Characters / A Very Secret Service

André Merlaux

André Merlaux

Played By: Hugo Becker

An idealistic, naïve trainee in the French Secret Service.

• Country Mouse: Technically not, since he's a Parisian just like his colleagues, but the more senior agents spend most of the first series treating him as a rube by mocking his cheap, unfashionable suit.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Effortlessly takes out two FLN men before Jacquard, ostensibly his trainer, even knows what's happening.

• Good Is Not Dumb: He might be naive and moral, but he's more competent than his senior trainers.
• Happily Adopted: He was taken in by one of his father's friends after his father was killed in the war, and loves the man dearly.
• Identical Grandson: Is the spitting image of his father.

Jacky Jacquard

Jacky Jacquard

Played By: Karim Barras

In charge of Algerian intelligence.

• Dirty Cop: His behaviour in Algeria has shades of this. He is supposed to eliminate all threats to De Gaulle's authority in the country, whether they come from Algerian independentists or French nationalists, but it's clear that his main priority is to maintain his properties' value, to the point that he actually sides with the OAS against De Gaulle.
• Going Native: Zig-zagged. Jacquard truly loves Algeria and feels at home there, but, rather than honoring the Algerians' desire for independence, he wants it to remain a French possession. He even passes information to the OAS when President de Gaulle allows Algeria self-determination.
• Grammar Nazi: He has no patience for anyone, particularly Americans, butchering the French language.
• Mighty Whitey: Not really, since the entire show is satire, but he's treated this way by Moktar and others, who refer to him as "Sidi Jacky."

Roger Moulinier

Roger Moulinier

Played By: Bruno Paviot

Head of the Africa desk.

• The Casanova: He has fathered a number of children on the job, whom he does not support.
• Dance of Romance: He shares one with Irène.
• Disappeared Dad: Himself for his many children.
• In Love with the Mark: He falls for Irène Mercaillon after being tasked with tracking her.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: Since the show thrives on Deliberate Values Dissonance, nearly everything he says about Africa and its inhabitants is extremely patronising or disparaging^note Since the point is that such racism was widespread and unchallenged at the time, Moulinier doesn't have a monopoly on it, he just expresses it more often as the "Africa expert"
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: Briefly. When he falls in love with Irène Mercaillon, he shows up to work in a bright red suit; that ends, though, when Moïse tells him, "Put on a proper suit. This isn't the circus."

Jean-René Calot

Jean-René Calot

Played By: Jean Edouard Bodziak

Responsible for Eastern bloc intelligence.

• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Calot is very competent at managing the Eastern bloc. Him being replaced by other agents causes the building of the Berlin Wall and the Cuba missiles crisis.
• Cassandra Truth: He correctly guesses what Merlaux is up to in season 2; when he explains his theory, though, everyone laughs him off, assuming it's just another one of his eccentricities.
• Catchphrase: Q.E.D.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: He's an odd fellow, and with odd ideas a lot of the time. Even in a Service that has its own strange logic, nearly every other thing he says elicits puzzled looks and eye-rolling from his colleagues.
• Cunning Linguist: Speaks at the very least, German, Bulgarian, Russian and later is the only one that bothers to learn Quebecois French.
• Driven to Madness: The show implies (especially in season 2) that Calot is the way he is because of prolonged immersion in the Insane Troll Logic of the USSR. (This would also be an instance of Crazy Sane.)
• Success Through Insanity: The madness that makes Calot completely dysfunctional most of the time also makes him perfectly suited to life in Moscow.
• Talking to Themself: He actually hallucinates a doppelgänger.
• Twin Threesome Fantasy: Two, actually. First, he dreams about making love to Marie-Jo with his doppelgänger; later, he actually sleeps with the Creepy Twins he picks up in East Germany.
• Workaholic: While he appears to spend much of his working day smoking and chatting with his fellow agents, he seems to have no interests outside of his job, to the point that when the Colonel orders him to take a few days off, he tries to refuse and then has to ask Marie-Jo for advice on how to spend his holidays. In the end, he just sits in his apartment wearing a flower shirt and sandals, and writing postcards.

Clayborn

Clayborn

Played By: Josephine De La Baume

The only female agent in the Service. Given the sexism in her workplace, it's not too surprising that she runs off with a Cuban revolutionary.

• The Ace: Clearly the most competent agent, although most of her feats are off-screen.
• Action Girl: She's just as tough as she is sexy. When Jacquard, Moulinier and Calot send a thug after her to prevent her from getting the promotion they want, the next day she shows up without visible injuries and throws said thug's Glass Eye into Jacquard's glass of whiskey.
• Ambiguous Situation: She defected to Cuba, or maybe it was A Match Made in Stockholm.
• Honey Trap: Her expense report in the first episode has her spending over a million francs on lingerie, and she's later seen seducing an African diplomat. On Mercaillon's orders, she seduces Merlaux.
• Ms. Fanservice: She has a couple of scenes of her in lingerie.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Her lover may or may not be Che Guevara.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The episode in which Jacquard, Moulinier and Calot try to stop her from getting a promotion all three of them want, Moïse is seen reading briefs of successfully completed missions by Clayborn. Also, the fight in which she rips out a thug's glass eye happens entirely off-screen.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: She's only ever adressed as Clayborn, but her file shows that her last name is actually d'Abreville, and the part with her first name is left off-screen.
• Passed-Over Promotion: Moïse wants to take Clayborn on as his protégée, but the Colonel literally laughs off the idea of promoting a woman, and instead promotes the clearly unqualified Lechiot, who dies very shortly after receiving the promotion.
• The Smurfette Principle: The only female agent in the Service.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Clayborn is by far the most competent agent in the shop, but the menfolk are too busy staring at her chest to notice.

George "Moïse" Préjean

George "Moïse" Préjean

Played By: Christophe Kourotchkine

Chief of operations. Part badass secret agent, part harried middle manager.

• Benevolent Boss: He spends time and energy to save André from Mercaillon.
• By-the-Book Cop: His approach to prosecuting Mercaillon. He has compiled a dossier of evidence of his involvement with Les Collaborateurs, and intends to go through the proper channels (although not necessarily public ones, as Moïse intended to rely on a contact at a ministry in order to directly transmit his dossier to the highest spheres). When Mercaillon steals the file, Moïse is desperate and decides that his best bet is to wait for Mercaillon to retire. All of this contrasts with the much more direct (and reckless) approach André advocates.

• Meaningful Name: He is both the day-to-day leader of the team and the intermediary between the lower-ranking agents and the Colonel.
• Papa Wolf: When two obnoxious CIA agents disparage Jacquard, Moulinier, and Calot, Moïse will have none of it: "Nonsense. They are exceptional. I hope you have agents of that caliber in your own service."

Marie-Jo Cottin

Marie-Jo Cottin

Played By: Marie Julie Baup

A secretary or general office girl; later promoted to agent by Moïse.

• Country Mouse: She states early on that she began working for the Service because there was no work for her on her parents' farm, and she's quiet and down-to-earth.
• First-Name Basis: Like all the other secretaries, everyone in the Service only addresses her by her first name; even after becoming an agent, everyone still calls her by her first name.
• Given Name Reveal: Downplayed in that her first name is known pretty much since her introduction, but her surname is unveiled at a particularly significant moment: her promotion to agent.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: After she stages Merlaux's death, she walks into the office with a newfound confidence and a new outfit befitting an independent woman instead of a meek secretary.
• Spy Catsuit: Wears quite a few after being promoted to agent.
• Stay in the Kitchen: Even Moïse, the most enlightened man in the Service, takes a long time to realize how skilled and talented Marie-Jo is.

Lechiot/Gomez/Schmid

Lechiot/Gomez/Schmid

Played By: Antoine Gouy

Like the drummers of Spinal Tap, the accountants of the Service tend to meet bad ends. Fortunately, there's always another one waiting in the wings.

• Character Tics: Schmid whips his hair often.
• Hidden Depths: Lechiot was a poor fit for his eventual position, but he apparently was a member of the French resistance in the war.

• Pet the Dog: Schmid is visibly touched when Moïse pronounces his name correctly.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Gomez seems to know something bad is coming, and asks Moïse for the day off just before Moïse is arrested by Mercaillon. Good self-preservation instincts; too bad he drowns while on vacation.
• True Neutral: Even Schmid, the most obstructionist of the accountants, never acts out of spite or malice, and he's even helpful once or twice. He simply serves a higher power: proper procedure and paperwork.

Colonel Maurice Mercaillon

Colonel Maurice Mercaillon

Played By: Wilfred Benaiche

Head of the French Secret Service.

• Blackmail Backfire: When he attempts to blackmail Moïse over knowing that he is a closeted gay, he ends up at a secret gay meeting point Moïse frequents, and ends up dancing with a man there... and Moïse takes a picture of them, blackmailing him right back.
• Les Collaborateurs: He was the one who ratted out Merlaux's father and most of his Resistance connections to the Nazis, getting him killed.
• Covert Pervert: Uses a peep show booth for meetings with his two Mooks; all three of them are, of course, Distracted by the Sexy.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The Colonel may be a collaborator and a whole bunch of other things besides, but he loves his family and is devastated when his wife leaves him.
• Foreshadowing: He is seen in bed ostensibly reading a book written by Charles de Gaulle, but the cover slips, revealing he's reading one written by Marshall Pétain, hinting at the revelation he collaborated with the Nazis.

• Living a Double Life: His wife and children don't know that he works for the Secret Service, instead believing that he has a boring job at the Department of Veterans.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Tells this to André, who's about to kill him. He is lying.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: He refuses to pronounce Moktar's name correctly; he mocks Moktar's halal diet; and he hurls at least half a dozen homophobic epithets at Moïse.
• Pragmatic Villainy: When it was expedient, he collaborated with the Nazis, but now he seems to be genuinely devoted to General de Gaulle.
• Sanity Slippage: After the dissolution of his family, he starts behaving erratically. This culminates in him having a full-blown breakdown in the Algerian desert, with Moktar and Jacquard having to talk him out of blowing himself up with the Gerboise Verte nuclear bomb.
• Stay in the Kitchen: Both at home and at work, the Colonel strongly resists the societal changes that are brewing in the early 1960s.

Sophie

Sophie Mercaillon

Played By: Mathilde Varnier

A cute tailor that becomes André's girlfriend.

• Boyish Short Hair: gets such a haircut. Her mother is horrified.

• Daddy's Girl: Despite their starkly divergent political opinions, she dearly loves her father. Her relationship with her mother is often more difficult.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: With her brother Yvon. He is as quiet and obedient as she is outspoken and rebellious.

Irène Mercaillon

Irène Mercaillon

Played By: Stephanie Fatout

The traditional and devoted wife of Maurice Mercaillon that eventually leaves him.

• Housewife: She is at first your typical 50's-60's bored bourgeois housewife.
• Innocent Bigot: Despite becoming more liberal after leaving her husband, she is still horrified when Sophie tells her that she fell in love with an Arab. Baby steps.
• Prim and Proper Bun: At first, but she undoes it during one of André's visits and starts wearing her hair down, as a first sign of her growing desire for independence.
• Really Gets Around: After hooking up with Moulinier, she states that she does not want to settle with a husband and has a significant number of lovers.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: After leaving her husband, she wears more modern and colorful dresses, reflecting her new-found independence.

Moktar

Moktar

Played by: Khalid Maadour

Jacquard's Algerian henchman, who manages his real-estate business in Algiers.

• As the Good Book Says...: After finding a Bible in the same warehouse that contained the Green Jerboa atomic bomb, he reads it, finds it "pretty well-written" and begins quoting scripture.
• Only One Name: His last name is never revealed.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gives one to Mercaillon of all people, who has a full-blown breakdown and is ready to blow himself up with the Green Jerboa bomb.

Anna and Maria

Anna and Maria

Played by: Laetitia Chambon (Anna) and Helena Chambon (Maria)

A pair of twin sisters from East Germany, whom Calot talks about as if they were a single person (Anna-Maria) for some reason.

• Hammerspace Hideaway: They get out of East Germany by hiding under a trapdoor in the floor of their van, which is not nearly thick enough to contain one person, let alone two.
• Only One Name: Their surname is never revealed.
• Single-Minded Twins: They usually stay very close to each other at the hotel they run, and have a common attraction towards Calot. A few times, they even say sentences in unison.
• Twin Threesome Fantasy: They make it a reality for Calot.