Here it is, finally, the long-awaited season of Plan B featuring Pier-Luc Funk in the role of a little thug in search of redemption. For the record, remember that due to COVID-19, what was to be the third season of this thrilling and brilliant anthology series had to be postponed.
“In a pandemic, the scenes of sexuality and fights would have been impossible to shoot, explains director Jean-François Asselin, who writes the series with Jacques Drolet. During that time, we were writing the one with Anne-Éli [Anne-Élisabeth Bossé], where there was less proximity. »
The spectators were thus able to wait while following a third season centered around an angry policewoman wanting to avoid a feminicide. We also see Anne-Élisabeth Bossé and Patrick Emmanuel Abellard, who played her patrol partner, during the new season of six episodes available on Véro.tv from Thursday.
The wait was definitely worth it. Obviously, Drolet and Asselin are still as inspired and Plan B is not about to run out of steam… like Jessy Bonin, embodied with a perfect blend of candor, insolence, vulnerability and inexhaustible energy Pier-Luc Funk.
“He flees because reality is unbearable to him, explains Jacques Drolet. He runs away from her by lying, by running. With Jean-François, we recognize ourselves a little in Jessy in many levels. Of course he is in a situation of acute misery, but myself, I invent stories to protect an image of me… and I think that I am not the only one. »
Seeing Jessy run for his life, step over fences, climb walls and infiltrate through windows in breathtaking obstacle courses, it is clear that the role seemed tailor-made for the tireless 28-year-old actor.
“The role was written like that, but Pier-Luc took it up a notch,” says the director, who does not hide that filming was difficult because of COVID-19. He does all his stunts. I don’t think anyone else could have run as much as him, at the speed we are running. He was very committed and really felt like he was part of the team, of the project, but there were days when Pier-Luc, who was in every scene, told us he was tired. »
hard middle
Upon his release from prison, Jessy wants to be master of his destiny. With his friend Dave (Étienne Galloy), endearing gamer solitary, he wants to find a way to lead the high life, to solve the money problems of his father (Patrice Robitaille) and to take care of his drug addict mother (Évelyne Rompré), as well as to win back Pamela (Mounia Zahzam), the love of his youth.
“The character comes from research with little guys from Hochelaga; I’m a big brother by the way, everything comes from there, reveals Jean-François Asselin. Often the poor do not see that they are poor and I think we all invent a system where we give ourselves an image of ourselves in order to survive. We wanted it to be approached with truth, that’s why the first episodes are hard. The question we were asking ourselves is that a guy who got off to a bad start like him is recoverable? »
“We don’t necessarily need to answer that question, but we can talk about these people, who live with us in society, but whom we sometimes prefer not to see, believes Louis Morissette, producer for KOTV. . There are people who go from crime to crime, from bad decision to bad decision and we wonder why, but when you come into the world with a rock in your shoe, it is sometimes more difficult to break the cycle. »
Once again, Jessy will have the bad idea to associate with the Dupuis brothers (Marc Beaupré and Guillaume Laurin). During a forced entry into a wealthy residence, Jessy is reluctantly transported by two mysterious men (Dany Lefebvre and Benoît Reid) in a truck driving backwards. Welcome to the Plan B agency!
But when you don’t have a penny in your pocket and a trip to the past costs nearly $180,000, what do you do to benefit from Plan B services? “Each year, we have to add a convention because we want to bring in the stories,” says the screenwriter.
“It’s the season when we talk more about the gimmick with Dave in comic stuff, we found that it allowed us to renew ourselves, says the director. We were just thinking of doing a season of Plan B ; when we invented this machine, it had to be as simple and as quick as possible because what interested us was the process. We try to ensure that the machine is never at the center of the story. In fact, it’s a gimmick which allows me to broach subjects that I would never broach. »
If in the English version of the series, to discover on CBC from February 27, where Karine Vanasse and Patrick J. Adams take over the roles created by Magalie Lépine-Blondeau and Louis Morissette in the first season, the men in black have made way to androgynous twins, in the French and Belgian adaptations, the process was replaced by a pill and an injection respectively.
No matter what ruse he finds to gain access to Plan B, each time he returns to the past, Jessy embarks on a frantic race against time filled with emotion, with the final journey culminating in a most heartbreaking ending. : ” My first feeling to reading, because I am first of all a reader, it is only in the 6e episode he sabotages himself so often that I needed that ending, to end on that note,” concludes Louis Morissette.