It’s hard not to recognize Ruth Ellen Brosseau listening to the new Tou.tv series The candidate, in which a young single mother agrees to be a presidential candidate in a constituency she has never lived in, for a party whose program she does not know. Like the one who embodied the orange wave in 2011, the protagonist of this dramatic comedy will be elected to everyone’s surprise. A whole world then opens up to her, the workings of which she will have to learn little by little without getting lost.
In the first episode, Alix Mongeau (Catherine Chabot) is a somewhat angry nail technician who lives in a working-class neighborhood of Longueuil with her daughter, whom she had at 16. Certainly, she is a hardworking woman who was able to complete her 5e secondary school with a dependent child, but let’s say that Alix is more comfortable with the “D system” (for resourcefulness) than with the Westminster system.
“Yes, she has colored hair, yes, she has ostentatious clothes, but we don’t judge her. Don’t judge your character, that’s the basis. From the first reading, I fell in love with it. I never told myself that it was a joke. She is direct, she has humor, she responds, she has a lively intelligence,” warns actress Catherine Chabot, who knew how to avoid falling into caricature.
His character doesn’t know much about politics at the start of the series, and didn’t even vote in the last elections. But to do a favor for a former high school friend, whose charms she is not indifferent to, Alix agrees to run as a candidate for the Progress and Democracy Party of Quebec, which is struggling to recruit candidates in lost constituencies. Dramatic twist: a scandal leaves the government in the middle of an electoral campaign, and she is, against all expectations, elected to the National Assembly as she celebrates her 30the birthday with her best friend in New York.
Politics, secondary
During the 10 one-hour episodes which will be online from Thursday on Tou.tv Extra, his dazzling personality and his corrosive outspokenness will come up against the rigidity of the political world. Certainly, The candidate is set in the political environment, but viewers who are disinterested in it will still be able to appreciate the series, we assure you.
“This is not a politics course. In the same way asBefore the crash is not a series about finance. What interests us is always people above all,” underlines André Béraud, first director of dramatic programs and feature films at Radio-Canada.
At a press viewing on Wednesday, André Béraud let it be known that The candidate would not see a second season, even if the potential is there. “The decision was made to make a miniseries in which we follow [le personnage principal] for a year. Next, why stretch the sauce? » he indicated.
Inspired by the orange wave
The filming of The candidate Last year was complicated, particularly because of bad weather. COVID-19 and cockroaches also visited the set. What’s more, director Sébastien Gagné (Sleepless night, Let go, The cottage) was refused permission to film inside the National Assembly.
All these pitfalls are not reflected in the first two episodes presented to the media. What is striking, rather, is that the dramatic comedy clearly bears the mark of its author, Isabelle Langlois, the one to whom we owe the successful series Rumors And Let go.
The screenwriter was not present at the press viewing on Wednesday, but she had previously explained in an interview that the “spark plug” for this series was the 2011 election of Ruth Ellen Brosseau.
However, we take great care to specify that the character of Alix Mongeau is not the former NDP MP, elected to everyone’s surprise during the orange wave although she never went to her constituency, Berthier- Maskinongé, and that she spent part of the campaign in Las Vegas. Ruth Ellen Brosseau was not consulted during the writing process.
We can read at the end of the credits that “any resemblance to real characters can only be coincidental”. Really ?