Feel-good focus for Encore International

Encore International is hoping to sell feel-good programming to a world looking to take its mind off the pandemic.

With the stress of the global pandemic hitting home, Montreal-based distributor Encore International – the sales arm of the Encore Group – is seeing an opportunity with buyers for uplifting content that can ease the mind and warm the heart.

“We need to sell programming that is uplifting, that offers a good mood, good values, that people can watch on streaming or via linear TV, but which is relaxing and fun,” explains Chrystine Girard, Encore International’s head of international distribution.

“What came as a surprise is there’s a demand for shows that are bit older (five even eight years old) because people are looking for something that reminds them of the good old times. We need to have something that takes our minds off the current pandemic situation, and that translates into the type of product that we are selling.”

 

As such, Encore is leaning into its portfolio of comedy programming, which includes five seasons of TVA series Boomerang (60×22’), four seasons of Radio-Canada series Freefall (aka Lâcher Prise, 52×22’), and three seasons of Les Beaux Malaises (33×22’), which also aired on TVA.

“The core of our business is geared around talent,” says Girard. “Take Martin Matte, for instance, with Les Beaux Malaises. Originally, he was a stand-up comedian and he wanted to go into television, Encore supported him so he could develop Les Beaux Malaises, a series that was produced by Encore. And we ended up with this huge, 45%-market-share series, three seasons, 35 awards around the world… it’s crazy. And we’re still selling it right now, worldwide.”

The show has been billed as French Canada’s answer to Seinfeld. “Part of its appeal is that it’s based on something that’s evergreen, that won’t change over time. It’s about family, it’s about your kids, it’s about taboos – talking about sex and everything – but it’s never anything too edgy.”

Girard also highlights Boomerang, which, as with many of Encore’s titles, is being sold as both a format and as ready-made tape. Now in its fifth season and numbering 60 episodes overall, the situational comedy centres on the increasingly prevalent phenomenon of adults moving back in with their parents, whether it be because of a life setback or in a bid to offset financial stress, or just to help ease them into their golden years.

“One of the beauties of formats is that a number of local productions were completed before the lockdown,” Girard says. “Boomerang is one of them, in terms of both format adaptation and also for the ready-made version. You have a number or territories where the rights were sold prior to the lockdown and production has already started; in Sweden, for example, their local version was completed in time.

“But even in parts of the world that are still in lockdown, a lot of producers want to hold on to their writers, so they’re optioning the show and starting adaptation in preparation for the after-pandemic. And Boomerang is a very good example of that.”

Rounding out the playlist are kids series The Complicated Life of Lea Olivier (12×22’), an adaptation of the book written by Catherine Girard-Audet that has been commissioned for a second season by TVO (Club Illico) and TFO; and Crave teen dramedy Forever and a Day (14×22’).

Also aimed at teens is lifeguards series Jérémie (90×22’), in production on its fifth season for Vrak; and high-school drama The Academy (30×22’), airing for three seasons on Club Illico and TVA.

For young adults, there is For Sarah (6×52’), the French series which aired on TF1, an adaptation from Encore’s original (10×45’) which originally aired on TVA, about a 17-year-old woman who has a car crash; and Runaway (10×45’), about a girl who runs away from home to be with an aspiring musician with a toxic lifestyle.

On the Crime and Investigation front, Encore has on offer Crime Stories (26×45’), commissioned for a fourth season by ICI Radio Canada Télé.

Encore also has a good offer on the factual front with The Fisher King Race (8×45’), an exceptional Télé-Québec series about lobster fishermen; and The Good Life with Go-Van (13×24’), a travel series which proposes alternative lifestyles, starring adventurer Julien Roussin Côté.