That’s it, the fifth season of the Canneséries festival has just ended on the Croisette. With, as a final bouquet, the screening of the first two episodes of the comedy “Le Flambeau: les aventuriers de Chupacabra” this Wednesday, April 6 in the Louis-Lumière auditorium, within the Palais des festivals in Cannes (Alpes-Maritimes). This fiction, which will be scheduled on Canal + in May, is the sequel to “La Flamme”, broadcast on the encrypted channel in the fall of 2020.
The first season was a parody of the reality show “Bachelor, the Bachelor” and was adapted from an American format produced by Ben Stiller. In France, Jonathan Cohen is in charge. Co-author, co-director and main actor, he embodied in the first episodes an airline pilot in search of love. He puts on the same costume and his character arrives on the cursed island of Chupacabra, thinking of repeating the sentimental adventure. But here he is this time immersed in a competition of the “Koh-Lanta” type.
A large part of the superb cast of season 1 is still there, including Géraldine Nakache, Ana Girardot, Camille Chamoux, Pierre Niney, or Ramzy Bedia. Among the new faces, let us mention Gérard Darmon, Kad Merad, Natacha Lindinger, Sébastien Chassagne, or comedian Laura Felpin. Jérôme Commandeur succeeds Vincent Dedienne at the presentation of the fictional show.
Absurd humor, sometimes hilarious, sometimes clumsy
We find in “Le Flambeau” the same ingredients as in “La Flamme”: a humor so absurd that it is sometimes hilarious, sometimes too clumsy and vulgar. The element of surprise is no longer there, but the change of frame does a world of good.
“Basically, for this season 2, we wanted to do the same dating show, but with a girl instead of the male hero, recalled Jonathan Cohen during the press conference presenting the Canneséries festival in early March. It gave a rehash of season 1, we were out of inspiration. It was in the middle of this writing journey that we said to ourselves: But if we did Koh-Lanta ? There, it started to fuse in all directions. The format therefore becomes an original creation, moving away completely from the American version.
Fans of the TF1 game will inevitably find themselves there more than others, with roundabout events, a familiar soundtrack, and a few tunes by host Denis Brogniart in the interpretation of Jérôme Commandeur. Beyond a few facilities in the sometimes misplaced gags, some twists are frankly gratifying. Hoping that this season 2 holds on the length, where the first had quickly run out of steam.
« The Torch: Adventurers of Chupacabra », French series by and with Jonathan Cohen (2022), with Jérôme Commandeur, Géraldine Nakache, Natacha Lindinger… nine episodes of around 40 minutes, coming to Canal+ in May