Marc Labreche on the way to Noovo

The Downton Abbey side of our Summer

Did you take a dip in a refreshing lake last weekend, miles from the sweltering humidity of Montreal?

Posted at 12:45 am. Updated at 07:15.

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You have experienced Our summers for a time without servants, oil lamps, and the formal address between spouses.

Almost 20 years after its release on TVA, the ambitious historical saga Our Summers, a classic of our television heritage, is reborn on the Amazon Prime Video platform, offering the four seasons in French.

This rich mini-series, which narrates the summer vacations of middle-class Montrealers in Bas-du-Fleuve over a whole century, fits perfectly with this warm time when we are all talking about a cozy chalet, a jetty at sunset, a liter of sparkling rosé, etc. dream clear water.

I loved “Our Summers” back then and, thanks to Amazon Prime Video, rediscovered the panache, romance and ruthlessness of its 29 episodes. It was daring to start such a dense and complicated project in 2005, following six strong women who had lived in the same summer villa – Les Salines – between 1900 and today.

The story unfolded with future leaps, flashbacks and even forebodings, those dreamlike sequences in which a female character encounters her ancestors or descendants dressed in red. In fact, it was a bond of mutual aid between these six women who were related by blood to the Salines residence.

The narrator also changed from episode to episode. “Our summers are my favorite professional summers. As a narrative structure, it was very ambitious. It was a big boat. “It was a great writing experience and a very enjoyable challenge,” recalls Michel d’Astous, who co-wrote and produced Nosétés with his accomplice Anne Boyer, to whom we also wrote My Mother, My Son, The Blue One Hour” and “A” owe a number of other popular shows.

Our summers begin in the summer of 1900 in Cap-sur-Mer, a fictional village inspired by Saint-Fabien-sur-Mer, near the Bic National Park. Shopkeeper John Marivale-Desrochers (Jean-François Pichette) buys a plot of land from the Belzile family, local farmers, and has a magnificent summer home built there, the dream of his wife Maria Brabant (Sophie Prégent). This residence, called Les Salines, has been passed from mother to daughter until modern times, ie 2007.

In Cap-sur-Mer, the very poor Belziles work for the Desrochers, the rich Montrealers who arrive with their huge suitcases, their wooden croquet set, their beach loungers and their cook, Bernadette (Pierrette Robitaille). Over the course of four seasons, the tragic fates of the Belzile and the Desrochers intersect with death, adultery and rape, among others. The Desrochers’ maid Rachel (Karyne Lemieux), known as the cursed savage or the squaw, will play a key role in the sequel to this soap opera covering seven specific summers spanning 1900, 1915, 1922, 1930, 1939, 1952 and 1966

And each summer had its own director: Lyne Charlebois, Francis Leclerc, Alain Desrochers, Philippe Gagnon, Nicolas Monette, Jean-François Asselin and Sophie Lorain, who shot the scenes near the Saint Lawrence River in Kamouraska, where an empty Mansion located Salines were built.

When Michel d’Astous and Anne Boyer presented Our Summers on TVA, they had not yet traced their series’ impressive pedigree, whose branches spanned six generations. It’s quite simple, almost the entire roster of the Union des artistes (UDA) has played in nosétés, including Marie-Chantal Perron, Patrick Labbé, Julie Le Breton, David Boutin, Marc-André Grondin, Sarah-Jeanne Labrosse, Sébastien Ricard, Sylvie Drapeau, Julianne Côté, Gilles Renaud, Louise Portal, Mylène St-Sauveur, Sébastien Huberdeau and Isabelle Blais.

Fanny Mallette wowed viewers with her interpretation of the troubled Nora, John and Maria’s only daughter, a lame woman married to an alcoholic doctor who dreams of writing in her pavilion on the family estate. In addition, each of the six heroines of Our Summers had an artistic talent, be it piano, painting or singing.

Our Summers was broadcast by TVA between 2005 and 2008, and has consistently exceeded one million ratings. In my opinion, the best first season was watched by 1,464,000 viewers. Each of the chapters contains eight episodes, except for the second, which was shortened to five hours. “TVA didn’t have the resources to shoot an entire season and we didn’t want to risk skipping a year,” recalls writer-producer Michel d’Astous.

And for such a beefy historical miniseries, the budget allotted wasn’t astronomical, we’re talking $800,000 to $900,000 an hour. Ten years before Our Summers, the Marguerite Volant series was being produced on Radio-Canada at a million an hour.

The shock to social classes based on major historical events (stock market crash, two world wars, sexual revolution) already had a Downton Abbey side in Our Summers. Not to mention the hot relationships between the small staff and the big world, the piano concerts and the beautiful, expensive dishes!