Actor Roman Duris is at his grungy, understated, raspy-voiced best as Vernon Subutex, the down-and-out creator of the once-legendary, now-defunct record store, Revolver. As the series opens, Vernon’s 1990s glory days — when “we plunged into rock as if it were a cathedral” and were fiercely “at war with apathy” — are long gone. Flat broke, with pride intact, he’s evicted from his apartment. So he bums around Paris, calling on old friends, in search of one crash pad after another, becoming an anonymous wanderer through the bustling city streets. Yet, he has something precious in his possession and soon becomes the most wanted man in town. By turns comic and touching, at once an exuberant hymn to the lost dreams of youth, a bewilderment at where they all went, and a search for meaning and redemption, Vernon Subutex is inspired by the first two volumes of Virginie Despentes’ best-selling novels of the same title.

Writer-director Cathy Verney began her career as an actor, appearing in numerous films and TV series. She moved into the director’s chair with her short film, How Time Flies, then went on to create, write and direct the first two seasons of Hard, a comedy series on the porn industry, for Canal+. From 2014 to 2016, she wrote and directed several episodes of the popular French TV series Desperate Parents.