La famille Plouffe (inspired by the novel Les Plouffe by Roger Lemelin) began life as a radio series and moved to Canadian television on 4 November 1953, where it was broadcast live to air.
This series described the daily lives of the working-class Plouffe family – Plumber Théophile (Paul Guèvremont), his wife Joséphine (Amanda Alarie) and their four children: Cécile, Ovide, Napoléon and Guillaume – who lived in the Lower Town of Quebec City in the years following World War II.
Patriarch Théophile (called “Pap”) could never forget that he was Quebec’s cycling champion 35 years ago. His clucking, scolding and loving wife, Joséphine, was called “Maman”.
Their intellectual son Ovide (Jean-Louis Roux) turned Parisian after one visit to France. Cécile (Denise Pelletier) was a sharp-tongued spinster. Athletic Napoléon (Émile Genest) thought exclusively in terms of physical fitness and sport. Guillaume dreamed of playing professional hockey.
The viewing public identified with the joys and suffering, the successes and failures of this working-class family, giving rise to a huge infatuation for the show, which led Lemelin to follow up by writing two other series: En haut de la pente douce and Le petit monde de père Gédéon.
An English version – The Plouffe Family – was also broadcast in the second year of the series. It was the same show with the same cast, just in a different language and broadcast on different nights.
This series described the daily lives of the working-class Plouffe family – Plumber Théophile (Paul Guèvremont), his wife Joséphine (Amanda Alarie) and their four children: Cécile, Ovide, Napoléon and Guillaume – who lived in the Lower Town of Quebec City in the years following World War II.
