`outstanding’ achievements

Initially adapted from novels and radio plays, or ‘radioromans,’ the teleroman has endured for more than 40 years as the most popular form of mass entertainment in Quebec.

Typically, teleromans attract network audiences of between one million and two million, and when a program has special merit, it’s discussed the following morning – in the newspapers, at home by friends over coffee, and at work.

The major historical difference between a Quebecois teleroman and an American soap, says an expert in the genre, is that the teleroman has attracted many of Quebec’s best playwrights and novelists.

‘If we think of (the late) Roger Lemelin, who wrote La famille Plouffe, or Germaine Guevremont (writer of Le Survenant),’ says screenwriter and teleroman historian Jean-Pierre Plante, ‘it’s as if Margaret Atwood, Pierre Berton or Mordecai Richler wrote drama each week for television.’

With a specific reference to Radio-Canada’s contribution to the art of the teleroman, the Banff Television Festival’s international board of advisors named the French-language public broadcaster this year’s winner of the CanWest Global Outstanding Achievement Award. It’s the first time a Canadian broadcaster has won the prestigious award since its inception in 1985.

As such, a word on the origins of the teleroman seems appropriate.

In the early 1950s, says Plante, television in Quebec borrowed from literature because of a shortage of other forms of dramatized production. Faced with a virtually non-existent film industry, producers at Radio-Canada turned to the novel.

A case in point, Lemelin adapted his novel Les Plouffes for radio in 1952. The following year it was reinvented as the first Radio-Canada teleroman, La famille Plouffe. A smash hit, the series was also broadcast in English on cbc.

In 1954, Guevremont adapted his novel Le Survenant for television.

‘This series was about an exiled spirit, who, unlike those around him, had traveled widely and lived abroad among anglophones,’ says Plante.

Other noteworthy novels brought to the small screen with great success in the early days include Claude-Henri Grignon’s Un Homme et son peche, which became Les Belles Histoires de pays d’en haut in 1956, and Robert Choquette’s La Pension Velder, which went to radio before becoming a teleroman in 1957.

Based on a novel written in the 1930s, Les Belles Histoires had an unparalleled 30-plus-year career in the psyche of the Quebecois, first as a novel, then as a radioroman, and finally as a teleroman which lasted for 14 years.

The series featured a cruel and truly unforgettable miser known as Seraphin.

As is still a current practice, Radio-Canada recruited writers from legitimate theater.

One of the more prominent was Marcel Dube, who wrote many teleplays and three original teleromans – La Cote de sable (1960-62), a story about a remarkable family who waits for their son to return at the end of ww ii, De 9 a 5 (1963-66), and La Vie promise.

‘It’s important to understand that in Quebec there is not much money to be made with books and theater, so television represented big bucks for writers,’ says Plante, the screenwriter of Restez a l’ecoute, a four-hour teleroman anthology, based on 2,000 hours of programs, that was commissioned by Radio-Canada in 1992.

Teleromans were created as entertainment, but historically they have played a pivotal social role for the Quebecois, says Plante.

One of Radio-Canada’s favorite authors, Victor-Levy Beaulieu, has written two teleromans in the past four or five years, L’Heritage and Montreal, P.Q.

L’Heritage broke new ground, asserts Plante, because it introduced the taboo subject of incest, and was inspired in large measure by themes and passages in the Bible.

In the 1960s, teleromans revealed what was extraordinary about people who otherwise lived ordinary, everyday lives, says Plante.

Notable shows included Louis Morisset’s Les filles d’Eve, Francoise Loranger’s Sous le signe du lion, Reginald Boisvert’s Le pain du jour, Rue de l’anse and Le bonheur des autres, Guy Dufresne’s Septieme nord, and Rue des pignons, scripted by Louis Morisset until his death, and then by his wife, Mia Riddez.

An excellent source of information on the teleroman is the recently published Cinematheque quebecoise anthology, Repertoire des series, feuilleton et teleromans quebecois 1952-1992.

According to author, broadcaster and teleroman writer Guy Fournier, Quebec television and its most popular expression, the teleroman, were largely responsible for the advent of the all-transforming Quiet Revolution in the 1960s.

‘Before television, there was no culture in Quebec. There was only folklore, and that’s something very different,’ writes Fournier in the anthology’s preface.

The current slate of Radio-Canada teleromans includes Sous un ciel variable, set in a small town where logical but greedy developers battle environmentalists; La petite vie, a very nutty and popular sitcom; A nous deux, a story about the private lives and courtroom experiences of a group of lawyers; Watatatow, a young teen series not so unlike Degrassi; and Montreal, P.Q., a scandalous tale set in Montreal in the late 1940s when the city was known for its ‘wide open’ action.

Teleromans differ considerably from Quebec drama series such as Scoop, La Misericorde or Blanche.

They are shot mainly in-studio on videotape, as opposed to 16mm film, and have longer runs than series, usually 26 episodes a season. And they are produced at a fraction of the cost of private-sector dramas.

Last season, teleromans broadcast by Radio-Canada averaged a million viewers per week and rarely attracted under 700,000. The most popular, La petite vie, reached an audience of close to two million.

Currently, Radio-Canada produces five hours of teleromans in-house each week and commissions another four hours a week of independently produced drama. The genre makes up 12% of the public French-language broadcaster’s primetime schedule.