After threatening to stop making big-budget dramas, Quebec’s largest private television network, TVA, has ordered a third season of the lavish historic series Nos étés.

‘Despite the difficulties, broadcasters know that we need those big-budget dramas that unite viewers. They are still the backbone of television programming in Quebec,’ says Michel d’Astous, a writer and producer with Duo Productions, which coproduces the hour-long drama with Cirrus Communications.

At $800,000 per episode, Nos étés – the story of six generations of a rural Quebec family – will be the most expensive domestic series to carry a TVA logo next season.

The decision to renew Nos étés surprised many in the industry, since TVA owner Pierre Karl Péladeau said earlier this year that big-budget dramas were too expensive to produce. Viewers, he said, were turning to specialty channels and the Internet for entertainment, and advertisers were following suit. Just one month earlier, TVA caused an uproar after canceling two big-budget dramas, Vice caché and Un homme mort, both of which cost over $800,000 per hour to make.

The network claimed they didn’t earn enough ad revenue. Vice caché attracted, on average, 869,000 viewers each week. Un homme mort brought in 1.3 million, on par with the 1.4 million that watched season one of Nos étés. Its second run is slated to air this fall.

‘Eight hundred thousand dollars for an historic series isn’t an enormous budget. But we made a programming choice to make fewer big-budget series, but to still do them,’ TVA spokesperson Nicole Tardif told the Montreal daily La Presse.

In Quebec, big-budget dramas, or séries lourdes, generally cost more than $800,000 per hour. The broadcasters that run big-budget drama series – Radio-Canada and TVA – contribute roughly 30% of the budgets through licence fees. Most of the remaining cash comes from provincial and federal tax credits and the Canadian Television Fund.

SRC says it still believes in séries lourdes, but appears to invest less money in them. Three years ago, the net’s most expensive series was the now-canceled Jack Carter, which cost $925,000 per hour. This upcoming season it will be the new 7e Round, at around $690,000.

The two other Quebec broadcasters, the private network TQS and the provincially funded Télé-Québec, have lower operating budgets and typically shy away from expensive dramas.

‘It’s a difficult period for big-budget dramas,’ says d’Astous. ‘Eight years ago, we would have spent more than $1.3 million on this type of series. But today, everything is more expensive, so we have to be more resourceful.’

Cutting those corners starts with the script. ‘I can’t put a scene on a train or downtown where we need big crowds, because that costs,’ he says.

Cirrus’ Jacques Blain notes that actors, technicians and writers will sometimes work for less, to a point.

‘People will accept to make less money in order to deliver the product, but of course there’s a limit,’ he says.

Although they did go over budget by $300,000 to produce an earlier season of Nos étés, the producers expect to stay in the black for the third.

‘Each team has a different theory of how to cut costs without compromising quality,’ says André Dupuy of Pixcom Productions (7e Round, Au Nom de la loi). He believes good TV is about communicating emotions. ‘If we have good actors and the script is good and the emotions are there, other stuff matters less.’

But Dupuy admits it’s harder these days to make epic tales such the period piece Les Filles de Caleb – which captured the attention of more than half of Canada’s French-speaking population when it was broadcast in the early 1990s. ‘It’s pretty hard to reconstruct the battle of the Plains of Abraham on a low budget,’ he says.

Cirrus’ Blain agrees: ‘There are certain stories we can’t tell without money. Historic, action or science fiction series are hard to do on a low budget.’

Unlike in English Canada, big-budget dramas make up a very small percentage of current television production in Quebec, says Céline Pelletier, spokeswoman for the APFTQ. ‘Most series made here have budgets smaller than $800,000.’

According to the Quebec producers group, the average budget for a French-language fiction hour in 2005 was $259,000, compared to $1.3 million in English Canada.

Typically, SRC and TVA usually broadcast between two and four expensive dramas a year. The remaining series fall into three categories: cheap téléromans (soap operas such as Virginie, which are filmed in studio and cost around $200,000 per hour to make); téléromans plus such as Annie et ses hommes (filmed in studio with some exterior shots, costing between $350,000 and $425,000 per hour); and séries mi-lourde (medium budget) such as Minuit, le soir, which are shot on location and usually cost around $625,000 per hour to make.

D’Astous believes the budgetary constraints are changing the stories that are getting told on Quebec’s small screen. ‘I think, more and more, we see dramas focused on the couple, or on fewer numbers of people.’

Despite the constraints, he remains positive about the future of Quebec’s lavish dramas – a mainstay of the province’s TV culture.

‘I think there will always be a place for good stories,’ he says. ‘It was like that 50 years ago and it’s like that now. It’s up to us to adapt to the financial reality of broadcasters and funding institutions.’