Participants in Survivor Québec take part in one of the franchise's signature challenge events.noovo/Supplied
Canadian Survivor fans, what are you doing the next few Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and, let’s see here, Thursday evenings? I’d include Wednesday, but I already know what those nights look like for you: You’re watching the 44th season (yes) of CBS’s hit reality series at 8 p.m. every hump day, possibly with family, with friends or at a watch party with fellow fans.
“Welcome to one of the most exciting and fascinating destinations in the world – the Philippines,” says Survivor Québec host Patrice Bélanger in the show’s opening montage, a series that first aired April 2, some 23 years after Survivor: Borneo debuted May 31, 2000.
Bélanger, previously the host of Québécois lifestyle show Sucré Salé, steps into the iconic cargo shorts to do his best interpretation of series stalwart Jeff Probst. Ballcap on, Bélanger is chatty, he’s upbeat, he’s from Gatineau. (In fact, a bunch of the 20 contestants are – to the point where one tribe, “Kalooban,” jokes that they should rename themselves “Gatinooban.”)
With decent production values, engaging challenges and a stunning location for all the excitement (the winner takes home a cool $100,000), squint hard enough at Survivor Québec and you might see glimmers of Probstian goodness. Great news for fans, right? If you’re like me – a lifelong watcher of the original – all of this should be welcome. Why wouldn’t I tune in to a legitimate Survivor spinoff with an all-Canadian cast? I already keep up with Australian Survivor, which some fans have embraced as a tougher, rougher version of the international competition format. What’s another handful of tribal councils or so?
Malheureusement, Survivor Québec airs solely in French. No surprise there, obviously, but what is surprising is how Noovo (pronounced “nouveau”), the Bell Media streaming service behind the series, offers no English subtitles for any curious Canadian anglophones who might care to binge it. From what I can gather (there may be exceptions), that’s true for all Noovo programming.
All right, so Noovo isn’t intended for English Canada – that’s fine. But no English subtitles for a series beloved around the country? Excluding English Canada from the all-new Survivor Québec experience is, to say the least, odd. Consider that two of the past three winners of Survivor have been Canadian (Erika Casupanan and Maryanne Oketch, million-dollar winners of Survivor 41 and 42, respectively), a fact made more impressive as Canadians only recently began participating in the competition (thanks to a critical casting rule change in 2018). Then consider the rabid Survivor fan base, a crowd that, judging by Survivor-focused ads for Corus Entertainment’s StackTV, are also forking over subscription dollars to stream it live on Global. My question, then, is pretty simple: What gives, Bell Media?
For those still interested, French subtitles on Noovo can be translated, albeit wonkily, via third-party means – even if we shouldn’t have to. That being said, there are moments you may not need them: “Let’s go, Patrice – drop le puck,” says Simon, a 21-year-old mechanic on the Tiyaga tribe, in the first few minutes of the season premiere (add words such as “blindside” and “comeback” to the list of expressions on Survivor Québec that need no translation).
Either way, as they say on the show, “La tribu a parlé.” For fans (and newcomers) with their French up to snuff, it’s free to listen in. Otherwise, paraphrasing the immortal words of Jeff Probst, Noovo’s got nothing for you. Head back to Crave.
Special to The Globe and Mail