Allan Hawco’s SAINT-PIERRE Charts New Territory for Canadian Television
The Republic of Doyle star returns in this police procedural that unfolds in the remote French territory off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador.
by Joe Mastromatteo
Photo by Derm Carberry
- Published on
More than 20 years after initially visiting Saint Pierre and Miquelon — a French archipelago south of Newfoundland — actor Allan Hawco recalls the exact moment he first docked on the island.
“We took a Zodiac across the Atlantic Ocean, 30 kilometres of open sea,” Hawco tells RANGE from his home in Newfoundland. “When we landed, customs met us on the wharf and stamped our passports on the side of a dory.”
It was during that trip that the seed for his latest television series, SAINT-PIERRE, was planted. “We walked around town, and I was just super moved by everything. At the end of the day, we were having a beer, and the whole thing kind of hit me like lightning.”
SAINT-PIERRE follows Hawco as Donny “Fitz” Fitzpatrick, an everyman detective with a quick wit and natural suaveness. After digging too deeply into a case in his native Newfoundland, Fitz is exiled to work in Saint Pierre and Miquelon. There, he is partnered with Geneviève “Arch” Archambault (Josephine Jobert), a Parisian detective whose grounded demeanor contrasts sharply with Fitz’s brash charm.
As the duo tackle cases, the layers of their intricate personal histories add depth to the story, and spark a special kind of chemistry.
“Ninety-nine per cent of everything that is said is scripted, and painstakingly so,” Hawco explains. The “magic,” as he calls it, is a testament to the strong working bond he shared with Jobert on set. “As we’re doing what’s on the page, (it) kind of becomes alive and real.”
While SAINT-PIERRE has the potential to captivate audiences beyond Canada, including French and European viewers, Hawco emphasized his focus on storytelling. “You can’t chase an audience,” he says. “What I was looking for was a story that I felt needed to be told. We started to work out different layers of who these people were, where they were from, what they wanted, and where they were going.”
Hawco also reflected on the comfort, and challenge, of working within the mystery procedural genre, a nod to his roots with Republic of Doyle. “If you look at a procedural cop show—I find those quite comforting as a writer. They’re super challenging, but they are also familiar, and I know the rules intrinsically.”
Over a decade since Republic of Doyle aired, Hawco expressed pride in how far Canadian television has come. “When we started doing Republic of Doyle, it was a rare thing to get a show that would do a million, a million-plus (in viewership). It’s not a simple answer as to why our game has gotten so good. There’s opportunity. There’s been a willingness from the public to buy in.”
Championing Canadian productions for “punching above their weight,” Hawco believes Canada’s TV quality competes strongly on a global scale. “We really punch at that level with SAINT-PIERRE. We just tried to focus really hard on story, on character, and great actors.”
SAINT-PIERRE premieres Monday, Jan. 6 on CBC Gem and broadcasts at 9 p.m. EST on CBC
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