MONTREAL — They moved in only six weeks ago, but the Bougon clan has become as familiar to Quebeckers as the family next door. Not that many would want them for next-door neighbours.
Les Bougon is a television sitcom featuring a household of beer-guzzling welfare cheats who wake up each day plotting new ways to defraud the system. The Bougons lie, deceive and steal from the Quebec government -- and they have huge audiences admiring the way they do it.
More than 2.2 million viewers tune in to watch the family's exploits each Wednesday. The show has become so popular that the term bougon has entered the lexicon as shorthand for someone who rips the system off.
"The show is a succès de scandale," said University of Montreal French professor Benoît Melançon, who has added the term bougon to an Internet site of new Quebec expressions. "Everyone is talking about it."
One Quebec newspaper announced the arrival of "Bougonmania." Others are less enamoured: The province's Finance Minister has promised to go after "the Bougon spirit" that inspires tax evaders.
The tabloid Journal de Montréal ran an exposé this weekend on "the real Bougons" who scam the system.
Who's the inspiration for the series?
There's patriarch Paul Bougon, played by well-known Quebec actor Rémy Girard, who pays off a Canada Post letter carrier to deliver fraudulent welfare cheques to his door. He defends his slovenly lifestyle, saying there's no point wasting time washing dishes when life expectancy in his poor neighbourhood is 11 years below average.
Daughter Dolorès is a nude dancer who brings troops of clients home to the family duplex. Mother Rita does phone sex while performing household chores.
The barely literate elder son, Paul Jr., needs a car for a date. Lacking his own, he wanders into the garage of the Montreal Casino and steals a Jaguar.
A 10-year-old, Mao, was adopted from China in the belief he could help the family with computer scams.
Completing the household are a dog named Ben Laden, a grandfather who doesn't bathe and the elder Paul's brother, Fred, the family black sheep, who dreams of honest work.
The show has provided a long-awaited hit for Radio-Canada, the French-language service of the CBC, but some critics have asked if the public broadcaster has lost its way.
Not surprisingly, welfare activists denounced the show for trafficking in stereotypes.
Creator François Avard said he just wanted to portray a less-than-pretty world that's ignored on mainstream TV, even on Quebec's popular téléromans (soap operas).
"There was absolutely nothing on TV showing the kind of people I'd cross on the streets of Montreal every day," he said in an interview. "I wanted to show that there's something other than what we see on television all the time, the good, clean, ideal life, with a car in the garage.
"They're a very marginal family, because in addition to screwing the system, they're unified."
The word bougon has an established meaning in French: a grumbler. But these Bougons are not grousers; they're energetically looking for ways to bilk the system. And they probably work harder to avoid work than they would at a real job.
One TV critic says that if Quebeckers recognize themselves in the Bougons, it's because they see the enterprise and mettle of ancestors who survived long, cold winters.
Viewers can't help but share some of the Bougons' delight at getting even with the smug bureaucrats, landlords and nouveaux-riches who populate their world.
"The Bougons are contemporary Robin Hoods," said Jean-Pierre Desaulniers, a professor of communications at the University of Quebec at Montreal.
"They give to the poor, in this case themselves, at the expense of the rich. So there's an inventiveness in their delinquency that's very agreeable."
The series is also a satiric commentary on the haves and have-nots in Quebec, at a time when the province is talking about scaling back the generosity of the state. Last week's episode showed Paul Bougon getting a tour through a suburban neighbourhood of swank mansions, each one belonging to someone who also took advantage of the system -- a criminal biker, a corrupt politician and a bankrupt high-tech millionaire.
The question is whether the ingenious Bougons will maintain their ratings supremacy in Quebec. Last night, the rival TVA network launched the new season of its huge hit, Star Académie, a U.S.-style reality show and talent hunt that drew millions of viewers in Quebec last year. It's a ratings powerhouse, and may prove as big a challenge to the Bougons as a knock on the door from a welfare inspector.
