It’s the type of modern, brutal, hard-hitting and stirring TV series that we’re used to coming across on a paid platform, and therefore more niche, like Crave or Netflix.
With an almost documentary approach, this miniseries imagined and directed by Mara Joly follows four young people from a red-light and poor neighborhood in Montreal, who deal with violence, their own or that of a loved one. The dialogues jump from French to English, Franglais, Creole and Spanish, naturally, without altering the fluidity of the story (yes, there are subtitles if necessary, don’t screw up).
Really, I really liked it After the flood, which takes off Thursday at 9 p.m. on Noovo. This is a show – very different from the traditional soap opera – that is at once daring, captivating and original.
Moreover, for those who complain that Quebec TV always shows the same faces of white actors, know that the majority of the main roles in this fall novelty have been entrusted to actors from diverse backgrounds, unknown to the general public. And they are doing more than well, particularly comedian Erika Suarez, who plays a bubbly young Latina who dreams of fame by cleaning for the rich.
The first episode seems a little disheveled, but the intrigues unfold in a more organic way in the second, which gives the taste of going until the sixth and final hour.
No, despite what you may imagine, After the flood doesn’t lecture ignorant viewers about privilege or systemic racism, frankly. Forget moral lessons. With acuteness and realism, beyond wokism, the series tells the story of the fall and redemption of four young delinquents who join a mixed martial arts club to avoid a criminal record.
It is a black police officer, Maxime Salomon (Penande Estime), who trains the four recruits, even if her boss (Stéphane Demers) is opposed to the idea of teaching already violent people how to fight better.
IMAGE TAKEN FROMAFTER THE DELUGE
Penande Estime and Blanche Masse in a scene fromAfter the flood
But for children of the DPJ like the impulsive Dylane (Blanche Masse), the fight in the octagon allows her to channel her anger, her impulses and thus avoid snapping at anyone when she loses her temper. At 17, Dylane leaves a youth center and manages her hot temper very poorly (the very first scene ofAfter the flood butt hard, it goes without saying).
His mother, who raises him alone (Marilyse Bourke, very fair), is a bipolar woman who does not take medication, and leads him into a cycle of endless violence. Dylane, enraged and destitute, only relies on her big brother Jimmy (Karl Walcott), and even he finds her exhausting and considers abandoning her.
The most touching character ofAfter the flood is Eva (Erika Suarez, a discovery). Both of his immigrant parents operate a home cleaning business. A dropout, Eva helps at Super Clean and secretly feeds an OnlyFans account (renamed OnlyFame), which she hopes will enrich her. Behind Eva’s effervescent personality, we feel the distress of this young woman stuck among the poor, but who aspires to the more bling-bling world of the bourgeoisie.
IMAGE TAKEN FROMAFTER THE DELUGE
Erika Suarez
Of Haitian origin, the taciturn Jay (Steve Diouf Felwin) turns out to be a mystery. After a stay in prison, he still hangs out with his brother, a member of an influential street gang. Although he expresses a desire to end his criminal career, pressure mounts on Jay to return to collecting drug debts and robbing houses. How do we get out of this difficult environment in which we grew up? Jay orchestrates his escape by carrying a big secret that only his caring mother knows. The revelation of this punch in the second episode is surprising.
The language heard in After the flood is the one, mixed, who speaks in a neighborhood like Saint-Michel or Montréal-Nord, even if Noovo’s series never identifies the precise place where its protagonists live.
Throughout the episodes, you will see characters vaping (flavor: Red Bull and melon), handling firearms, lighting cigarettes, engaging in “stick and poke” (a form of tattooing), shouting at each other , drinking too much and living in very modest apartments.
OK, OK, a Spanish-speaking family involved in housekeeping and black people shooting guns in the middle of the night, isn’t that cliché? Yes and no. Yes, because these stereotypes, often true, have already been exploited on the small screen.
And no, becauseAfter the flood adds depth to characters who could have been one-dimensional. Without glorifying their misdeeds and without sinking into miserabilism either.
After the flood – not to be confused with Before the crash on Radio-Canada – is unlike anything currently offered on Quebec television. Less harsh than I would like to be erasedthis miniseries stands out from the crowd of local productions and deserves the rain of compliments that will shower it in the coming days.