TBI Scripted: How ‘Good Morning Chuck’ tackles addiction by going niche with heart

Good Morning Chuck

Mark Layton speaks to the star and creators of Crave’s Québécois comedy-drama Good Morning Chuck (Or The Art Of Harm Reduction) and how they blended fact and fiction to find the laughter in drug abuse rehabilitation.

Hailing from St-Laurent TV and Connect3 Media, and among the latest additions to the Cineflix Rights scripted sales catalogue, is comedy-drama Good Morning Chuck (Or The Art Of Harm Reduction) – also known by the French title Bon Matin Chuck.

The French-language show, which made its debut on Canadian network and streamer Crave last month, is based on the experiences of actor Nicolas Pinson and offers a quirky and humorous, but also compassionate, exploration of substance abuse, addiction and rehabilitation.

“I struggled with addiction for about 15 years of my life and went to rehab three times. I rehabilitated myself in humour, you know,” Pinson tells TBI. “I was telling my story to my friends about what I’ve been through, when I was doing drugs, and everybody was laughing. It helped me to make peace with my past.”

Pinson stars in the show as the titular Chuck, who is a popular morning TV show host until a shocking drug scandal shatters his nice guy public persona. In order to salvage his ruined reputation, Chuck enters rehab, hoping to prove his girlfriend his agent and his audience that he has changed his ways. But there’s just one problem – Chuck doesn’t really think that he needs help.

Good Morning Chuck

Creating a fiction

Beginning life as a short-form project that hewed closer to Pinson’s real experiences, once co-director, co-writer and long-time friend Jean-François Rivard came aboard, it transformed into 10 x 60-minute series, following the fictional Chuck.

“First was he was playing kind of himself. This is kind of a trend that I’m tired of; the real fake life of someone who’s playing his own character – Seinfeld started it,” shares Rivard.

“I wanted people to see him play a character, and because it’s based on his experiences, we didn’t want [people to think] this is the real story of the show – we wanted to have more opportunity to explore a fiction.” This fiction, Pinson tells TBI, was “very therapeutic”, allowing him to relive a variation on his past experiences “in another skin”.

Rivard shares that his ambition with the series was to show some understanding and respect to those who have struggled with addiction: “I want people who went through the same process that he did to laugh about it. I want to make them feel good instead of reliving what they did. We didn’t want to put on screen what people think addiction is. I don’t want it to be miserable. I want it to show that everybody around you can be inadequate.”

The series is a clear work of passion for those involved, with show producer Lou Bélanger, from St-Laurent TV, telling TBI that it was created from a place of friendship. “Nicolas was my friend, I wanted to work with him. The fact that he’s got one of the biggest professional opportunities of his life and it came from all those years of struggling, of pain and hurt… to see him happy now, it makes me emotional, just talking about it.”

Good Morning Chuck

Finding the heart

Good Morning Chuck is strikingly shot in both a black and white version with some sparing moments of colour – as well as being available in a full colour version – a choice that Rivard tells TBI “puts people visually on the same level in front of addiction, they’re all equal.” Pinson elaborates: “It’s like the addicts’ vision of their life. We see the heart of Chuck seeing it black and white.”

Musing on the future of scripted production and the rising costs across the industry, meanwhile, Bélanger adds that he likens this series to Netflix’s Korean hit Squid Game in that they both tell niche stories that deal with universal themes – in this case, addiction and recovery – and suggests these are the types of scripted shows that are going to stand out in future.

“It sounds cliche, but it’s about working with local talents, local stories, local resources, but trying to find the most personal and unique thing that is going to reach everybody. Squid Game is a quick example that everybody knows that became a worldwide phenomenon, but it wasn’t meant to please everybody. So go niche, but go niche with something that’s universal. I think that that’s the model and that’s the future.”