The 7 Lives of Lea (aka Les 7 Vies de Léa) is a 2022 French series on Netflix that ticks a lot of my boxes: time travel, body swapping, interesting location. It’s a limited series (only seven episodes) based on the novel, Les Vies de Léo Belami by Nataël Trapp. By the title of the book, it sounds like they gender-swapped the lead (the book does not appear to be available in English).

We meet 17 year old Lea at a party by a river where she is trying to score drugs from a classmate. She’s a bit of a mess, a reckless party girl who doesn’t seem to have any plans post high school. She abandons the party and goes off by herself down the river where she contemplates swallowing a handful of pills. Then she finds the skeletal remains of a body.

The next day Lea wakes up in the body of a 17 year old boy. It’s June 1991, exactly 30 years in the past. The boy, she comes to find out, is Ismaël, an Arabic boy who plays bass in a band with Lea’s teenage parents. But Back to the Future this is not. Lea wakes up the next day back in her own body and her own time. She realizes that Ismaël is the body she found in the gorge.

The next day, Lea travels back to 1991 again, this time waking up in her mother’s body. And so it goes. Lea spends one day in 2021, the next in 1991, each time in a different body of someone who knew Ismaël. She decides that it is her mission to prevent Ismaël’s death. To do that she has to untangle all the secrets of the past.

This is an interesting show, well written and well acted. You can watch it in the original French or dubbed for the subtitle averse (in English, Spanish, German, or Italian). I don’t know any of the actors but they acquit themselves well. The gorge that plays a central role in the show is Verdon Gorge in Southeastern France. It’s a striking location with a deep ravine.

Is it bingeworthy? Yes. With only 7 episodes, it’s an easy watch that you can get through in a few days.