The man who loved too much | Triple life, to go into exile, to blind yourself

This is probably what comes closest to a marital nightmare: discovering that your partner is leading a double life, that he has a second family in another city and that one has nothing, but seen nothing going for all. these years, how could we have been so stupid and naive?

In The man who loved too much, the new bushy television series from Noovo, Marc-Alexandre (Patrice Godin) surpasses himself in deception. He has a wife (Hélène Florent) and two adult children in Montreal. He has a second wife (Fanny Mallette) and younger children in Magog. And he begins an extramarital relationship with a young sculptor (Nadia Kounda) who lives in Bromont.

Torn between these three women, who do not know the existence of others, obviously, Marc-Alexandre, who works on the road as a sales representative, begins to crack under the pressure. He suffers from insomnia. Anxiety eats him away. And the military routine that he imposes on himself so as not to betray himself eats up a lot of energy.

Juggling with two distinct cell phones, removing or putting on his wedding ring, adjusting his schedules to satisfy each of the families, Marc-Alexandre lives in a super hermetic and suffocating love triangle.

The first episode of The man who loved too much, which the Noovo channel will relay on Tuesday, January 11 at 8 p.m. (at the same time All the life at Radio-Canada and Red bracelets at TVA), however discloses crucial information: the three women in the story will meet at the Granby hospital following a serious road accident, which will leave Marc-Alexandre in a coma.

The showdown at the top of the marriage triangle will take place in the third hour. And that promises to be epic. In the first two episodes (out of a total of eight) that I saw on Tuesday, the authors Anne Boyer and Michel d’Astous (The gentleman, The blue Hour) present the many characters that inhabit this series, which is part of the lineage of adult productions such as The Affair Where The Undoing.

Some crucial details of the story tumble very quickly, others settle too slowly. It’s strange and unsettling, this mixture of acceleration and braking of intrigue. It requires a good period of adaptation.

What I liked the most about The man who loved too much ? Actor Patrice Godin’s game. He manages to infuse heart and warmth into a character who could have been a real asshole. It is not easy to “sell” to viewers a man who lies so much, who cheats on his blondes gleefully, without a shadow of remorse. But Patrice Godin convinces us that his Marc-Alexandre loves deeply – and certainly very badly – each of his spouses. He is a committed, loving and available family man, despite all the constraints of his scattered triple life.

What I liked least about The man who loved too much ? Narration. Marc-Alexandre’s best friend, Benoit (Martin-David Peters), writes an essay book on polyamory and infidelity. Benoit is the only one to know the secret of Marc-Alexandre and it is he who tells us the story in voiceover. This process weighs down a program that is already quite busy, thank you.

The two families founded by Marc-Alexandre are not at all alike. In Montreal, he lives in a big house in Mount Royal with Josée (Hélène Florent), a successful businesswoman who is reopening a downtown restaurant. In Magog, he lives in a bungalow with Geneviève (Fanny Mallette), a very relaxed orthopedagogue, who smokes joints in the spa.

And with his artist lover Nadira (Nadia Kounda), it is his early sexual passion that guides him.

How does Marc-Alexandre manage to never get pinched? You will discover it in the episodes directed by the inventive Yves-Christian Fournier (Tomorrow of men). Honestly, to see Marc-Alexandre constantly inventing excuses or justifying each of his absences exhausts us as a simple spectator. His hyper vigilance notably contaminates relations with his eldest son Yannick (Jean-Simon Leduc), who treats his father as a robot so much he follows a hyper structured routine, a routine that resembles that of a double agent.

The man who loved too much is not the kind of thing you watch as a dilettante flipping through a magazine or playing candy Crush on the tablet. It’s complex, even confusing at first.

It’s rare for that to happen, but I have no idea how this series is going to end. Nostradumas thinks that the protagonist will die in the hospital and that he will not have to choose between his lives in Bromont, Magog or Montreal. It seems the only logical outcome. Unless the three spouses consecrate it there by discovering the extent of the little secrets that have become big lies?