Gritty Quebec cop series
Isn’t afraid to tackle the issue of gun violence in schools.
The first episode of the second season of 19-2, one of the most talked-about shows of the past few years on Quebec TV, only airs Jan. 28, on Radio-Canada television, but it’s already generating quite a bit of controversy.
Radio-Canada made the first two episodes available to journalists a few days back, but it was only the first show that everyone was talking about. The season opens with a bang, literally. The two main protagonists of this gritty cop series — Montreal police officers Nick Berrof (Réal Bossé) and Ben Chartier (Claude Legault) — race into a local high school where a teenage gunman is on a shooting rampage.
Obviously, it echoes our own city’s tragic history of school shootings — from the École Polytechnique to Concordia University to Dawson — but the storyline takes on a whole other dimension in the wake of the horrific mass murder last month at a grade school in Newtown, Conn.
The script for the 19-2 episode was written more than a year ago and the troubling scenes were shot last August, months before the Newtown shooting. Some critics have already suggested that perhaps it’s not appropriate for a TV network to be airing a show like this about a school shooting so soon after Newtown.
But Podz (real name Daniel Grou), who directs 19-2, has absolutely no qualms about depicting this bloody carnage.
He said he never thought for one second about not airing the episode.
“It’s a hot debate,” said Podz, in an interview in the Radio-Canada cafeteria the other day. “So why not talk about it in our fiction? Art is supposed to contribute to a dialogue in society and it’s supposed to help us figure out how to deal with these traumatic events. So I think it’s perfect timing. Why should we hide from this reality that’s more and more preva- lent in our society?”
A similar debate arose surrounding the launch here in 2009 of Denis Villeneuve’s film Polytechnique, a work of fiction inspired by the murder of 14 young women at the École Polytechnique in December 1989. For me, the key question then with Polytechnique — and now with the 19-2 episode — is what these artists are trying to say with the depiction of these school shootings. Obviously, filmmakers should be able to make art about whatever they want, but you really have to tread carefully with this subject matter. 19-2 is a smart, provocative TV show and it has already raised many thought-provoking issues about what it’s like to be a police officer in a major city like Montreal in the early 21st century.
So, clearly, the episode is not just about sensationalism and boosting ratings. But what does it have to say new and important about a murderous rampage like this?
“The goal of this series is to explore what goes on in the life of a police officer, and show how these events affect their lives,” Podz said. “And this event will colour the psychology and personalities of every character in the show throughout the season.”
I mention that I think it’s quite unlikely one of the major U.S. networks would air an episode like this right at this point. Podz said the executives at Radio-Canada never put any pressure on the production team to nix this episode.
“I think Radio-Canada is pretty brave to put this out there,” Podz said. “The only thing is they didn’t want it to be too graphic, which it isn’t.”
19-2 is a groundbreaking show for Quebec TV. There have been plenty of gritty cop shows on American TV — from Hill Street Blues to The Wire — but there haven’t been many chez nous. There was Omerta a few years, but not much else. What’s intriguing with 19-2 is how it really takes us inside the heads of the cops, and it’s very much a warts-and-all portrait of our city’s men and women in blue. And they’re not all good cops.
The police were frontand-centre in the public consciousness last year as a result of the months-long student protests. and there was much discussion of alleged inappropriate police behaviour, most infamously with the case of Officer 728, Const. Stéfanie Trudeau, who was at the centre of much controversy for her behaviour during the demonstrations. So it would seem a natural that those protests and the police reaction to them might turn up on this season of 19-2. But that’s not the case.
“We won’t see a student riot and we won’t see an Officer 728,” Podz said. “It’s not a show about the SPVM (Montreal police force). It’s a show about cops in a North American city.”
The second season of 19-2 begins on Radio-Canada Jan. 28, at 9 p.m. The last episode of season one airs Jan. 21 at 9 p.m. on RadioCanada.