In September 1996, Valérie Beaulieu, a 22-year-old student and bartender, arrived from Quebec and moved into the super colorful Montreal loft – Pizzédélic style – which housed the seven roommates from the second season of Storefrontwhich Télé-Québec relayed on Monday evenings.
In September 2024, the same Valérie Beaulieu, 50 years old, now co-shareholder and president of the Trinôme et Filles box, will produce the new version of the reality TV Storefrontwhich will be resurrected on Télé-Québec, but in daily format, scheduled from Monday to Thursday in a time slot to be determined.
“ Storefront changed my life. I dreamed of leaving Quebec. I had toured Dagobert. I knew I wanted to work in communications, but I didn’t have anyone to give me a pass on the palette. During Storefront, I was messing around. Afterwards, I took charge of myself, I stopped partying and I returned to university,” confides producer Valérie Beaulieu, one of the notable candidates of Storefront 2where young adults aged 18 to 22 were chosen to fill very specific roles.
PHOTO PIERRE MANNING, PROVIDED BY PRODUCTION
Valérie Beaulieu
Valérie Beaulieu was the rebel, the extroverted girl who expressed herself without filter. The cast also included Rosalie the idealist with a terracotta skirt, Marie-Josée the hockey player from Amos, Alexandra the shy Franco-Ontarian, Dimitri the eccentric with multicolored hair, Emanuel the nutrition enthusiast from Rivière-du-Loup and Danny the sportsman, who lived his homosexuality openly in the big city. The “guinea pigs” of Storefront must then live more than 200 km from the mainland.
Considered the ancestor of Quebec reality TV, Storefront began in September 1995 and ended in the spring of 1998, after four seasons on Télé-Québec. The producers of Trinôme paid the rent for the seven gables (that was their nickname), who agreed, in exchange, for a camera to follow them for 10 months.
Storefront, whose opening credits were punctuated by an original song by Kevin Parent, was closer to cinema verite than reality TV as we know it today. It was really good. And it’s the show that made me love this television genre that is less and less despised, fortunately.
The new version of Storefront will take up the basic elements of the 1995 concept, sticking to the reality of seven members of Generation Z, aged 18 to 25, who are settling in Montreal for the first time. “What are the dreams of these young people? What are their challenges and their goals? We will follow their joys, their sorrows, their successes, their failures, their breakups, their jobs and their studies,” specifies producer Valérie Beaulieu.
Scheduled for mid-August, the busy back-to-school period, the filming of Storefront, version 2024, will not last 10 months, but 10 weeks. The production will pay for the apartment of the seven new gables, who will however have to manage with groceries, cell phone bills and all related expenses.
There is no grand prize to be won at the end of Storefront. There are also no physical challenges to complete, puzzles to solve or gross food to ingest.
Storefront rather shows the daily life of seven roommates who emancipate themselves and who discover Montreal, a city that is unknown to them.
“At that age, everything is a first time. The transition to adulthood is a pivotal moment. We uproot ourselves and are confronted with realities that we did not see coming,” explains Télé-Québec’s vice-president of content, Nadine Dufour.
In Storefront 2, the participants lived in a huge two-story loft, decorated by Michel Robidas, at the corner of Sainte-Catherine Est and de la Visitation streets, above what is today the Renard bar, in the Gay Village. The Trinôme et Filles team is currently looking for an apartment large enough to accommodate seven people, in seven different bedrooms, which is quite rare in the current real estate market.
The dominance of floaters
Frugo Dumas, my permanently angry alter ego, takes control of this column, which eviscerates the last episode of Big Brother Celebrities on Noovo. How were low-skilled players like comedian Dave Morgan, content creator Gabrielle Marion and Paralympic athlete Frédérique Turgeon able to sneak so far into the show, accomplishing virtually nothing? It’s astonishing.
We understand the comedian Danick Martineau and the Olympian Charles Hamelin for dragging these three floating competitors with them, because they represent no threat to their possible crowning.
For Danick and Charles, the elimination of actress Joëlle Paré-Beaulieu was the right thing to do to protect their backs. But for us, simple fans of reality TV, it’s a disaster. Joëlle was a formidable participant, brilliant and cunning, who never gave up.
Backed against the wall, Joëlle led a skillful rescue campaign from despair, she triumphed in the betting room (where Danick failed) and bought one last necklace in the hope of saving herself.
The problem for Joëlle is that Danick, able to put his emotions aside, wins when it matters, and he was able to execute his plan to oust his rival. At least Dave Morgan had some semblance of remorse by voting to keep Joëlle in the game.
It’s obvious that Danick and Charles will punish Dave for this act of betrayal. And who, Fred, Gabrielle or Dave, will have the courage to separate Batman and Robin? If the trajectory of the current season is anything to go by, no one will attempt a putsch. They are all too sheepish for that, bêê-bêê-bêê (Frugo hands the keyboard to Hugo here, thank you).