Apostrophes was a live, weekly, literary, prime-time, talk show on French television created and hosted by Bernard Pivot. It ran for fifteen years (724 episodes) from January 10, 1975, to June 22, 1990, and was one of the most watched shows on French television (around 6 million regular viewers). It was broadcast on Friday nights on the channel France 2 (which was called "Antenne 2" from 1975 to 1992). The hourlong show was devoted to books, authors and literature. The format varied between one-on-one interviews with a single author and open discussions between four or five authors.

A well-to-do bourgeois, Tartarin lives in Tarascon, a small southern town, among friends who, like him, love hunting "à la casquette", gossip, aperitifs and thought-provoking journeys. Imaginative like all his compatriots, Tartarin ended up believing he had once been to Shanghai, so fervently did he recount his illusory adventures. It was even rumored that Tartarin was about to leave for Africa to hunt wild beasts, and this was so insistent that the brave man, urged on by his friends, was forced "for the sake of honor" to embark. He arrives in Casablanca, surprised to discover a modern city and not a single lion. But a charming Moorish woman, Baïa, seduces him, and Tartarin indulges in the "delights of Capua". This euphoria is short-lived: Baïa disappears, a false prince, mostly a swindler, finds a replacement and sets off on a hunting expedition in southern Morocco, which will only earn Tartarin the loss of his savings and a blind old lion dragged along by two beggars.