Le Plus Grand Français de tous les temps ("The Greatest Frenchman of all Time") was a France 2 show of early 2005, based on an original series of Great Britons on the BBC. The show asked the French viewers who they thought was the Greatest Frenchman or Frenchwoman. It was presented by Michel Drucker and Thierry Ardisson, and the final episode was broadcast at the French Senate.
The winner was the former president and leader of the Free French movement, Charles de Gaulle.[1]
The show was criticized by some historians in that it focused only on personalities of recent French history. Key figures of French history who contributed to the founding of the French nation, such as the national heroine Joan of Arc, the kings Philip Augustus, Saint Louis, and Louis XIV or French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte were largely ignored.