The inhuman factor

A brief announcement ahead of the first episode tells you that Inhuman Resources is “Based on a True Story”. But the saga that unfolds through the six riveting episodes of this French mini-series is so incredible that it is hard to believe that claim. And yet, it turns out, the kernel of the plot really is based on a real-life event — an HR “experiment” that France Télévisions conducted on 12 of its senior employees in 2005, which so shocked crime novelist Pierre Lemaitre that he wrote a prize-winning thriller in 2010 called Cadres Noirs loosely based on that incident.

France’s and, indeed, Europe’s, unemployment crisis is the backdrop against which this drama plays out. The protagonist of Inhuman Resources is Alain Delambre, ably played by Eric Cantona, the star striker of Manchester United in the 1990s who has successfully reinvented himself as an actor after he retired from top flight football (fans will recall the stellar role he played in the charming 2009 film Looking for Eric).

Delambre is a 50-something HR manager who was laid off some years ago and is struggling to make ends meet on inadequate unemployment benefits. Inevitably, the loss of income is matched by a loss of dignity and self-respect as Delambre takes on meagre-paying menial jobs — as a fitter on a factory floor who is prey to an abusive floor supervisor by day and a distributor of leaflets for a pizza outlet. Poring over the “Situations Vacant” columns one day he spots an ad for an HR manager at a powerful French conglomerate specialising in defence aeronautics — and if you think you know the name you’ll be wrong, the glitzy corporation is called Exxya.

The specs seem to fit his qualifications and experience so Delambre applies, without much expectation of a response. To his surprise, he is called for a preliminary interview and, though he fails the written test, is asked to turn up for a “final” round. The process puzzles Delambre; he is experienced enough in the hiring game to know he cannot compete with the younger, smarter candidates and yet, the recruiting consultant handling the process for Exxya is enthusiastic about him.

Delambre turns to his friend, a former IT whiz who is also jobless, to investigate, which he does by the simple expedient of hacking into both companies’ systems. What they discover is beyond bizarre. The “final” interview is to be a double test, both for the HR position that was advertised and the company’s senior-most executives. The scheme that had been hatched between Exxya’s hotshot, feral chief executive officer (CEO), Alexandre Dorfmann and the hard-nosed recruiting consultant was to create a fake hostage situation in which “terrorists,” mercenaries hired for the purpose, would break into a senior management meeting and take executives hostage. They would then “terrorise” these executives on the basis of actions relayed through ear pieces by the candidates for the HR job, testing the first for resilience and the second for the ability to think on their feet.

Why did Exxya’s CEO want to test his senior executives in so extreme a fashion? The conglomerate had just lost a huge order for fighters from some unnamed Asian country to another European competitor on price. To regain its competitive edge, Exxya needed to cut costs urgently and that meant axing thousands of jobs at its plant in northern France (the country’s rust belt where, in fact, the far right Marine Le Pen draws her main support base). This CEO needed a hatchet man for the job. Since lay-offs entailed potential violence and intimidation by workers, he wanted to test his senior executives in extreme situations such as a hostage crisis.

How Delambre prepares for this challenge and the subsequent twists and turns of the plot guarantee an enthralling binge-watch, not least because of Mr Cantona’s truly stellar performance. There will be no spoiler alerts here but suffice it to say that there are no real winners or losers in the end. As for the “real-fake” hostage-taking at France Televisions, many of those who were subject to the attack suffered psychological problems and several who complained were silenced or dismissed. It was only in 2009 that the executive responsible for the idea was convicted by the courts. 

Shooting for the TV series, which was released on Netflix in April this year, would have started well before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, (Mr Lemaitre wrote much of the screenplay). But the central message of Inhuman Resources retains a grim relevance that goes well beyond the “inhuman” HR experiment. It is, in fact, a searing comment on corporate greed, wealth inequality and unemployment and the inhumanity embedded in the uber-capitalism of the 21st century. These are issues that has convulsed the global discourse well before the pandemic — in no small measure due to the work of a French economist, Thomas Piketty — and will become more acute now as the Covid-19-induced economic disaster raises the spectre of mass lay-offs and unemployment in every country.