The book Notre-Dame tells individual stories of people who were around when the fire at the medieval Catholic cathedral, Notre-Dame, broke out. The mini-series is now streaming on Netflix.
Notre-Dame follows Alice, a firefighter suffering from the trauma of her first mission, clearing up her mind to get back on the field.
As a rookie, she lost her boyfriend and her colleagues that day. Now, on her first day back, she joins the team taking care of the situation at Notre-Dame, which is led by her dead lover’s father.
Apart from saving Notre-Dame as the centerpiece of the story, the message of the series suggests that people will remember what they were doing the night Notre-Dame was burning.
Articulating the same stories, the show also presents Elena, a journalist trying to get an inside scoop on the cathedral on fire.
Max, a restaurant owner, searching for his addicted daughter, and a kid named Billy, looking for his father as he believes he is a firefighter and part of the team that is diffusing fire at the cathedral.
Lastly, the show also tells the story of a construction worker at the cathedral, Bassem, who lost his wife in Syria and now seeks to connect with a woman that looks strikingly similar to her.
How much of Notre-Dame is based on a true story?
Notre-Dame is based on the fire that actually broke out at the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris on April 15, 2019. The series takes inspiration from the real accounts of the firefighters that served that night.
The show also takes cues from the book, ‘La Nuit de Notre-Dame’, written by the Paris Fire Department and Romain Gubert.
It stays true to the events surrounding the fire at the cathedral without taking any creative liberty. The incident got international coverage owing to the cultural importance of the place.
The firefighters worked their way out to not only diffuse the fire but also to make sure the relics inside are moved and the history of the place is preserved well.
By the first light of the morning, the efforts of the firefighters paid off as they managed to put out the fire with zero casualties. Though the roof of the cathedral fell off, Notre-Dame continued to stand tall.
At the time of this writing, Notre-Dame is in the process of restoration and will be fully restored by 2024.
Coming to the characters featured in the series, the stories around them are fictional and built for the drama.
Characters like Alice, Elena, and General Ducourt are used to navigate how the firefighters took adequate measures.
As the message of the show suggests, it’s about how people will remember what they were doing that day, and in order to portray that, the show has added some other characters with their own stories far away from the fire.
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