Reality TV addicts who were demanding a Double occupancy aimed at more mature singles (read: for X and boomers) will enjoy themselves with My mother, your fatherone of the centerpieces of TVA’s fall schedule.
It’s really very good, sparkling and charming. The first episode, scheduled for Thursday at 8 p.m. on TVA, is full of moving and funny moments, in a more relaxed and less sponsored context of seduction than that of OD.
The eight single parents of My mother, your fatheraged 40 to 60, converge on a mansion in Mont-Saint-Hilaire with the aim of falling in love again under the auspices of host Nathalie Simard, who hopes to give the lie to her success from the early 1990s. Stay friend.
To hell with the famous “friend zone”, we want thrills, passion and a plane that rocks in the evening, preferably.
Excited and nervous, the eight parent-contestants do not know that their grown-up children, whose ages range from 19 to 24, will be living in the house next door and that they will spy on all their activities, their happy hours and even their one-on-one dates.
The observation sessions of the children – all adults, I repeat – take place in a group, on a big soft sofa. Let’s listen to them: oh, your father chose my mother, she’s super nervous, it shows, I think she likes your father, your mother doesn’t look her age, oh no, my father just lied to your mother, he doesn’t like dogs, red flag!
PHOTO PROVIDED BY TVA
Children of candidates of My mother, your father multiply the tasty comments about their parents.
These children are brilliant, relevant and lucid. And their comments, fair and tasty, aim at the center of the target. They never hesitate to point out the faults of their parents, while emphasizing their qualities of heart, obviously.
More focused on conflict, Quebec reality TV rarely shows healthy relationships between parents and their twenty-something children, and it warms the heart to witness so much complicity. That last sentence sounds corny, upon rereading, but it’s not.
As we now move into an environment for 450 people born in the 1970s and 1980s, generic pop music from The Island of Love or the aggressive reggaeton of OD gives way to the songs The Look by Roxette and Fields of Gold by Sting. Everyone has their own classics, okay?
As convenience store alcohol brands propel OD, one of the major sponsors of My mother, your father is called Depend. Yes, Depend, the manufacturer of urinary incontinence products. To each his own, okay?
The first episode of My mother, your father quickly introduces its eight participants, four men and four women looking for romantic connections. The one who most turned on the competitors is Alain, 60 years old, “who speaks like a Beethoven melody”, says one contender, completely under his spell.
Yanick, 51, is described as a mermaid man, because he loves being on the water (and underwater, we imagine). Jonathan, 44, is “very full of beautiful values,” while Alain, 60, lives his emotions to the fullest. You will see this at the end of the first hour, in a semi-sad aquatic sequence.
Gaspé native Sandy, 53, stammers under stress. Judith, 53, spent almost 30 years with the father of her three children. Isabelle, mother of 21-year-old twins, hopes to start her fifties with a nice guy and Chantal does not reveal her age, in order to maintain a strange form of mystery, which is certainly not based on honesty.
The mechanics of TVA’s new intergenerational reality TV show, adapted from the British format My Mom, Your Dadhas not been explained in detail. Will there be eliminations? Travel? A batch of new candidates? Do the participants sleep in the same rooms? We will find out over the weeks, I hope.
In the animation of this Love Island wisdom, singer Nathalie Simard injects kindness, humor and warmth into her interventions. We feel her invested in the love journey of the eight stars of this reality TV show. This sincerity is not feigned.
On the other hand, the host sometimes switches to the side of ” coach of life” by reminding competitors to live their emotions and not to repress the tears that come.
This type of therapeutic production already exists. It is about If we loved each other. There is no need to play the shrink between two sips of sparkling wine. Singles from My mother, your father all seem balanced and good, two words not often associated with reality TV.
They don’t sign up for the show to get free therapy or win a prefabricated house in Mirabel. They truly believe in the idea of meeting their soul mate on Cupid TV.
And they hope, contrary to what Nathalie Simard sang in The war of the tuquesthat love will not take too much time.