Jocelyn Deschênes, one of Quebec’s hottest producers, is making his first foray into English television with a remake of his hit Radio-Canada sitcom Rumeurs, and who better to help him navigate the murky waters of the English market than TV visionary Moses Znaimer.

The two have joined forces to make Rumours, a half-hour comedy about the careers, loves and family lives of the staff at a Toronto women’s gossip magazine. It is set to premiere on CBC Oct. 9 at 9 p.m.

Znaimer, who executive produces, says the show’s universal appeal attracted him.

‘It doesn’t matter if it’s Toronto, Vancouver or Sao Paulo – the show is about ‘big city’ themes,’ says Znaimer, who in another life cofounded Citytv. ‘Everyone is looking for love; everyone is sweating their careers… and whatever you’re doing leads you into traffic and pollution.’

Znaimer met Deschênes two years ago at SRC’s fall launch. Several days later, an independently financed pilot for an English version of Rumeurs was in the works. Now the CBC has ordered 20 episodes of the new series, one of the Ceeb’s largest single orders for a new show.

In Quebec, Rumeurs regularly reaches more than one million viewers and has won multiple awards, including best comedy at last year’s Prix Gemeaux. It is currently in production on its fifth season.

The English-language scripts are straight translations of the French ones by Isabelle Langlois, with minor colloquial changes and a few Toronto-specific references slipped in. Langlois approves the final scripts, which have been translated and tweaked by Arthur Holden.

It costs just over $300,000 per episode to shoot in Montreal and ‘benefits from the exceptional leverage you can get when the two productions are actually in process at the same time,’ according to Znaimer. The English version wraps shooting Sept. 8, while the French continues on until February.

Rumours borrows not only the sets from its French predecessor, but also helmers Louis Choquette (Temps dur) and Éric Tessier (Sur le seuil) and its seasoned crew. The English version will, however, introduce a new cast, including Amy Price-Francis (Cake), David Haydn-Jones (The Last Kiss), longtime favorite Jennifer Dale (Love Come Down), Sadie LeBlanc (Celeste in the City) and Stephanie Mills (Lives of the Saints).

‘Historic efforts to bridge [the French and English TV markets] have almost always amounted to one cast trying to shoot two different-language programs at the same time. It’s extremely difficult – probably impossible – to find a cast so fluid in both [languages],’ says Znaimer.

Translating a Quebec series for the English market was a logical next step for Deschênes, founder and president of Montreal-based Sphère Média Plus, which produces more than half a dozen hit shows in Quebec, including Le monde de Charlotte, Un monde à part and Providence for SRC, as well as Annie et ses hommes and 2 frères on TVA.

‘I felt that I couldn’t go further than I have in Quebec, and wondered how I could do something else,’ says Deschênes.

He and Znaimer are not stopping with Rumours. They are also in negotiations with CBC to produce an English version of Vice caché (like Desperate Housewives, but from the male point of view), now entering its third season on TVA. The two are also hoping to produce a translated version of Les hauts et les bas de Sophie Paquin, Deschênes’ latest comedy, set to premiere on SRC this fall.

Znaimer says he is also deep in negotiations with leading South American broadcasters TV Bandeirantes and TV Globo Internacional to produce Spanish and Portugese versions of Rumeurs in South America. The recipe would be the same: translated scripts with local references and vernacular, distinct casts, and shared sets and crew. He also says there is a potential for selling the format in Europe, with French and German versions being produced side by side.

CBC believes the program has a plum timeslot for its target demographic – the challenge is to bring the viewers there.

‘We’re thinking the audience is going to be largely female, so the kind of marketing, communications and promotion plan that we have for it takes it outside of the usual ways that we’ve promoted other shows,’ says CBC executive director of network programming Kirstine Layfield.

According to Layfield, a promotion plan is in place, but she says it’s too early to release specific details.

Layfield says the success of Rumours’ first season will not necessarily be measured by how close it gets to the magic million-viewer mark – a figure regularly surpassed by the French version, and one CBC TV head Richard Stursberg recently cited as a target for all scripted CBC series.

But the pressure on Rumours to perform is now amplified after the hasty cancellation of The One, the ABC reality show simulcast on the Ceeb. The future is now in doubt for a proposed Canadian version of The One, which was supposed to join Rumours as two of the cornerstones of the pubcaster’s primetime lineup.

‘It’s one of the top new shows on for fall, so we do have high expectations for it, but in terms of quantifying it with numbers at this point, we’re going to see how it plays out,’ says Layfield. ‘For me, success is doing anything better than we did the year before.’

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