Network: TVA Television Network
Broadcast Run: 2005 to 2006
Broadcast Medium: Television
With a simultaneously dramatic and humourous style, Vice caché, a dramatic series that totalled eighteen 60-minute episodes, written by François Camirand and Louis Saia, invited the TV audience into the fascinating universe of five couples who lived in the Croissant des Gémeaux, a magnificent “dead end” where cathedral ceilings, columns, in-ground swimming pools and luxurious cars were a dime a dozen.
Vice caché explored anguish and despair. A dormant despair that mesmerized our modern societies, broken down into suburbs, stacked one on top of the other, to infinity. This series asked a fundamental question, but not without irony: how is that having everything is still insufficient to make someone truly happy?
Airing over two seasons, Vice caché was directed by Claude Desrosiers, and starred Nathalie Mallette and Luc Picard (the Champagne-St-Pierre couple), François Papineau and Maude Guérin (the Pouliot couple), Alexis Martin and Marie-France Lambert (the Barbeau couple), Sylvie Léonard and Christian Bégin (the Gendron-Rivers couple), as well as Guy Nadon and Micheline Bernard (the Lalonde Beauchesnes couple). In 2006, TVA decided to remove Vice caché from its programming schedule, even though a third season had been planned and the series was attracting a million TV viewers per episode.
Vice caché won an Artis Award (People’s Choice) in 2006, for Luc Picard (Best Actor in a TV Series) and four Gémeaux awards in 2005 and 2006, one for Best Actor in a Leading Dramatic Role and three awards for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.
Written by Yvon Chouinard – September, 2008