Season 4 of Documentary Now! is an early Christmas gift | myCANAL Rwanda

Since 2015, this real UFO persists in the landscape of the series and we rejoice. Three years after the previous season, here we go again Documentary Now! and the English actress Helen Mirren, who always presents with all the seriousness of the world the “classic documentaries” of the series, except that they are obviously always about parodies.

And for this fourth season, Seth Meyers and his friends from Saturday Night Live behind the series were particularly inspired in their choices, as it begins with a double episode centered on a “visionary German director” who tries to create the ultimate masterpiece despite dantesque shooting conditions in Russia and a very tumultuous relationship with his favorite actor.

As often in Documentary Now!the main roles are held by prestigious guests, which gives us the unexpected opportunity to see Alexander Skarsgård play this enjoyable parody version of director Warner Herzog, facing a pseudo Klaus Kinski as furious as the real one. What else?

The following episode is not to be outdone, since after having played in one of the funniest episodes of the third seasonthe immense Cate Blanchett makes her return in the role of a hairdresser who seriously lacks gentleness with the customers of a small English salon where everyone confides their little secrets and their problems.

As in her previous appearance, the actress who won this year’s César d’honneur is extremely funny, and she herself offered to hijack an old BBC documentary for this episode. To add to our happiness, his boss is played by a Harriet Walter (Killing Eve, This Is Going To Hurt) unpayable.

We are then treated to a parody of a great classic sports documentary, When We Were Kings (1996), except this time it’s not a boxing match but a brutal Welsh sport where two shirtless men are swinging stones at their faces in a sheep pen. It’s as great as it sounds, and you have to see the accents taken by the cast, where we find in particular Jonathan Pryce (seen in the last season of The Crown) and… Welsh singer Tom Jones.

The penultimate episode replaces the octopus of the recently Oscar-winning documentary The Wisdom of the Octopus (Netflix) by a monkey with whom a director creates an intense but particularly expensive relationship. But the best was saved for last, since Documentary Now! simply offers us a last episode entirely shot in French in tribute to Agnès Varda and her late film Agnès Beaches (2008).

Liliane Rovère embodies the icon of French cinema and goes in search of her “lost thrill” and her memories on the roads of France, and as always in this series, the result is both hilarious and touching.

Because it must be remembered, Documentary Now! uses parody not to make fun but to reveal often overlooked pearls of documentary. This new season will still delight the most serious cinephiles, because in addition to the many more or less hidden references, each episode always reproduces with maniacal precision the formal style of the original documentaries. In short, All I Want For Christmas Is Documentary Now!

Documentary Now! season 4, available on December 19 on CANAL+, in addition to the 3 previous seasons!