''Les Bougon - c'est aussi ça la vie!'' is a
Quebec
Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...
sitcom
A sitcom, a portmanteau of situation comedy, or situational comedy, is a genre of comedy centered on a fixed set of characters who mostly carry over from episode to episode. Sitcoms can be contrasted with sketch comedy, where a troupe may use ne ...
broadcast by
Radio-Canada
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (french: Société Radio-Canada), branded as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian public broadcaster for both radio and television. It is a federal Crown corporation that receives funding from the government. ...
from 2004 to 2006, written by
François Avard and
Jean-François Mercier
Jean-François Mercier (born 19 July 1967) is a comedian, screenwriter and television host from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Mercier's comedy features his scruffy appearance and mixes social criticism with vulgarity, curse words and expressions o ...
and produced by
Fabienne Larouche
Fabienne is a feminine French language, French and English language, English given name. Notable people with the name include:
* Fabienne André (born 1996), British athlete
* Fabienne Dufour (born 1981), Belgian swimmer
* Fabienne Feraez (born 1 ...
. The show won three
Gémeaux in 2004. The show's first episode aired on January 7, 2004, and the last one aired on April 17, 2006. It is currently being adapted for French television by
M6.
A feature film adaptation, ''
Votez Bougon'', was released to theatres in 2016.
"Trump presidency is ideal backdrop for Les Bougon's move to big screen"
''Montreal Gazette
The ''Montreal Gazette'', formerly titled ''The Gazette'', is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Three other daily English-language newspapers shuttered at various times during the second half of th ...
'', December 13, 2016.
Overview
The show follows the antics of the Bougon family, who have sworn to do anything they can to cheat the system. They plan all sorts of schemes to scam money out of normal citizens and businesses. This is usually easily accomplished thanks to their many accomplices, who are just as crooked as they are.
Language : French
Main characters
Paul Bougon (
Rémy Girard
Rémy Girard (born August 10, 1950) is a Canadian actor and former television host from Montreal, Quebec.
Acting career
Girard played the role of Rémy, the main character, who is dying of terminal cancer, in the Canadian film ''The Barbarian In ...
)
Paul is the brains of the family. His current lifestyle is the result of being disillusioned after attempting to denounce illegal trafficking at the harbour where he worked, only to be told to keep quiet by his union, his bosses, and the judicial system. Ever since, he has adopted an openly defiant attitude against the rules of good citizenship and expects his family to follow suit.
Rita "Tita" Bougon ( Louison Danis)
Rita is Paul's vulgar, alcoholic, chain-smoking wife. Although she spends a minimum amount of time cooking and cleaning, she maintains an unconditional love for her family and adopts the same defiant attitude as her husband. She has no qualms about doing whatever she wants no matter how inappropriate the behaviour.
Paul Bougon Junior (
Antoine Bertrand
Antoine Bertrand (born September 13, 1977) is a Canadian film and television actor. He is best known for his roles in the television series ''Les Bougon'' and the films ''Louis Cyr'', a role that earned him the Iris Award for Best Actor, and '' S ...
)
As the aspiring star of the family, obese "Junior" fervently puts his father's teachings into action and attempts the most outrageous stunts he can think of. While he is a successful crook, he has little education or culture, and his lifestyle doesn't appeal to the women he tries to attract. He has often shown his lack of common sense, logic, and reading skills and often misuses words to funny effect. He also lacks a sense of social decorum, burping in the face of anyone, even women he's attracted to. Despite his idiocy, he has a good heart and is very protective of all the members in his family.
One of the reasons for his lower level of intelligence and his learning difficulties could be that Rita smoked and consumed beer throughout her pregnancy, as she explains later to a pregnant Dolorès.
Frédéric "Mononc" Bougon ( Claude Laroche)
As the only family member to attempt to get back into the system, he is often the butt of jokes, especially due to his idealistic views about the world. His attempts at getting a real job always fall flat as he realizes his co-workers also follow the Bougon lifestyle. He is constantly disappointed that people are not as honest as he would like to believe they are. Throughout the series, he consistently fails at most things he attempts, such as finding and keeping a job — he usually gets fired for being too "good" — or even trying to commit suicide. Despite how much the family dislike him, they still manage to show him their affection at appropriate times, such as when Paul, after reading his suicide note, scolds him and tells him that he "won't take away his only brother."
Dolorès "Dodo" Bougon ( Hélène Bourgeois Leclerc)
A low-dollar prostitute
Prostitution is the business or practice of engaging in sexual activity in exchange for payment. The definition of "sexual activity" varies, and is often defined as an activity requiring physical contact (e.g., sexual intercourse, non-penet ...
, "Dodo" is several years older than Junior. She has a reputation for bringing work home after her shift; a running gag is that she's always followed by a different man (or, on one occasion, a woman) as she comes out of her bedroom each morning. Easily swayed by instant pleasure and gratification, she sometimes deals drugs behind her parents' backs, but is discovered the two critical times she's had any. She once joined a cult
In modern English, ''cult'' is usually a pejorative term for a social group that is defined by its unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals, or its common interest in a particular personality, object, or goal. This ...
that she was brainwashed to think was a religious group that believed in "srevinu", the universe's mirror. It ended up being nothing more than a sex-based sect. Paul and Rita managed to get her out. Of all the family members, she's one of the least supportive. She once answered her brother Junior's threat of committing suicide by questioning if she was the only normal family member.
Mao Bougon ( Rosalee Jacques)
Mao is an adopted Chinese child, who was considered an investment by the family. They believed an Asian kid would know about computers, hacking, and the Internet. Mao loves the family and considers their lifestyle to be nothing but a big, fun game. She skips school to take part in her siblings' escapades. During the first season, Mao was thought to be a boy, but during that season's final episode, it was learned that she is a girl. We learn in the second season that she was lovingly adopted by Paul Bougon when he worked the night shift in the Port of Montréal. One night, he heard moaning and gasping from a ship container arriving from China and discovered fifteen Chinese stowaway refugees dying or dead from asphyxiation and starvation. Mao's mother was still alive when Paul delivered the girl but died seconds after giving birth. Paul brought the infant home and raised her as his own child.
Léo "Pépère" Bougon (Pierre Ébert)
Leo was known as "Pépère" to the immediate family, until his death in 2004. He never spoke, in fact spending all his time in a wheelchair in a state of vegetation
Vegetation is an assemblage of plant species and the ground cover they provide. It is a general term, without specific reference to particular taxa, life forms, structure, spatial extent, or any other specific botanical or geographic character ...
, usually hunched over, eyes nearly always closed, and mumbling incomprehensibly.
Beaudoin (
André Lacoste
André — sometimes transliterated as Andre — is the French and Portuguese form of the name Andrew, and is now also used in the English-speaking world. It used in France, Quebec, Canada and other French-speaking countries. It is a variation ...
)
The straitlaced landlord
A landlord is the owner of a house, apartment, condominium, land, or real estate which is rented or leased to an individual or business, who is called a tenant (also a ''lessee'' or ''renter''). When a juristic person is in this position, the ...
of the duplex occupied by the Bougons is constantly aggravated by their shenanigan
Shenanigans are secret or dishonest activities that are typically complicated, humorous or interesting.
Shenanigans may refer to:
* ''Shenanigans'' (game show), a 1964–65 children's television game show
* ''Shenanigans'' (EP), a 1995 EP by ...
s. More than once, he has attempted to sell the house just to evict them.
Ben Laden, the family pet
Ben is a little dusty white dog (whose name is derived from Osama Bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (10 March 1957 – 2 May 2011) was a Saudi-born extremist militant who founded al-Qaeda and served as its leader from 1988 until Killing of Osama bin Laden, his death in 2011. Ideologically a Pan-Islamism ...
) who isn't really appreciated by anyone but Paul Senior. He is permitted to do pretty much whatever he wants, whether eating on the counters or drinking beer. He understands human speech; he growls at Fred for having referred to Bin Laden negatively in his TV scripts. He is also the legal owner of the Bougons' fraudulent construction company.
See also
* ''Trailer Park Boys
''Trailer Park Boys'' is a Canadian mockumentary sitcom television series created by Mike Clattenburg that began airing in 2001 as a continuation of his 1999 film bearing the same name. The show follows the misadventures of a group of trailer p ...
''
References
External links
http://www.radio-canada.ca/television/lesbougon
Les Bougon
on IMDb
IMDb (an abbreviation of Internet Movie Database) is an online database of information related to films, television series, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and personal biographies, ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bougon, Les
Television shows set in Quebec
2004 Canadian television series debuts
Ici Radio-Canada Télé original programming
Prix Gémeaux-winning shows
2000s Canadian sitcoms