Montreal: According to television drama writer Rejean Tremblay, tv’s hold over the public is deepening and society’s political options have become entwined with the medium’s self-serving influence.

Network television and its machinations are the subject of the latest Tremblay series, Reseaux, a 20-hour Emergence International production slated to air on Radio-Canada this fall.

According to the writer, a globe-trotting columnist with Montreal daily La Presse, setting the series in a competitive work environment plays to his own conviction that effective tv drama is built on the struggle between winners and losers.

Reseaux tracks the intrigues, aspirations and stories that tie and undo reporters, newsroom staff and management at a major public tv network and its fierce, private-sector competitor.

The series is being shot in two 10-hour blocks produced at $840,000 an hour and is the first tv drama from Emergence, an equal partnership production company headed by Louise Gendron and producers Andre Viau and Pierre Lalande.

The first leg of the $17-million production wraps in May and encompasses 82 shooting days. Alliance Communications, which sold Shehaweh for Gendron in the past, has acquired international rights on Reseaux.

‘Cinelande [Viau and Lalande’s commercial house] is using lots of directors and I am working with those directors as well,’ says Gendron.

Per Gendron, working with a proprietary and experienced group of directors – Erik Canuel, Charles Biname, Richard Ciupka, Yves Simoneau and others – sets up interesting advantages and helps to concentrate ‘a similar way of thinking.’

‘The most important thing that we’d like to convey is that we have directors who are hot in teleseries and features,’ says Viau. ‘I am a step ahead [of my competitors]. I can turn around and say [to a client], `Who do you want, I’ve got him here.’ ‘

Emergence will produce both tv series and feature films in English as well as in French and with coproduction partners.

‘We’re building our credibility at the moment,’ says Viau, ‘and we didn’t come in by the back door, we came in through the front door.’

Gendron, who manages the new company, says this is only ‘the first season [of Reseaux] and we will renegotiate it [the hourly budget] next year.’

165-day shoot

Reseaux has 200 speaking roles and a thousand extras. Gabriel Pelletier (Karmina, Sirens, Emily of New Moon) is directing the first five episodes, with Benoit Pilon (Rosaire et la Petite Nation) directing the next five. The series is being shot in parallel (in blocks covering various episodes), with the second portion starting up in mid-July and going through to late December.

Leading players include Patrick Huard, Micheline Lanctot, Widemir Normil, Paul Bisson, Rene Gagnon, Caroline Neron, Pascale Montpetit, Pierre Collin, Lorne Brass, Remy Girard and Mario Saint-Amand as an unscrupulous and seductive pop singer.

Cast as Reseaux’s top newscaster, Dorothee Berryman (Winter Lily, Urban Angel, Dames de Coeur) says Tremblay has penned an interesting role. ‘Network tv is a tough place. If I look at it from the point of view of my character, she is a woman with values and good ethics and I think it’s a very difficult job. She probably worked very hard to get there because it’s a man’s world. She put a lot of energy into her career, and perhaps, in her personal life, there are a lot of problems.’

Commenting on Reseaux’s cinematography, dop Bruce Chun says, ‘We’re always moving on a dolly, always. We have a lot of pages to do each day. It’s a tv series so we want to go with something that’s basic and simple and locations that are easy to light and look good fast.’

Chun’s dual Aaton setup is lighting up to 5,000 feet of film a day.

Transposed from Toronto, Chun (Reaper, The Hunger) is shooting on the new Super 16mm Kodak Vision 200 film stock (7274) and the Vision 250 daylight stock (7246).

Daniele Rohrbach is Reseaux’s supervising producer, Andre Chamberland is the art director, Michele Hamel is doing the costumes and Glenn Burman is editing. Yvon Dupuis and Louis Dupire are the sound team. Mureille Laferriere is handling the casting and Robert M. Lepage is the music composer.

Tremblay (Urgence, Scoop) says dealing with Radio-Canada brass on the direction of the story was a ‘delicate’ business.

‘It’s like asking the medical association to approve the scripts for Urgence,’ he says. (Urgence is a tv series set in a hospital emergency ward penned by Tremblay and Fabienne Larouche.)

Tremblay’s current interests in dramatic tv include a series on the world of casinos and the intrigues of a Montreal-based rcmp unit.

As for Pelletier, he’s looking at an upcoming English feature project with Lux Films, a Behaviour Communications subsidiary, and an English-track tv series with Prisma Productions.

Reseaux investors include Radio-Canada, Telefilm Canada ($2.8 million), sodec, the ctcpf lip program and both Quebec and Canadian production credits.