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Paul Gross delivers rollercoaster-ride political thriller in new TV drama H2O
Updated at 15:29 on October 27, 2004, EST.
TORONTO (CP) - Now this is more like it.
For those viewers who have been hungering for a quality Canadian TV drama, Paul Gross has delivered again. After his enormous critical success with the Shakespearean-themed miniseries Slings & Arrows last season, Gross has come roaring back with a volatile two-parter called H2O airing this time, not on pay cable, but on the CBC on Sunday and Monday night. It's a political thriller filled with passion, suspense, intrigue, murder and assassination. And it's all Canadian, yet devoid of the cheesiness that has marked well-meaning but pretentious efforts in the past. The title has multiple meanings but basically deals with a new prime minister's secret agenda to sell our fresh-water supplies to the Americans as the price to finance domestic health care. Out of that dry, procedural-sounding set-up, Gross, as star, co-writer and co-producer, has fashioned a fast-paced drama bulging with paranoia and conspiracy.
"It's very much a cautionary tale, a sort of kick to the side of the head, a storm warning," explains Gross, who is clearly proud of the project. "More than anything else, it should be a kick-ass rollercoaster ride.
"This makes it sound like it's a didactic story, it really is just. . .I thought 'Holy shit, this is going to be fantastic!""
H2O opens with a Trudeau-like prime minister paddling down a river in northern Quebec. His RCMP security begins to freak, though, when the canoe rounds a bend to their location, upside down. The PM's body is soon retrieved from some rapids and airlifted out but he is pronounced DOA. Missing is the body of his companion, a female Ottawa lawyer we later learn was also his mistress. Injured but still alive is their river guide, a character with a somewhat shady past.
Events then proceed at breakneck speed.
Back in Ottawa, the deputy prime minister, a former Quebec separatist, is sworn into office. And the PM's prodigal son (Gross) flies back from Europe for the funeral to deliver a powerfully-eloquent eulogy that, like Justin Trudeau's at his father's funeral four years ago, electrifies a grieving nation.
The son initially rebuffs party overtures to run for the leadership, but he soon changes his mind. As evidence of an assassination conspiracy emerge, so does a secret government plot to sell Canadian fresh-water supplies to a drought-infected United States, where the president is fairly licking his parched lips for access to all that northern H2O.
Loyalties shift as the ex-separatist is defeated by the PM's son and viewers are left wondering just who are the bad guys and who is out to save Canada.
The Trudeau similarities continue as the new PM invokes the War Measures Act to suppress a perceived terrorist threat on the nation. Asked how far he's prepared to go, Gross utters that iconic line; "Watch me."
"Yeah and it's fairly conscious," the actor says about the parallels. "We did try to use certain elements that would be familiar from real life, (we) just kind of slam them in side by side, so that there's a familiarity and it feels like it has a grounding."
But will Canadians, so used to seeing themselves as a benign culture apart from the evil political conspiracies in other lands, buy the film's premise that it could happen here?
"It's not that unusual and there is a certain level of corruption in most governments even if they are democratically elected, so that yeah, I think that we are kind of naive."
Gross says by and large the intentions of our elected officials are essentially good, but that our democracy is rather vulnerable.
"If someone were to arrive on the scene who had a dark agenda for the country, it's pretty hard to stop them," he adds. "Our checks and balances are not as enshrined or as built in cement as our neighbours to the south.
"If anything, this is a plea for engagement . . . wake up and pay attention to what's happening with your governments."
Adding in no small measure to the story's verisimilitude is the rare access the production got to Parliament Hill, both exterior and inside the real corridors of power.
"That was astonishing, actually to be in there," Gross says. "Actually shooting in our capital. And it is such a beautiful building. I wish we could have spent longer in there."
The rest of the cast is a who's who in Canadian acting: Gordon Pinsent is a Peter Mansbridge-type TV anchor, Leslie Hope is the federal cop who uncovers the murder conspiracy (and who catches the eye of the bachelor PM), Kenneth Welsh is a conniving industrialist, Martha Henry is the elder PM's anguished widow and Callum Keith Rennie is a scary agent provocateur.
The Canadian Press, 2004
Paul Gross delivers rollercoaster-ride political thriller in new TV drama H2O
Updated at 15:29 on October 27, 2004, EST.
TORONTO (CP) - Now this is more like it.
For those viewers who have been hungering for a quality Canadian TV drama, Paul Gross has delivered again. After his enormous critical success with the Shakespearean-themed miniseries Slings & Arrows last season, Gross has come roaring back with a volatile two-parter called H2O airing this time, not on pay cable, but on the CBC on Sunday and Monday night. It's a political thriller filled with passion, suspense, intrigue, murder and assassination. And it's all Canadian, yet devoid of the cheesiness that has marked well-meaning but pretentious efforts in the past. The title has multiple meanings but basically deals with a new prime minister's secret agenda to sell our fresh-water supplies to the Americans as the price to finance domestic health care. Out of that dry, procedural-sounding set-up, Gross, as star, co-writer and co-producer, has fashioned a fast-paced drama bulging with paranoia and conspiracy.
"It's very much a cautionary tale, a sort of kick to the side of the head, a storm warning," explains Gross, who is clearly proud of the project. "More than anything else, it should be a kick-ass rollercoaster ride.
"This makes it sound like it's a didactic story, it really is just. . .I thought 'Holy shit, this is going to be fantastic!""
H2O opens with a Trudeau-like prime minister paddling down a river in northern Quebec. His RCMP security begins to freak, though, when the canoe rounds a bend to their location, upside down. The PM's body is soon retrieved from some rapids and airlifted out but he is pronounced DOA. Missing is the body of his companion, a female Ottawa lawyer we later learn was also his mistress. Injured but still alive is their river guide, a character with a somewhat shady past.
Events then proceed at breakneck speed.
Back in Ottawa, the deputy prime minister, a former Quebec separatist, is sworn into office. And the PM's prodigal son (Gross) flies back from Europe for the funeral to deliver a powerfully-eloquent eulogy that, like Justin Trudeau's at his father's funeral four years ago, electrifies a grieving nation.
The son initially rebuffs party overtures to run for the leadership, but he soon changes his mind. As evidence of an assassination conspiracy emerge, so does a secret government plot to sell Canadian fresh-water supplies to a drought-infected United States, where the president is fairly licking his parched lips for access to all that northern H2O.
Loyalties shift as the ex-separatist is defeated by the PM's son and viewers are left wondering just who are the bad guys and who is out to save Canada.
The Trudeau similarities continue as the new PM invokes the War Measures Act to suppress a perceived terrorist threat on the nation. Asked how far he's prepared to go, Gross utters that iconic line; "Watch me."
"Yeah and it's fairly conscious," the actor says about the parallels. "We did try to use certain elements that would be familiar from real life, (we) just kind of slam them in side by side, so that there's a familiarity and it feels like it has a grounding."
But will Canadians, so used to seeing themselves as a benign culture apart from the evil political conspiracies in other lands, buy the film's premise that it could happen here?
"It's not that unusual and there is a certain level of corruption in most governments even if they are democratically elected, so that yeah, I think that we are kind of naive."
Gross says by and large the intentions of our elected officials are essentially good, but that our democracy is rather vulnerable.
"If someone were to arrive on the scene who had a dark agenda for the country, it's pretty hard to stop them," he adds. "Our checks and balances are not as enshrined or as built in cement as our neighbours to the south.
"If anything, this is a plea for engagement . . . wake up and pay attention to what's happening with your governments."
Adding in no small measure to the story's verisimilitude is the rare access the production got to Parliament Hill, both exterior and inside the real corridors of power.
"That was astonishing, actually to be in there," Gross says. "Actually shooting in our capital. And it is such a beautiful building. I wish we could have spent longer in there."
The rest of the cast is a who's who in Canadian acting: Gordon Pinsent is a Peter Mansbridge-type TV anchor, Leslie Hope is the federal cop who uncovers the murder conspiracy (and who catches the eye of the bachelor PM), Kenneth Welsh is a conniving industrialist, Martha Henry is the elder PM's anguished widow and Callum Keith Rennie is a scary agent provocateur.
The Canadian Press, 2004
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Date: 2004-10-27 06:08 pm (UTC)I'm Just Glad I Can Watch It!
Date: 2004-10-28 01:27 pm (UTC)I haven't had a "new" PG fix since Men With Brooms came out on DVD (I had to get a membership at a video rental place I've never used before, and haven't used since, and have them special order it in order to get that one!), and I had to actualy *go* up to Canada to watch Aspin Extreeme as no one here had any copies. So to be able to watch H2O the night it premears all over CA...Well...I'm a happy girl, however I can get it. ::LOL:: And since it is sorta a mini-reunion of some of the DS cast, all the better. I'm always looking for those CRK, and somewhat harder to find Gordon Pinsent fixes, too (it's nice to find Mr. Pinsent on Red Green ocationaly).
Re: I'm Just Glad I Can Watch It!
Date: 2004-10-31 05:05 pm (UTC)