Kif-Kif | |
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Genre | Comedy drama |
Created by | Sylvie Tremblay |
Written by |
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Directed by |
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Creative director | Stéphanie Bujold |
Starring |
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Country of origin | Canada |
Original language | French |
No. of seasons | 2 |
No. of episodes | 189 |
Production | |
Executive producer | Jean-Pierre Morin |
Producer | Sylvie Tremblay |
Running time | 24–25 minutes |
Production company | Vivaclic |
Original release | |
Network | Radio-Canada |
Release | September 11, 2006 September 2, 2008 | –
Kif-Kif (known as Roommates in English)[1] is a Quebec teen-oriented téléroman produced by Vivaclic and broadcast by Radio-Canada.
The series center on a group of high school students—four girls and four boys—who live together at a Des Sables High School's residence.
Kif-Kif was produced by Vivaclic and was originally broadcast at Radio-Canada from September 11, 2006[2] on the 17h timeslot replacing Watatatow.[3] The company Tribal Nova developed an interactive website to be updated in real time as the series is broadcast.[2] The series was conceived with the working title Comme en Appart and selected by the Quebecor Fund in Spring 2005.[4] Episodes 105 to 189 were funded by the Canadian Television Fund with around $1.5 million.[5]
On April 18, 2007, Radio-Canada announced that Kif-Kif was cancelled and would stop to air in Winter 2007.[6] All 189 episodes were already shot by its cancellation time but only 104 had been broadcast by the network.[6] Among the reasons given by the channel were the poor ratings and a decrease in Canadian Television Fund to support youth-oriented shows.[6] Also, the show was failing to reach its target audience of 12–18 years[1] and was mostly seen by adults.[7]
The series rights were later sold to Latin America;[8] in Brazil, it was broadcast by Boomerang[9] and TV Brasil.[10]
Kif-Kif's website was elected the best website at the Boomerang Awards[11] and the Gémeaux Awards.[12] At the 2007 Gémeaux Awards it received six nominations[13] and its episode 64 won the Best Screenplay in a Youth Program or Series.[14] In 2008, it was nominated for Best Youth Program or Series – Fiction at the Gémeaux Awards but lost to Ramdam.[15] It also received a French Award of Excellence from the Youth Media Alliance for the episode "Bye Julien".[16]
In 2007, the series was exhibited in the same timeslot of Grand-Papa and recorded an average of 127,000 viewers against 118,000 of its competitor.[17]
The Gazette's writer Gaëtan Charlebois praised the show's "solid acting" as well as its "jaunty" dialogues. However, he commented on the series's "bizarre aesthetic", saying: "Though Kif-Kif has the same shoestring budget as other such programs, it seems to show it more vigorously – almost revelling in its cheesy ugliness."[18] Steve Proulx of Voir criticized what he called "a trivialization of smoking", questioning its occurrence in a show broadcast by a public station. Proulx also stated there was some publicity for Neutrogena and Canadian Armed Forces and he criticized it too.[19]