The comedy duo DAVA, comprised of Sacha Béhar and Augustin Shackelpopoulos, is about to take a leap forward with "Protocole DAVA," available on the Canal+ app from March 25th, before its broadcast on the channel starting April 5th at 12:10 PM, according to Canal+. After years of cultivating an absurd, edgy, and deliberately uncomfortable brand of comedy on stage and online, the two comedians are now entering a more high-profile arena. It remains to be seen whether this unique format, previously reserved for a loyal following, can survive the transition to a wider audience.
A unique duo arriving in a more visible format
The program takes the form of a series of 26 episodes, each approximately two minutes long, written by Sacha Béhar, Augustin Shackelpopoulos, and Alexandre Cariou, and directed by Sylvain Fusée, according to Canal+. The premise is simple: two mock editorialists tackle everything that has made recent news, from Ukraine to crêpes, from elections to water bombers, in a media parody pushed to the point of absurdity.
What distinguishes DAVA is less the subject matter than the style. For over ten years, the two authors have been developing a humor of saturation, jargon, repetition, and derailment. Their world rests on a falsely expert language, emptied of its meaning through overuse. To describe their latest show, Libération spoke of a "nauseating utterance of contemporary jargon," a phrase that aptly summarizes their way of transforming modern language into comedic material.
Canal+ is banking on a deliberately dissonant comedy
The arrival of DAVA on Canal+ is anything but insignificant. In the channel's press release, Lyes Boudechiche, the head of programming, speaks of a "radical comedy offering" and a world where "nothing is quite like anywhere else: not the pace, not the themes, not the tone." This acknowledged connection to the channel's atypical comedic forms clearly reflects the project's ambition: to establish DAVA within a tradition of offbeat humor, while embracing its own brand of brutality.
The guest cast further confirms this desire to open up their world without smoothing it over, notably including Éric Judor, Marc Fraize, Natoo, Thomas VDB, Pauline Clément, and Sébastien Chassagne, according to Canal+. But the real challenge lies elsewhere: DAVA Protocol will not be judged on its already established originality, but on its ability to avoid conformity. If the series maintains its starkness, its taste for unease, and its logic of organized chaos, it could well bring to the French comedy scene a voice that it often lacks: a truly dissonant one.
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