Because they are chubby and are often confined to the same type of character at auditions, actresses Julie de Lafrenière, Sarah Desjeunes Rico, Debbie Lynch-White and Olivia Palacci offered themselves a leading role by imagining the series “The bombs”, in which they camp four strangers who find themselves in a center specializing in addictions.
To achieve their goals, the four playmates, who became great friends over the process, joined forces with producer Sophie Deschênes (“19-2”, “Before the crash”), author Kim Lévesque Lizotte (“Les Simone”, “Before the crash”) and the director Pascal L’Heureux (“Fishermen”, “Discussions with my parents”).
The result is a dramatic comedy as funny, touching as it is profound, in which we can all recognize ourselves, here and there. Addiction might be a heavy subject, but we treat it here with enough humor to entertain us, while making us think thanks to the emotions, the resilience and the light emerging from this quest for happiness against a backdrop of friendship. .
The four performers who portray the main protagonists are corpulent, a rarity in a TV where all diversity finally shines, with the exception of bodily diversity. The girls, however, are not in closed therapy for 21 days due to their excess weight. We discover in the first episodes, with flash images, that the evils that afflict them go back to childhood.
Over the six episodes – journalists saw two on Monday – we dig deeper into their wounds to better understand them, as the characters themselves must do by undertaking a “journey deep within themselves”.
Photo QMI Agency, Joël Lemay
Juliette (Olivia Palacci), a compulsive poker player, is in denial when she arrives at the Catharsis center. But she has no choice but to take herself in hand, her partner Paul (Fred Eric Salvail) threatening to leave her.
Claudine (Debbie Lynch-White) is pushed against the wall by her adoptive parents (Chantal Baril and Maka Kotto) and by her brother (Maxime-Olivier Potvin). They worry about seeing her become dizzy in her unbridled sexuality.
Crown prosecutor Vicky (Sarah Desjeunes Rico) is overdosing on prescription drugs, but her body can’t take the whirlwind any longer.
Finally, Emma (Julie de Lafrenière), who is a social worker, has a very interesting virtual life, but her many profiles hide her great loneliness. She was bullied in her youth by David (Maxime Mailloux) and her past will catch up with her.
There are few centers where all forms of addiction coexist, but Kim Lévesque Lizotte has found one in Switzerland! And for the needs of diversity of quests, we wanted to decompartmentalize the issues of the residents.
As soon as they arrive, the four girls are warmly welcomed by Louise (Lise Roy) and Pierre (Pier Paquette), two doctors in a couple who founded Catharsis following a personal tragedy. The author was inspired by a couple of doctors who moved away from traditional medicine to help their child overcome an addiction.
The four girls, who share the same room, take part in individual and group sessions as well as art therapy, in particular, sharing all their meals with three other boarders: Jacynthe (Laetitia Isambert), who is orthorexic, Étienne (Félix-Antoine Duval), who has obsessive compulsive disorder, and Grégoire (Jean-François Mercier), who is a compulsive buyer.
Kim Lévesque Lizotte was working for the first time with a structure that she had not established. She believed that the exercise would be easier, but it was more demanding, because she constantly relied on the four ideators, they who had defined the names of the characters, their personalities as well as the points of fall. She is surprised herself by the words and the depth of the psychotherapist Fabien (Jean-Nicolas Verreault), whom she nevertheless fed with words.
We love the creative camera of Pascal L’Heureux – the camera turns upside down when a character’s life changes –, the music of Philippe Brault and the Catharsis center, which we set up in the premises of the Orford Music Center , in Estrie.
Produced by Sovimage, in collaboration with Corus, the series “Les bombes” will be broadcast from Thursday, February 2, at 9 p.m., on Séries Plus.