Previewing CBC’s Plan B

[Warning: General spoilers ahead.]

It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem. It’s me.

Philip Grimmer (Patrick L. Adams), one half of the central couple of CBC and CBC Gem’s supernatural-themed relationship drama, Plan B, hasn’t quite connected those dots as his marriage with Evelyn Landry (Karine Vanasse) implodes in the opening moments of the new series. In 2015, they come in hot, lightning striking when Evelyn’s brother and fellow attorney, Pat (François Arnaud), introduces them and the rest of the room fades from view.

When we pick up six years later, things have cooled considerably and Evelyn takes a stand that sends Philip down a bottle where he drunk dials a purchase that puts your worst Amazon bender to shame. Ordering a “Plan B” reset and assigning a date for his requested second chance, he sleeps it off and forgets it, and then it’s delivered to him.

That second chance is exactly what it sounds like, a do-over.

But that also gets into the thornier notions of free will, full disclosure, and consent when one party has intel the other does not. Once Philip gets to start over (and over and over), the series follows his different choices, and the rabbit hole of other choices and left turns that begets. All those rules about resetting (and returning to) your original timeline when you step outside your lane also apply.

And then Philip has to look at the one variable that hasn’t changed in all those scenarios, the one thing he can wholly control.

It’s a heady, often uncomfortable watch in the way marriage dramas often are. That said, Adams and Vanasse are always welcome on our TVs and they go deep on the material here. The cast is rounded out with Josh Close as Philip’s brother, Andy, and Troian Bellisario as one of Philip and Pat’s colleagues.

A CBC original production, the Montreal-filmed series is adapted from the Radio-Canada French-language drama of the same name. The season is directed by Jean-François Asselin, Aisling Chin-Yee, and Maxime Giroux and co-written by Lynne Kamm, along with Asselin and Jacques Drolet, who wrote the original. Asselin and Louis Morissette, who starred in and was a showrunner on the original, are co-showrunners and executive producers here.

Plan B premieres Monday at 9 p.m. ET (9:30 NT) on CBC and CBC Gem, with seven additional episodes to follow in the same timeslot. Here’s a sneak peek.