Noovo | Talented judges and (Marco) bad luck

Two new features stand out, for diametrically opposed reasons, in the fall schedule that the Noovo channel unveiled on Wednesday morning.

There is the large variety platter What talent!Quebec adaptation of the format Got Talent with a panel of judges composed of Anne Dorval, Serge Denoncourt, Marie-Mai and Rachid Badouri. Funny and offbeat, Anne Dorval stole the show at the press conference, which bodes well for this first edition of What talent!which will welcome magicians, acrobats, singers, comedians, dancers and other acrobats.

Noovo will broadcast four episodes of What talent! per week, from Monday to Thursday at 7:30 p.m. The Monday evening episode will last 60 minutes and the other three will be limited to half an hour. Host Marie-Josée Gauvin, the helmswoman of Rouge FM in Greater Montreal, will lead this vast television competition with a purse of $100,000.

The second new feature of Noovo is called Marco Lachance (Wednesdays at 8 p.m.), a “comforting” comedy developed and performed by Michel Charette. How can I say it? It’s a failure and quite embarrassing, thank you. Next to Marco Lachance, Counter offer And The Arena seem like real comedy geniuses.

With great difficulty, I watched the first four episodes (out of a total of 12), already online on the Crave platform. First, it is a crime against humanity to stick such a hideous wig on the head of Michel Charette, who now looks like the Nickelback singer in his worst years.

We understand that it was necessary to break the image of Michel Charette Happiness or of District 31but this wavy hair takes up all the space and we only see it on the screen.

Like Ted Lasso, but with bad hair, Marco Lachance (Michel Charette) is an eternal optimist who works in the complaints department of a large appliance store. This bread-and-butter job stifles his old dream of becoming a rock star, like he did 25 years ago, when he played in a very popular band.

Separated and settled in Limoilou with his two teenagers, one of whom is gender-fluid, Marco Lachance also hosts his widowed mother (Micheline Bernard, underused) who vapes and compulsively hoards dishes and furniture from the Marie-Antoinette restaurants.

Despite its good intentions of “pure happiness” television, Marco Lachance is full of awkwardness, tone shifts and gags that fall flat.

For example, a colleague of Marco Lachance expresses suicidal thoughts and finally throws herself in front of a moving train. It’s very, very heavy, we understand. Reaction of the protagonists? It’s boring, but, hey, it confirms to us that we must live our own life 100%, YOLO!

And it’s hard to imagine that Marco Lachance, also the leader of a five-person choir, is seriously considering a career in music when he sings very badly in karaoke (help, Jean Leloup!) and his compositions contain even more poor rhymes than an edition of Cégeps en spectacle. In short, we don’t believe for a single second that he might return to the spotlight.

If you’re looking for a much more successful comedy, go for Inhale exhale (Monday at 8:30 p.m.), which brings together Sonia Cordeau and Virginie Fortin in a yoga retreat that turns into a nightmare. This comic thriller is unlike anything else and is full of sharp lines.

Completely high schoolwith formidable efficiency, arrives on Wednesdays at 8:30 p.m. and welcomes a new math teacher, Miss Carmichael (Julie Le Breton), who will experience her Chouchou moment with student Brian Manson (Pierre-Yves Roy-Desmarais).

Those who missed Good morning Chuck on Crave will catch up with this unique drama series (Wednesdays at 9 p.m.) about addiction. It follows a morning TV host (Nicolas Pinson) who loses everything after a wild weekend of bagged cocaine, wild sex and unlimited booze.

HAS I come to you (Monday and Tuesday at 9 p.m.), which is moving at a nice cruising speed, Marc Labrèche will introduce several new chakras, including Jean-Luc Mongrain, fighter Olivier Aubin-Mercier, singer Patrice Michaud and comedian Jean-Thomas Jobin, in addition to regulars such as Élise Guilbault, Guylaine Tremblay, Mathieu Pepper, Josée Deschênes, Fabien Cloutier, Ève Côté and Pascale Renaud-Hébert.

In the third season of the Game Master (Thursday at 8 p.m.), Louis Morissette and his sidekick Antoine Vézina will challenge Virginie Fortin, Arnaud Soly, Alex Perron, Bianca Gervais and Richardson Zéphir to games that are just as crazy as ever.

Changing of the guard at the helm of the Gala Québec Cinéma: Phil Roy takes over from Jay Du Temple, who was unavailable, for the second edition of this ceremony on the airwaves of Noovo. The festive event, dropped by Radio-Canada in 2022, will take place on Sunday, December 8. Live, of course.

On the news side, Noovo will launch (September 9) a daily midday news bulletin that will last 30 minutes and will pair Marie-Christine Bergeron (Noovo Info 17) to Jean-Simon Bui, screwed in his virtual studio in Quebec. The debaters of the 10 p.m. news jump into the ring the same week.

Reality TV The traitors, Love is in the meadow, Big Brother Celebrities And Survivor Quebec have all been renewed for 2025. The second season of Traitors was recorded this summer at the Manoir Rouville-Campbell, and the candidates of Big Brother Celebritiesa mix of veterans and rookies, have already been selected. No names have leaked yet, and I implore my spies here to contact me, it’s urgent.

It is Double occupancy: Mexico which will launch the fall season of Noovo, on Sunday, September 8 at 6:30 p.m., with a red carpet so hot that a competitor (real estate broker Bilal, 29, from Montreal) suffered a pressure drop in the middle of filming. Noovo promises us bickering, squabbling and just enough Bulles de nuit to provoke profitable rapprochements. And ideally, co-host Frédérick Robichaud will replace the word “élure” with “élire” in his little vocabulary bag.

Read our column “ Double occupancy: Mexico : from vanilla to vintage edition hot »