I liked the new series less Fragments by Serge Boucher than his previous TV series like Fragile, Appearances Where Lights.
Don’t get me wrong here. Fragments is not a failed show, on the contrary. It surpasses a bunch of generic soap operas that currently abound on the airwaves. Still, the brilliant Serge Boucher, the master of psychological suspense with multiple layers and twists, has accustomed us to a very high level of intensity that Fragments does not reach. At least not in the two episodes out of a total of ten that I watched on Monday.
This loss of efficiency stems in particular from the abandonment of the police component in Fragments, a series that does not involve a devastating fire, two deaths in a car accident or an unexplained disappearance. The first half of Fragments comes out Thursday on Tou.TV’s Extra and the second will be there on December 15. No date has been announced for a passage from Fragments on traditional Radio-Canada television. Prediction: September 2023.
Project that most resembles Serge Boucher, Fragments tells a more “personal” investigation, without a detective sergeant, within a group of four friends, who cemented their ties in Victoriaville, in the early 1990s.
Victo’s quartet, who lived together for a long time, was then made up of the inseparable Paul-André (Étienne Courville), Marlène (Carla Turcotte), François (Alexis Déziel) and Jacynthe (Camille Felton). As its title suggests, Fragments comes to us in spare parts, from three different eras: the 1990s, the present and the near future. It takes some effort to place who does what and in what period, as this deconstructed series twirls through the years focusing on today.
Of the original quartet of the 1990s, only Paul-André (now played by René Richard Cyr) and Marlène (Céline Bonnier) still rub shoulders. The two live in magnificent condos in the same Montreal duplex. Paul-André, Serge Boucher’s alter ego, earns his living as a TV author – he writes the hit series Chanceswell, well –, while the chic Marlène, who does the housework in Gucci, heads a chair of political science studies at McGill University.
As she finishes a shitty day, Marlène crosses paths with François (James Hyndman) for the first time in 35 years. discomfort between them. François, now a surgeon and cardiologist, was Marlène’s childhood sweetheart. But why did they cut ties so drastically?
This is where Serge Boucher takes us into Fragmentswhich is closer toconfession : the families we choose, the regrets, the relationship with others and, above all, death. The doctor François lives in mourning for his wife Sylvie (Dominique Leduc), with whom he had two children, the primary school teacher Céleste (Shelby Jean-Baptiste) and the artist-photographer Édouard (Irdens Exantus).
The character of Tomas (Félix-Antoine Duval), whom I won’t describe for fear of divulging the plot, is recovering from a suicide attempt. This Tomas feels a deep malaise and self-loathing rarely seen on TV.
In the first two episodes of crossover type, the academic character played by Céline Bonnier is really unfriendly. We even wonder how this brittle and cold woman was able to keep her friendship with Paul-André and his spouse, Renaud (Luc Guérin) for so long.
The first episode of Fragments abandons us on a beautiful Serge Boucher punch, as we like them. The second ends smoothly, without necessarily having the taste to hang on to the third.
There is a lot of background music in Fragments, too even. It gets irritating after a while. Director Claude Desrosiers also inserts the characters of 2022 into the flashbacks of the 1990s, which gives the work a poetic aspect that we did not know from Serge Boucher.
And unlike most television series here, the protagonists of Fragments consume culture. They talk aboutHosanna and of The Duchess of Langeais of Michel Tremblay, they devour the books of Alexandria Quartet of Lawrence Durrell, they attend performances by Louise Lecavalier and quote In the moonlight by André Forcier. It’s awesome.
Serge Boucher excels when he casts his fair and benevolent gaze on the so-called ordinary middle class, nothing pejorative here. Fragments navigates in the Montreal bourgeoisie and it lacks a rougher side, more “real world”, which was found in Brittle.
That said, the slower and more introspective Serge Boucher remains the good Serge Boucher. I definitely want to see the final image when all the pieces of the puzzle are finally put together.
The mask throws and counts
Unsurprisingly, the final of Masked singers was the most-watched show on Sunday night with its 1,793,000 addicts. The final of Revolutionstill on TVA, was followed by 1,261,000 enthusiasts, compared to 990,000 faithful who tuned in Everybody talks about it at Radio Canada. As for The moment of truth restorative of Noovo, it attracted 410,000 OD fans.