Jacques Audiard to Make His TV Debut with French Spy-Thriller Series The Bureau

Famed director Jacques Audiard is making his TV debut with the French thriller spy series The Bureau, Variety reports.

Audiard will direct a handful of episodes for the long-running drama’s fifth and final season alongside showrunners Eric Rochant, Jérôme Salle, Thomas Bidegain, Anna Novion, Samuel Collardey and Mathieu Kassovitz. The show’s fifth season is set to air in 2020.

Based on real accounts, The Bureau follows members of France’s external security service—basically their CIA—during their everyday lives and missions. It zeroes in on intelligence officer Guillaume Debailly, who’s mysteriously called to return to Paris after spending six years undercover in Syria.

A Canal Plus original series, The Bureau is helmed by producer Alex Berger.

While his next gig has lured him away from the big screen for now, Audiard is one of France’s most revered filmmakers and will also co-write the fifth season’s episodes with his long-time writing partner, Thomas Bidegain, who’s worked on him with films including The Sisters Brothers.

Audiard’s latest, The Sisters Brothers, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Joaquin Phoenix and John C. Reilly, won him a best director prize at Venice. Audiard also earned the Palme d’Or for best director for 2015 crime drama Dheepan.

For American audiences, a U.S. remake of The Bureau, under the more Americanized title The Department, is underway.