It’s a great idea on paper. In We will pick up tomorrowhost Pier-Luc Funk receives, in a real retro bungalow in Longueuil, stars who sing, play balls games, deliver confessions and participate in absurd sketches.
Like a fictional series, cameras capture selected moments of this party home, where five famous guests furnish the superb mid-century decor. Think of Get out of herethink hard, but with Katherine Levac, Patrice Bélanger, Véronic DiCaire, Pierre Kwenders and Jacobus (half of Radio Radio) for the first episode.
The action, which you will discover Thursday at 9 p.m. on Télé-Québec, takes place in the living room, the bathroom, the kitchen, the indoor swimming pool and in the bedroom of this transformed suburban residence. in a huge studio, which I visited on Tuesday. It’s beautiful and full of potential, really.
But is it a good show, We will pick up tomorrow ? Yes and no. Yes for the musical portions, which inject some pep into the episode, even if we sometimes feel that the “anonymous” extras – there are around twenty of them – are forcing themselves to have fun. When Véronic DiCaire and Pier-Luc Funk resume Cheap Thrills of Sia (and Sean Paul) with the bandit takes off, if we ignore what is happening in the background.
No for the fun sequences of play, which don’t always work out. Honestly, who cares to see stars playing musical chairs or mimes in this context?
Some parts of the show seem long and airtight. As if viewers were attending a party to which they were not necessarily invited. It’s strange.
A sketch, divided into short sketches, also runs through each of the hours ofWe will pick up tomorrow. The first (very average) stars Antoine Olivier Pilon and the second (more comical) shows us a kleptomaniac, and fictional, side of Pascale Bussières.
This new “surprise box”, a polite synonym for catch-all, brings together several genres, which do not necessarily go together at first glance. Already, doing a quiz is complicated on TV. Making varieties is a different kind of challenge. Succeeding in effective sketches requires a lot of practice.
And mix all these universes in a single format? This gives very variable results.
It will be necessary to give time to We will pick up tomorrow to settle down properly. This is a brand new concept, which was invented by Pier-Luc Funk and the France Beaudoin team at Pamplemousse Média. Four of the 12 one-hour episodes have been filmed, which will allow for some necessary adjustments.
Pier-Luc Funk, 29, is overflowing with talent. He is a gifted actor and a formidable improviser. When he “interviews” his guests, in intimate moments, one-on-one, he does not seem 100% at ease. At the risk of rambling, doing interviews is a job in itself. And it gets refined over the years.
At a press meeting on Tuesday, Pier-Luc Funk remembered his years of parties house from the 2000s. The clothes he wears in We will pick up tomorrowvery Sk8ter Boi by Avril Lavigne, evoke this era of XL cargo pants and t-shirts worn over long-sleeved sweaters. All that’s missing are the Osiris or Etnies shoes.
The arena jump on the ice
The festival of new TV releases continues at Noovo, with the first round of the ice rink for the sketch series The arenawhich begins this Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.
PHOTO TAKEN FROM THE NOOVO SITE
Catherine St-Laurent, Catherine Chabot and Leila Thibeault-Louchem in The arena
Verdict, after watching the first three half hours? It’s more visually beautiful thanBetween two sheets, but less funny. The series follows a host of characters who orbit around a suburban arena, including the canteen attendant (Valérie Blais), the janitor (Benoît Brière), players from a garage hockey team (Phil Roy, Valérie Tellos and Marc Beaupré), their spouses (Catherine St-Laurent, Catherine Chabot and Leila Thibeault-Louchem), parents of young skaters (Irdens Exantus and Mariana Mazza) as well as psychorigid twins (Sophie Cadieux and Éric Paulhus), two ex-Canadian champions figure skaters who joined the Ice Capades.
These twins, jaded and cynical, often wearing identical hats, inherit the most comical lines from this series, nicely produced by Sébastien Gagné (Sleepless night, Let go). They are hilarious.
Relationship problems, secret recipe for poutine sauce and erectile dysfunction, The arena casts a wide net. The humor is more good-natured, less grating, than that ofBetween two sheetswhich set a very high standard for hilarious sketch comedy.
Some gags from The arena, like the stench from a hockey pocket, are telegraphed. We see them coming from the last row of the stands.
Sometimes, the series contains frankly well-written scenes, which really grab us. Like the one between the three wives of hockey players, who discuss deodorant, sitting in the stands.
Catherine St-Laurent’s character reveals that she only uses virile male deos called Maritime Confidence and Boreal Nightmare. Because it’s not with deodorants with cutesy names like Spring Tenderness or Compassionate Breeze that a woman will get what she wants.
With a guy’s boyfriend, a woman’s mental load disappears and her hourly wage increases by $10, suddenly. Long live Kraken Courage! And this is the direction in which the authors should skate.