Separate company | Paranormal Encounters of the Third Kind

Cathodic invasion alert! A mysterious and luminous novelty lands Thursday on Videotron’s Club illico and it flashes very brightly on the radar screen of series to watch without blinking.

This well-identified television object is called Separate company and it turns out to be one of the pleasant surprises of the spring season. I binge-watched three of the ten hour-long episodes this week and I’m hooked on this story of child abduction by aliens, a kidnapping that hides deep, unexplored human dramas.

Technically, yes, Separate company is classified in the science fiction and paranormal sector. It is also a psychological thriller based around a destitute family, incapable of grieving and detaching themselves from the past.

The story of Separate companyimagined and directed by Benoit Lach (The 422 on Télé-Québec), begins on a campsite in the summer of 2009. In the forest, little Gabriel, a blond 8-year-old, disappears while playing hide and seek with his big brother Marc, 15, and his best friend, Julien.

The search is unsuccessful and no one finds Gabriel, lost in the wild. Three days later, surprise: Marc discovers a crop circle – a crop circle, in good French – very close to the place where his brother disappeared. For Marc, it is clear that Gabriel was kidnapped by aliens.

Fifteen years later, Repentigny’s family still clings to the hope that visitors from space will bring Gabriel back to Earth. The mother Micheline (excellent Maude Guérin) keeps Gabriel’s room in the same state as in 2009. She changes the sheets on the bed regularly and only talks about UFOs and apparitions of gray men.

The elder Marc, now played by the always fair Antoine Pilon, also devotes his life to ufology. A voluntary job, we agree. Tanguy, 30 years old, Marc still lives with his mother Micheline, who feeds him and even pays him a weekly allowance.

Twisted, complex and unhealthy, the mother-son relationship at the heart of Separate company is fascinating. Traumatized by the disappearance of her younger brother, Micheline watches over her eldest like a hawk. She adores her guy, no doubt about it, but she suffocates him, manipulates him and locks him into a prolonged childhood with harsh reproaches and intrusions into his privacy.

Antoine Pilon is very touching in his role as Marc, a poorly educated teenager who sports a solid Longueuil haircut, a real Longueuil, not the ironic and refreshed one adopted by Generation Z. Solitary, he spends his meager pay in a cabaret of naked dancers, in love with one of the strippers, obviously.

A bright spot emerges in Marc’s monotonous existence when his childhood friend, the intriguing Julien (solid Robert Naylor), returns to Repentigny. The mustachioed Julien, now a high school teacher, was at the campsite when Gabriel disappeared. Then, Julien cut all ties with Marc and hasn’t seen him again for 15 years. Why does Julien, in a relationship with emergency doctor Anne-Marie (moving Juliette Gosselin), reappear at this precise moment?

There is something The night Laurier Gaudreault woke up in this part of the story. Julien likes wine bars, talks to his students about independence and goes to work by bike. Marc drives a truck and evolves in a closed universe. Both obviously have things to learn and secrets to reveal.

The science fiction aspect doesn’t seem cheapo In Separate company and it manifests itself in shadows, colors and slender silhouettes. In the second episode, a man (Antoine DesRochers) in his twenties arrives at the hospital brand-naked with a red sun scar on his plexus. This patient with a shaved head remembers absolutely nothing. What if it was little Gabriel, released by the extraterrestrials 15 years after his great departure?

Separate company unfolds slowly, and this is what ensures credibility to this series which is quite a bit more captivating than Black Lake. Slowly, supernatural elements mix with 100% real events, which sows doubt in our viewers’ heads. The balance between the strange and the concrete does not break.

It would make sense that big-eyed bugs visited Repentigny and its surroundings. It would also be possible that an occult organization is hiding behind the kidnappings.

Each of the episodes contains clues to the continuation of the abundant intrigue. A nurse with strange behavior seems to be in cahoots with two agents in black who have come to take the DNA of the bald and amnesiac patient. In the psychiatric wing, a man in a wheelchair, played by Luc Picard, gives instructions that go back to Micheline and Marc, who never give up looking to see Gabriel again.

What’s good about Separate company, is that the ten episodes are ready to be consumed in binge. No waiting from Thursday to Thursday, everything has been posted online.

In addition, the first episode brings out the old Belgazou tape and its success Talk About It. Would this sweet music, which uplifts our soul, have attracted the extraterrestrials from Separate company ? Listen, because you should always listen better without speaking (alright, let’s talk!).