for/with France 3, according to the production company. I'm fairly certain it wasn't part of the Arte TV collection: http://download.pro.arte.tv/archives/fichiers/01677955.pdf

Actually this "L'irresistible.... musee de Picardie" episode was released on the 11th Architectures DVD, 3rd video, so it is part of the family. In English called "the Amiens Museum", that's where the Picardie is. I watched it, and it's cool, but it's a "prototype" episode of sorts, as they had not yet developed the stylized series intro. It's not clear how to file, but I guess it probably is correct now, sitting in season zero as an extra bonus "pilot episode" of sorts.. Though it was aired in '94, so predates the others of course.

Given that the golden rule at TMDB is to list by exact air date, and we don't have a solid record of when the episodes were truly aired, how do we proceed with setting the official order?

I guess I'll go tabulate their production years and known dates to see if i can reconstruct a most probable broadcast sequence. The current episode order is not correct, as I know of a few older episodes that should be put in front of the current E01.

Please advise if this is a valid approach. If so, I'll post later with a proposed official episode order.

how do we proceed with setting the official order?

The locked air dates should all be double-checked with the Arte magazine or some press material (edit: all done). If you spot any mistakes, please just let me know. I'll move the episode if I can confirm a different first air date.

The current episode order is not correct, as I know of a few older episodes that should be put in front of the current E01.

Are you sure? We now have access to a better source, the Inathèque, and the first recorded airing is La villa Dall'Ava Architectures on 19/09/1996 at 8PM. (They sometimes have some missing/misspelled data though.)

I guess it probably is correct now, sitting in season zero as an extra bonus "pilot episode" of sorts.. Though it was aired in '94, so predates the others of course.

Yes. I just checked with INA and it's for sure not part of the Architectures television series.

I've finished double checking and you've got the series almost perfect now, well done!

Just a few less important details in the french titles, not sure if it's worth addressing or not. But here are my notes since I cannot edit them:

1. Episode 28, "La saline..." official french title doesn't have the bracketed years, as listed on Inatheque here.
2. Episode 36, "La Villa Barbaro", the hyphen and after should be removed, as shown here . Easy mistake to make, the subsequent broadcaster "Via Stella" renamed the episodes when they became re-runs.
3. Episode 47, french title sticks out as lengthy , see here. It should just be "La citadelle de Lille".

There are some other minor differences in the french titles, but it's just the odd missing article (eg. "Une"), or re-conjugation ("Wa Shan, la maison d'hotes" versus "La Maison d’hôtes Wa Shan") which I personally find unimportant. That said, if one was to be ultra anal retentive, I guess they'd all get rechecked using INA, giving the first airing on Arte priority. :-( Not sure if it's worth it, what are the policies here?

On the side, that INA Inateque site is a goldmine for French television, awesome find!!! :-) Thanks! It answered all of the remaining questions in a very definitive way. I would agree that the current episode order is accurate after creating my own spreadsheet the other day in parallel from the INA data and comparing.

Thanks!

I guess they'd all get rechecked using INA, giving the first airing on Arte priority. :-( Not sure if it's worth it, what are the policies here?

In many cases, most official sources I checked had slightly different titles. For example, "La villa Barbaro - (villa di Maser) / La villa Barabaro (villa di Maser) " vs "La Villa Barbaro". I've used the INAthèque for a couple of months now, and I noticed there are sometimes small differences between the INA titles and the confirmed official titles.

The producer has some clips featuring what seems to be the opening on-screen title of a couple of episodes including Episode 36 (00:19), Episode 47 (00:37) and Wa Shan (00:47). Can you confirm the titles were also used in the version Arte released?

On the side, that INA Inateque site is a goldmine for French television, awesome find!!! :-)

I can't take credit for the find. But, yeah, it's pretty awesome.

@banana_girl said:

The producer has some clips featuring what seems to be the opening on-screen title of a couple of episodes including Episode 36 (00:19), Episode 47 (00:37) and Wa Shan (00:47). Can you confirm the titles were also used in the version Arte released?

The three videos you linked to are what was broadcast, and you can see the characteristic intro titles. Are you saying the on screen chyron titles are king?

If so i could help disambiguate, as I have all the episodes except one in hand (House in Bordeaux is lost to time and not in the DVD release). Let me know.

Yes, I think we should go with the on-screen title since most of the episodes are older and the official data is too unreliable.

@banana_girl said:

Yes, I think we should go with the on-screen title since most of the episodes are older and the official data is too unreliable.

Right then, I'll now scan through and compare the chyron titles in the video to the TMDB ones.

Note with the below: Nearly all of the titles in the videos are with CAPS LOCK, which looks nice on video, but would look like someone was screaming in TMDB and hopefully be against the rules... Please let me know if there are rules for using "Title Case", as apart from proper nouns, I've ignored case during my check as I don't know the policy. You can fix it if there are rules.

Deviations found while checking videos:

-- E01 = "Villa Dall'Ava" (no "la")

-- E04 = "Charléty, un stade dans la ville" (reworked strapline)

-- E08 = "Le familistère, une cité radieuse au XIXème siècle"

-- E12 = "Le bâtiment Johnson"

-- E13 = "L'École des Beaux-arts de Paris, une histoire en abyme"

-- E15 = "Pierre" should be capitalized - proper noun

-- E16 = "La Galleria Umberto I" (roman numeral "I")

-- E17 = "La gare Saint Pancras" (no hyphen, no joke...)

-- E18 = "La boite à vent, le Rectorat de la Martinique"

-- E19 = "L'Opéra Garnier" (sigh, yes, not just generic "Paris")

-- E20 = "Le Musée juif de Berlin, entre les lignes" (for consistencies sake, coma before strapline)

-- E24 = "La casa Milá" (Wrong accent on the "a")

-- E26 = "L'abbatiale Sainte Foy de Conques" (no "de")

-- E28 = "La saline d'Arc et Senans" (no hyphens)

-- E41 = "Hôtel Royal SAS" (SAS is uppercase, as in the airline company who owns.)

-- E45 = "VitraHaus" (it's a trademark / brand with stylized upper case H)

-- E47 = "La citadelle de Lille" (This one has the architect and construction years close to the title which is abnormal and I think confused some folks. They often include that info but smaller and down below, and we've never before considered it to be part of the title.)

-- E50 = "Ewha, L'Université cachée de Séoul" (Not sure how they missed the actual name Ewha in big letters..)

-- E54 = "La Citadelle du Loisir, le centre social Pompeia à Sao Paulo" (no slash, Sao is missing its tilde accent, though not sure if errors should be reflected faithfully...)

-- E61 = "L'utopie du désastre, La maison pour tous de Rikuzentakata" ("," not hyphen)

-- E66 = "," not hyphen between title and tagline.

That's it! My brain hurts now. Thanks for your help!

I made most of the changes, thank you so much for your help! I don't mind overruling the on-screen title for a missing accent or hyphen.

The only one I'm unsure of is "Charléty, un stade dans la ville". It's the title the INAthèque has and the title used in old newspapers TV listing. Maybe they changed it?

@banana_girl said:

I made most of the changes, thank you so much for your help! I don't mind overruling the on-screen title for a missing accent or hyphen.

The only one I'm unsure of is "Charléty, un stade dans la ville". It's the title the INAthèque has and the title used in old newspapers TV listing. Maybe they changed it?

I strongly doubt they've ever spent money re-producing the episodes to noodle with title chyrons.

These discrepancies are just caused by dudes at each broadcaster channel's programming department, pecking like pigeons into excel spreadsheets. They type anything they think will get more viewer ratings, or which complies with their internal style guides, and then it gets uploaded to the EPG distribution networks where I'm sure INAtheque siphons off the metadata. The creators are long since out of the picture.

That's why i think going with the inbuilt video titles was such a good idea, creators intent and all. Not possible with all series, but also not such a mess usually. ;-) Thanks again!