Hawco hits the screen again
N.L. actor/writer/producer Allan Hawco back with new series, ‘Caught’
In his hit CBC-TV series “Republic of Doyle,” Allan Hawco’s roguish private eye Jake Doyle was usually on the right side of the law.
His current role on Discovery Channel’s “Frontier,” as fur merchant Douglas Brown, sees him operating in the early days of Canadian settlement when most of the laws had yet to be written.
But in the CBC miniseries “Caught,” based on the novel by Newfoundland author Lisa Moore, Hawco’s David Slaney is clearly living in the underworld, on the run after breaking out of Dorchester Prison and looking for some payback from his erstwhile drug-dealing partner, Brian Hearn (Eric Johnson of “The Knick”), who put him there.
Moore’s book would make for a great crime thriller feature film, along the lines of “Point Blank” or “The Getaway,” but when eone executive Tecca Crosby handed Hawco a copy of “Caught” and suggested he try to get the rights, he saw the story taking place on a broader canvas.
“I could hear the music of it, literally, as I was reading it, and it got me very excited,” says Hawco, who also executive produced and wrote for the five-episode series, which premiered Monday night.
The Newfoundland actor/ writer/producer had already
received a strong recommendation for Moore’s novel from friend and former Great Big Sea singer Alan Doyle when “Republic of Doyle” was still in production, but he wasn’t able to take in her prose until the whirlwind of making its six seasons finally subsided.
As Hawco puts it, the miniseries version of “Caught” took shape in his mind as he read it, with the luxury of five hourlong episodes to allow both the storyline and the characters to breathe and provide plum roles for friends like Paul Gross as down-on-his-luck RCMP detective Roy Patterson and “Frontier” co-star Greg Bryk as Hearn’s weaselly henchman,
Cyril.
Add strong female characters like Tori Anderson’s mystery woman Ada and DEA investigator K.C. Williams (Enuka Okuma of “Rookie Blue” fame), and a gritty 1970s setting, and you’ve got the makings of an Atlantic-canadian crime story with echoes of Elmore Leonard.
“Elmore Leonard is a great touchstone, because this isn’t really a genre that’s necessarily associated with (Moore’s) work,” says Hawco. “It’s a nice departure, so it isn’t quite Leonard, it’s still Lisa, but it’s also this jailbreak/heist story of a guy on the run, and it’s a road story.
“She brings all these things to it that have all the ingredients of a ‘Midnight Run,’ or something like Leonard’s ‘Out of Sight,’ both the book and the movie. There are definite touchstones for me, in terms of the kinds of things I’m drawn to as an actor, and seeing myself being portrayed in something.”
Credited as a writer on all five episodes, Hawco likes the contrast between “Caught” and “Republic of Doyle.”
The latter was a comedy with dramatic moments, while the former leans more heavily on the dramatic side, but with a streak of dark humour. It seems like every character is playing both sides of the equation, hoping to come out on top, and everyone has something serious at stake, but most of all escaped con Slaney.
“Something dramatic has changed in Slaney during the five years he’s been inside and Hearn has been out,” explains Hawco. “Slaney is a different man now, and this is his last chance at anything. But Hearn is also a different man, and in many ways he’s at his breaking point and this is also his last chance.”
“Caught” was shot largely in Newfoundland, with the Dominican Republic standing in for Hearn’s home base in Mexico.
Director of photography Philip Lanyon opted to use lenses from the 1970s to give the show a classic, hazy look to match the vintage sideburns and wide lapels on display.
There’s not much glamour on display, especially with Gross sporting stubble and bad hair as the disgraced detective trying to bring Hearn to justice and claw his way out of a seemingly bottomless career hole.
“Paul and I have known each other for 16, 17 years,” Hawco says of his “Hyena Road” and “H20” co-star and mentor.
“He was on my mind from Day 1, for sure. I wasn’t sure if it would work out schedulewise, but it all just kind of fell into place.
“We had a long conversation before we started the work about how we wanted to approach it as actors, together. We’ve both logged a lot of time in front of cameras doing a certain type of thing, and neither one of us wanted to be in that realm of anything comfortable. We wanted our characters to be extremely uncomfortable.”
With Hawco’s Slaney on the run, hiding out in a cramped Airstream trailer, and Gross’s desperate cop looking grey and paunchy, these characters are the living definition of uncomfortable.
“Paul took that to the extreme, wearing a three-piece suit in the Dominican Republic, but that was his choice,” Hawco says with a sigh. “He doesn’t change his wardrobe once, and his justification for that was that Roy would just not do that. Why would he change? He doesn’t change.”