The Grand Hôtel Lazarus is a highly renowned establishment that welcomes monsters and fantastic creatures of every kind.
The hotel has enjoyed a brilliant history over the centuries, run by the Lazarus family according to the strictest traditions of hospitality for monsters. Although the hotel is today no more than a shadow of its former splendour and faces a dire financial situation, the management spares no effort to satisfy its guests: ghosts, vampires, ectoplasms, zombies, werewolves, poltergeists – all must be satisfied with their stay at the GHL.
To meet these varied, macabre and absurd needs, the GHL relies on an (almost) unflappable team: the owner Octave Lazarus, the butler Lucas Aurès and the staff Nora, Lambert and Amélie. Together, they try as best they can to keep the hotel going.
Grand Hôtel Lazarus is a nod to Switzerland and to one of its main tourist activities: the hotel industry. Drawing on our experience in this field, we decided to recount the daily life of the reception desk – the beating heart of a hotel – in a humorous form. The choice of transposing this subject into a fantastic, contemporary universe stems from the extremely strong potential of using monsters of all kinds to represent and highlight the various traits, reactions and stories of a hotel's guests and protagonists.
The format is reminiscent of a series that has enjoyed resounding success in the French-speaking world, Kaamelott. The use of static shots is intended mainly to give the floor to the protagonists and highlight the quality of their exchanges. The receptionists will be confronted with situations drawn from very real anecdotes from our experience in the Swiss hotel industry. A forgotten set of dentures, a collection of cockroaches with sentimental value, or the ghost room: the idea is to create a range of comical situations that will raise a smile. Black humour will also be on the menu.
The universe is very close to that of the Addams Family, with a few touches recalling the world of Tim Burton. Completely incongruous and unrealistic situations will be the protagonists' daily fare, and this ambivalence aims to provoke laughter but also reflection on questions central to us all: privacy, good manners, social differences, respect, etc.
Tackling the troubles of a profession that is sometimes thankless, often rewarding, in a fantastic universe where vampires lose their teeth and werewolves clog the drains with their fur, strikes us as a fundamentally interesting vein to mine, and the challenge appeals to us greatly.
This project is very close to our hearts, which is why, to give ourselves every chance and to offer a glimpse of what the Grand Lazarus Hôtel could be, we made a pilot episode in 2016. It was produced on a very modest budget, and we focused above all on atmosphere in order to convey the possibilities of such a universe with its distinctive aesthetic.