7 year old Alix walks through her mirror into a magical land. She befriends the wise walrus, inventive Hatter and Hare, and energetic egg Gros Coco. Their adventures are hindered by the overbearing queen like boss supreme director. (IMDB description)
Regular viewers of the French conglomerate tv Channel TV5MONDE in Europe may have noticed things have gotten rather Carrollian in the mornings. As part of its Jeunesse (Children's/Youth) programming TV5MONDE Europe have started showing season 2 of the French Canadian series "Alix et les Merveilleux" (Alix and the Wonderfolk) This little half an hour series ran on Canadian TV for 3 years. This series could well gain a audience of language learners, and Carrollians, beyond the intended child target market. I'll explain in a moment why I think if you're learning French (any variant, but especially French as spoken in Canada) this show will really help. First we'll talk about what this series actually is!
(Alix (Rosalie Daoust) and Rabbit (Inès Talbi) Photo Credit: TV5MONDE)
Although not an adaptation of the famous novels, Alix... has a end credit which translates to "liberally inspired by the work of Lewis Carroll" and certainly it makes good on that promise. The spirit of Carroll's original books is retained here by how bizarre the plotlines per episode get. There will be turns that logically make no sense, or are designed to make the audience laugh. In several episodes Alix breaks from daydreaming to ask her family a question related to her dream, which on answering, she dives back to imagining again.
In this sense Alix holds on to the intent of Carroll's work the way other children's series using the characters normally don't. It remembers to be as strange as a literal dream, as well as amusing. Plots generally start with Alix facing a problem in real life, typically with her parents, sister, or brother (all double as roles in Wonderland later) then daydreaming she goes through a mirror under the stairs and encounters friends who are having similar problems in a parallel plot. Yes, it has the same set-up as Adventures in Wonderland (1992) and long term fans of that can consider this series a direct successor. I prefer this series personally just for more how carrollian it feels and how off the rails plots can go.
(The Pause tea party. Photo Credit: TV5MONDE)
Rosalie Daoust's Alix, energetic, helpful, and a daydreamer, is Alice in modern-day childhood, whilst Grande Patronne (Marilyn Castonguay) with selfish demands, royalty status, and want to send someone to the dungeon, mirrors the Queen of Hearts. Rabbit (played by Inès Talbi) mixes the White Rabbit with White Knight characters, having Rabbit's overall characteristics but knight's inventing flair (like Knight, the inventions always go catastrophically wrong one way or another) Chef (Martin Héroux) is a mix of Caterpillar, King of Hearts and the footmen characters, being a messenger for royalty, and loving rules and order. Morse (as played by Didier Lucien) is a strange mix of the looking glass sheep (he runs a shop with a magical counter) and the Walrus (giving his love of raw fish) Humpty Dumpty (played by Alex Desmarais) re-named Gros Coco, is a young egg, and often overexcited, and perhaps the character here who is the furthest from their original form. Hatter and Hare ( Jean-Philippe Lehoux and Luc Bourgeois) are as usual, but Hare is a musician who has anxiety, and this Hatter actually owns a hat workshop. The "mad tea party" is a enforced tea break that occurs once per ep where characters are obligated to drop what they are doing in the plot, take tea together, and play a childhood game, or just one that is plain weird.
Carrollian objects and themes such as: cards, strange versions of croquet, chess, nonsensical trials, weird kitchen running, songs that make no sense, dancing, ridiculous advice, bad advice, logic-less laws, seeing dreams as important, and magical foods all make their due appearances in the series. Not bad at all for something that is nominally an "inspired by" work. There is an unshakable sense that the writing team has read Carroll's novels over several times, and has tried to re-create the same feelings of fun, whimsy, and outright strangeness in their own work. I can't really say this for any other series which also fall into the "character and location using" category.
(Alix (Rosalie Daoust) encounters Chef (Martin Héroux) (Photo credit: TV5MONDE)
So why may Alix as a series help Carrollians who specifically are learning French? First of all, the series is already has characters you'll know, albeit in a different form. Secondly, it has a jaw dropping 195 episodes, making it one of the longest "inspired by" Carroll series to run. Thirdly, the language, being for younger audiences, is somewhat simplified, meaning if you're a beginner/late beginner in French, this is for you. The accents of the actors also have a bonus of being for the most part, VERY clear. You can 100 percent learn from this series also if you aren't learning the French Canadian variation of French (just bear in mind some words are different in standard, as is prononciations).
Lastly, its just fun. Fun is something that is difficult to replicate in language learning and if this series can be that for you, it will certainly help.
Alix and the Wonderfolk airs on TV5MONDE Europe on weekdays. It is on demand worldwide at PLUS, and some episodes with French subtitles are on Archive.org.
