ABSTRACT
If you asked a French policeman to name some of the things that annoy him when making an arrest, he would probably answer: being sneered at for neglecting to read the detainee his Miranda rights. These rights, which come from a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in 1966, have nothing to do with what the French can expect. For a long time, the police have also complained that people ask to make a phone call immediately upon arrest. This is yet another expectation coming from American police series on television. A phone call is made for the detainee in France, but the timing and the caller differ from what happens in the United States. The police in France have attributed such confusion to ‘too much television’. Indeed, a huge number of police and courtroom dramas coming from the United States can be seen on French television, nearly every day on nearly every channel, once if not several times a day.
