Treasure hunt
Hosts Evelyne Charuest and Corey Loranger have a new mission: to help many French-speaking Canadians find their dream home in their dream location. Halfway between a reality TV show and a travel diary, Sought after neighborhood crisscrosses the country from coast to coast and stops in nine major cities, such as Quebec, Vancouver and Calgary. After having identified the needs and desires of future owners and selected a favorite neighborhood, Evelyne Charuest and Corey Loranger, supported by real estate brokers, each unearth a rare pearl that they must present to the participants. At the end of this very friendly competition, the buyers must choose only one accommodation and make an offer which will be accepted or not, market law obliges…
The spectator, however, soon finds himself face to face with the implacable reality. In the episode that focuses on the very popular neighborhoods of Mile End and Outremont in Montreal, we see that it is currently necessary to pay some $750,000 for a two-bedroom apartment. Unsurprisingly, we note that condo fees in Toronto amount to approximately $650 per month for a three and a half, which is worth almost $900,000 on average. Whereas Sought after neighborhood promises to better understand the real estate situation in Canada, we can regret that neither the phenomenon of gentrification nor the reasons which make prices jump are more explained or popularized. We must therefore look Sought after neighborhood for what it is, namely a pleasant entertainment that allows you to discover places with interesting history and architecture, but which many will never be able to afford to buy.
Sought after neighborhood
Unis TV, starting Thursday, October 27 at 7 p.m.
Portrait of the great Louis Armstrong
Sacha Jenkins makes an unprecedented foray into the Louis Armstrong constellation. His feature documentary Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues is a brilliant tribute to the unique timbre of this avant-garde jazz musician, trumpet virtuoso whose facial expressions are unforgettable, to his activism for the civil rights of African Americans, but, above all, to the man he simply was.
To do this, the director had recourse to the confidential radio logs that Louis Armstrong recorded throughout his life and to a plethora of archival images which, combined, draw a singular silhouette. Testimonials from his relatives and his contemporaries add, moreover, an intimate note to this amusingly touching film.
Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues
Apple TV+, starting October 28
Give back to Jumbo what belongs to Jumbo
Many know Dumbo, the fictional elephant imagined by author Helen Aberson and put into images by Disney studios at the turn of the 1940s, but what about the Jumbo pachyderm? The most famous and largest elephant in the world, it is said, arrived in New York in 1882 from the African savannah. If he has traveled the world as the main attraction of the Barnum & Bailey circus, his existence still remains very mysterious. Particularly, it is his death in Canada that intrigues scholars. Did Jumbo succumb to tuberculosis? Was his death just a sordid plot? The documentary Jumbo: the life of a star elephant offers to follow the team who examined the bones of the animal – whose skull weighs more than 150 kilos – preserved at the American Museum of Natural History in order to offer a new perspective on its fate.
Jumbo: the life of a star elephant
ICI Télé, October 22 at 10:30 p.m.