Dupuis Edition and Audiovisuel is currently developing Living with Dad, based on the album Dad by NOB, published by Dupuis for M6 in France. Co-produced with Belvision (Belgique), this modern, lively and gentle sitcom on family life is one of the projects that will be presented in Toulouse in September.
“Cartoon Forum is a great opportunity to present this funny, modern and refreshing new series to potential new partners,” said Media-Participations production audiovisual department MD Caroline Audebert. “It’s no surprise that NOB’s album has achieved massive success. His humorous take on this single dad enjoying bringing up his four daughters is really heart-warming. Being able to adapt it as a sitcom with the children’s gentle yet merciless point of view of the hurly-burly life of a modern family is a fabulous opportunity and a great pleasure,” she added.
“We are really looking forward to screening this gentle and funny series to our viewers. As the leading youth broadcaster in France, it’s very important for Gulli to highlight all types of modern and atypical family models. Living with Dad, where a father takes care of his four girls, allows us to get across strong messages such as gender equality. It is also an opportunity to portray four strong willed sisters, making them different and comic heroines enabling the whole family to recognise themselves and identify with them,” stressed Groupe M6 director of youth programmes Coralie Boitrelle-Laigle.
While the album adopts Dad’s point of view, the animated series, for six to 11-year-olds, takes the position of the daughters: Pandora, a.k.a Panda, 18, Ondine, 12, Roxane, eight, and Berenice, a.k.a. Beberenice, one. Their loving, but hyper-busy, mothers have entrusted them to their father, a single 40-something, who brings them up with love. Every day, living with Dad means exploring the contradictions between the theory (health, education, morality) and the practice (an outbreak of spots, limited screen time, hiding bad mark), a reminder that there is no single way of flourishing, and that depending on the age, dealing with problems can be done differently and passionately.
“The series is funny and entertaining while raising existential questions of ‘living, being and doing together’, above and beyond differences, in a changing world where collective references need rebuilding – in short, we all have something in common with these girls,” said director of the series Daniel Klein.
The album was created in 2014, and there have been seven of them so far and one special, The Dad Handbook, published by Dupuis. They have sold over 5,60,000 copies for the French version alone, and have been translated into seven languages: Spanish, Italian, English, Chinese, Dutch, Croatian and Serbian.
Directed by Daniel Klein, the 52 x 11’ series will be in 2D animation and will be distributed by Mediatoon Distribution internationally. Cyril Deydier is the author and it is being produced by Arthur Colignon, and executive producers are Caroline Duvochel and Caroline Audebert from Belvision, and Raphaële Ingberg.
