Between Dumas at Radio-Canada and The weapons On TVA, which of these two soap operas created by Fabienne Larouche stands out on the front lines of the great television war on Monday at 8 p.m.?
HAS Dumasa quality work, I preferred The weaponsan original, rhythmic and surprising proposition, populated by complex and hateful characters. The audience will hate in two seconds the two high-ranking officers of the Canadian army played by François Papineau and Frédéric Millaire Zouvi, two violent and toxic bullies, who treat their subordinates like cattle.
To quote the character played by Eve Landry, here are “two fucking big colonists”, from a bygone macho era.
IMAGE FROM THE WEAPONS TRAILER
François Papineau in The Weapons
We agree, life on a military base is not the sexiest subject for a TV series. But very quickly in the first episode, the screenwriter Pierre-Marc Drouin (Reasonable doubt, In Memoriam) deploys hyper-catchy plots. First urgent case on the pile: a soldier visibly in distress kills another before surrendering himself to the military police of the (fictional) Kanawata base, in Lanaudière.
The problem? The murderer and his victim are part of a commando as special as it is secret, the JTF16, an elite unit that forces its members to give up their identity and disappear from the map. The names of the JTF16 fighters are erased from official records, and these mercenaries no longer exist “legally” in the eyes of the State. Ghosts, in other words.
At the same time, a contingent of recruits arrives at the Kanawata base, a place so hostile that it is nicknamed the “gates of hell”. The terrifying Chief Warrant Officer Thomas Dallaire (Frédéric Millaire Zouvi) takes charge of their training and gives them reductive nicknames like Germaine (Audrey Price), Ricardo (Charles-Aubey Houde), Rambo (Émile Schneider) and Nobel (Alex Godbout).
This part of the How to Get Away with Murder works really well. Humiliated and almost tortured, the recruits, at first at loggerheads, stick together and form unexpected emotional bonds. At the same time, do these young soldiers all show their true colors? A big punch is hanging over our noses.
In an oppressive atmosphere evoking Unit 9 (director Jean-Philippe Duval also signs The weapons), the goodwill on this gangrenous military base comes from Lieutenant-Colonel Louis-Philippe Savard (Vincent-Guillaume Otis) and policewoman Kim Falardeau (Ève Landry).
IMAGE FROM THE WEAPONS TRAILER
Vincent-Guillaume Otis plays Lieutenant Colonel Louis-Philippe Savard.
Afghanistan veteran Louis-Philippe Savard arrives from Gagetown, New Brunswick, to replace Colonel Allan Craig (François Papineau) while the investigation into the militiaman’s assassination is completed.
The rigid Colonel Craig, who also trains the JTF16 commando, pushes for this to be settled internally, quietly, which displeases Savard, a good and modern man who wants to involve real detective sergeants in this delicate national security matter.
Now, how do you investigate a murderer who has no papers, no name and whose victim was supposedly cremated? The public relations machine behind the Armed Forces is struggling to stifle this scandal with its potentially inflammable media potential.
At the station, military police officer Kim Falardeau (Ève Landry, always fair) came across the soldier (Rodney Alexandre) who stabbed her JTF16 squadron mate to death. The assassin, in an advanced state of panic, demanded the presence of his brother – and a lawyer, which was denied. The suspect was sent to Edmonton jail without trial, or anything.
This nebulous murder, carried out in opaque circumstances (who ordered the assassination?), will pique the curiosity of police officer Kim Falardeau, who also hates the old hockey locker room mentality that still governs the Canadian army.
Two actors stand out in the first steps of the Weapons on TVA. Frédéric Millaire Zouvi plays a cruel, misogynistic and disgusting soldier, completely the opposite of the likeable and nono mechanic Jean-Michel de 5e Rank. With François Papineau, Frédéric Millaire Zouvi forms a tyrannical tandem that will make you recite complete rosaries in your living rooms.
Among the young, Émile Schneider (STAT) inherits a nuanced and robust score. His character, who completed a master’s degree in political science at the University of Sherbrooke, aspires to join the JTF16 commando, formed to prevent the Russians from building an illegal base in the Canadian Arctic.
Émile Schneider, who plays an extra-motivated top of the class, shares several scenes with the excellent Alex Godbout, who plays a more muddled and dissipated recruit, let’s say.
Yes, the universe depicted in The weapons is more hermetic than that of a hospital, a law firm or a police station. We know little about the codes of the army, the ways to greet each other, to march in line or the hierarchy to be respected. It is destabilizing (who reports to whom, again?) and it is a lot of information to digest in an hour.
But once these conventions are assimilated, we cling to the dense history of Weaponswhich catapults us into several surprising directions.
As for Dumas at Radio-Canada, the challenge of Weapons TVA’s goal will be to keep up this sustained pace for 24 episodes per year. A soap opera is a marathon, not a sprint. It takes breath and endurance to deliver so much captivating material from September to April.
For now, The weapons holds a small lead over Dumas. At the Holidays, however, it will be necessary to check at the finish photo whether the gap has not been made up by Gildor Roy and his caffeine-fueled investigators, which is 100% legal in this type of race.