QUEBEC’S TV DIVERSITY
Gémeaux prizes given out
Vincent Leclerc just stopped dead in mid-sentence. It was in the press room at the Prix Gémeaux and Leclerc was talking to a group of journalists after having won as best actor in a drama “saisonnière,” meaning a drama that runs for half a season.
He played Séraphin Poudrier in the Radio-Canada series Les pays d’en haut, one of the most talkedabout series of the past year in Quebec TV, and when he accepted the award on stage at Théâtre St-Denis, he’d talked about how significant it was that the producers and broadcaster had taken a chance on an actor who wasn’t a household name to play the lead in such an important series.
In the scrum, I asked him if he could follow up with some thoughts on that idea. He was about to answer, when he suddenly realized something.
“Wait a second, I think I forgot to thank some people,” said Leclerc. “I forgot to thank RadioCanada, Sovimage and Encore Télévision. Holy sh--. Hang on, I feel really bad. I forgot to thank the producers. Oh man, I feel really bad. They’re the ones that chose me. I’m very upset. I think I’m going to go have a drink.” He then walked off. Just before that, he talked about how moved he was to win the prize. When he won, the first thing he thought was, “I wanted to underline that sometimes we pick actors who aren’t wellknown and we give them lead roles and it can work out pretty well.”
Les pays d’en haut is a remake of one of the most famous series in the history of Québécois TV, Les Belles Histoires des pays d’en haut, which ran on Radio-Canada from 1956 to 1970. It was inspired by the novel Un homme et son péché, a tragic drama that’s a love triangle involving a young woman, Donalda, and the two men in love with her, the adventurer Alexis and the miserable misanthrope Séraphin, played by Leclerc in the new adaptation.
The 31st Prix Gémeaux, the Quebec television awards, were held Sunday night and broadcast live on ICI Radio-Canada Télé, with hosts Éric Salvail and Jean-Philippe Wauthier, who did a terrific job of adding some edge to the proceedings with their barbed humour.
There was no one show that dominated. Série noire was the leading nominee, in a tie with Unité 9, with 13 nominations, and the totally inspired offbeat dramatic comedy Série noire had handily dominated the Prix Gémeaux two years ago, taking home 11 statuettes. But the black comedy/thriller about a couple of screenwriters who get mixed up with the mob and a lot more didn’t win anything Sunday night, only winning four behindthe-scenes trophies at an earlier gala Thursday night.
That’s really too bad because the second season of Série noire continued to push the envelope even further than the first one and it was great to see a Rad-Can show that wasn’t just trying to please the biggest number of viewers with the usual fare.
Unité 9 did a bit better at the gala Sunday, winning as best drama, full season, and Guylaine Tremblay took the honours as best actress in a full-season drama for her extraordinary performance as the prisoner Marie Lamontagne in this toughas-nails drama set in a female penitentiary in Quebec.
In fact, four of the big winners Sunday gave a good sense of the impressive variety of TV being produced in Quebec.
“We made a lot of great TV this year,” said Salvail. And he’s right. Best drama, half season, went to Les pays d’en haut, a show that managed to take a classic Quebec story and make it relevant to audiences today. Then there was Unité 9. This is an extraordinary series that doesn’t shy away from the more harrowing side of life in prison for female inmates and packs a remarkable emotional punch.
Best comedy, as usual, went to Les beaux malaises, and no one was arguing about that choice. The TVA sitcom is one of the most popular shows in the province and, along with Martin Petit’s Les Pêcheurs, it has dragged local TV kicking and screaming into the 21st century, delivering the kind of smart, challenging comedy that’s the norm on cable TV south of the border.
Another big winner at the Prix Gémeaux was Laurence Leboeuf, who nabbed the hardware as best lead actress in a half-season drama, for her role as a woman working in a halfway house in Marche à l’Ombre. This is also notable given that it is one of the first major series to premiere on the pay network Super Écran.
“I’m super moved and really excited and really touched,” said Leboeuf. “It’s a role that demanded a lot of physical and emotional energy from me. I’m just really happy to see it recognized. My character is not very stable and we talk about all of that.”