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Denis McGrath teases X Company’s season finale

First, the good news: X Company has been renewed for a third season. The bad news? Our favourite Allied spy team is up to their necks in trouble heading into Wednesday’s second season finale. Will Aurora and Alfred be successful in turning Franz Faber? Will the squad be able to help the Canadian soldiers stranded on the beach at Dieppe?

We spoke to X Company‘s writer/co-executive producer, Denis McGrath, about what’s in store and the stunning real-life story behind Episode 8, “Butcher and Bolt.”

Congratulations on this season of X Company. It’s been spectacular.
Denis McGrath: You never know how good it’s going when you’re doing it. In the beginning, you’d see footage of Torben [Liebrecht] and think, ‘Oh my God, he’s taking it to the next level,’ but it doesn’t really connect until it’s finished. We all see the episodes when they’re in their rough cuts, and the music isn’t complete and the editing is still a little wonky. It’s takes a lot to get a jaded television professional to watch the finished version and go, ‘Oh my God!’ I’ve been doing that this season.

Was there anything that showrunners Mark Ellis and Stephanie Morgenstern wanted to explore specifically this season?
We wanted everyone to be a little more bashed up this season. The reference points we kept going to were the amazing pictures of soldiers before they went to Afghanistan and then one year later when they rotated back. It was haunting because you could see in their faces that none of these guys would ever be the same again. We wanted that sort of aspect to it. And the main thing they brought to us—and I was skeptical about it at first—was that they wanted to have a very compressed timeframe because they wanted to start with the Vel’ d’Hiv roundup of the Jews in July of 1942 and end with Dieppe, which is a little over a month later. That’s very compressed for 10 episodes and we had to figure out the timeline.

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We actually had a calendar up in the writers’ room that was the summer of 1942 and we penciled in, ‘Episode 1 takes place here and Episode 2 takes place here.’ The other thing that they brought—and we loved—was Sinclair in the field. There was a good mix where they came in with a backbone and then from there it was pretty easy to fill the bones in. We locked in very early with what we were doing.

What does the Episode 9 title, “Butcher and Bolt,” mean?
The more you look into Dieppe, what’s cool about it is that that 75 years later or whatever it is, there is still a legitimate argument about what the hell they were thinking. David O’Keefe’s book, One Day in August, basically said that the whole Dieppe raid was a cover for an intelligence operation and they were trying to get an Enigma machine. All of the books seem to agree that no one knew what the Allies were going for with this raid.

What was supposed to be a bigger invasion was scaled down to what it became and they changed the name of the operation. There is a line in the communications somewhere where Churchill refers to it as a “butcher and bolt” operation, which is a bit of cockney slang in there. To take a butcher is to take a look, so it was to go in, take a look around, and then get the hell out. That was the whole plan.

“We always said in the writers’ room that if anyone felt safe, we weren’t doing justice to the era.”

Talk about the radar part of the storyline.
We kept circling back to the radar thing because there is a truly amazing story. It happened with a real Canadian named Jack Nissenthall, who actually did the mission that our guys do in Episode 9 and 10. He was a guy who knew about radar and his job was to hook up with a group of soldiers and he was supposed to infiltrate the German radar station and get their secrets and then blow it up. Things went south and they couldn’t get there, but at one point the literally found themselves on top of a tank and had to take it out. In the end, they didn’t get into the radar station, but they got the intel in a different way, which we will show. Essentially, the mission competed by the X Company spies really happened.

What can you tell me about Scuba Man? He created the diversion at Camp X and then nothing.
[Laughs.] The only thing that I will say is that we do leave some threads hanging.

What can you tell me about the season finale, “August 19”?
There is a sense of finality. We do close off the story. There are a lot of scenes of closure that were inevitable and some horrible stuff that happens. There is some amazing stuff that causes you to think, ‘Oh my God, what’s going to happen in the next chapter?’ It’s a tough watch, man. We continue to do what we did to the audience all season and that’s to drive a lot of emotion, action and the feels.

Is there a chance someone from the core group doesn’t make it?
What I will say is that we always said in the writers’ room that if anyone felt safe, we weren’t doing justice to the era.

X Company‘s season finale airs Wednesday at 9 p.m. on CBC.

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CBC announces new and returning series for 2016-17 season

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From a media release:

CBC today announced five new original programs to its 2016-17 lineup of Canadian hits, along with the renewal of another 10 returning titles. Among the new titles are The Council (working title), a crime drama set in an isolated arctic outpost; observational series The School (working title); Northern-Canadian docu-series True North Calling; comedy series Four In The Morning; and Caught, a dramatic miniseries based on Lisa Moore’s novel of the same name. Series renewed for new seasons as part of the CBC-TV lineup include Murdoch Mysteries, Heartland, The Romeo Section, Hello Goodbye, Canada’s Smartest Person, This Life, X Company, Exhibitionists, Interrupt This Program and Crash Gallery.

NEW SERIES:

CAUGHT – New
6×60 (Winter 2017) – Take the Shot Productions and Entertainment One Television (eOne Television)
Adapted from the book by acclaimed author Lisa Moore, Caught is a riveting tale of bravado and betrayal, of complex characters and treacherous seas, of love, loss and last chances. Allan Hawco stars as David Slaney, who after six years incarcerated in a Nova Scotia prison for smuggling marijuana, has escaped. Slaney sets off on an odyssey that takes him deep into Latin America to reconnect with his once best friend and partner-in-crime who left him holding the bag years earlier. Slaney tastes freedom, but trusts no one and sees cops everywhere he goes.

 THE COUNCIL (working title) – New
10×60 (Fall 2016) – Lark Productions and Keston International Productions
The Council begins on the edge of the Arctic frontier during the endless days of the polar summer when a young woman, a renowned environmentalist, is found ritualistically murdered near the Canadian hamlet of Resolute. An investigation is mounted by the local RCMP inspector Mickey Behrens, an outsider and new-comer to the north who is running from a derailed personal and professional life, and her partner, officer Jo Ullulaq. A soulful counterpoint to Mickey, Jo is torn between the duty to his job and loyalty to his Inuit culture. The pair quickly discovers that the mystery extends far beyond the borders of the town and to the backrooms of Canadian parliament in Ottawa, the dark corridors of U.S. intelligence in Washington, D.C., the committee rooms of the Arctic Council in Copenhagen, the airbases of world powers, and the migrant conflicts at the border of Norway and Russia.

FOUR IN THE MORNING – New
8×30 (Summer 2016) – Serendipity Point Films
Four In The Morning is an edgy comedy that follows four friends in their twenties as they navigate life at the unpredictable, emotional and bewitching hour of 4 a.m. Dealing with themes of life and death, love and heartbreak, friendship and betrayal, it’s a series about self-discovery, disappointment and clawing after dreams that always feel out of reach.

THE SCHOOL (working title) – New
6×60 (Fall 2016) – Paperny Entertainment
The School is an intense, surprising and intimate series that, for the first time, looks deep into the incredible dynamic existing today between students and their teachers at a typical Canadian high school. Based on the award-winning UK format, The School offers unprecedented access into the day-to-day goings on at South Kamloops Secondary School in Kamloops, BC. Facing daily pressures at school, at home and in the world, today’s teens deal with seemingly insurmountable challenges. The School explores themes of teenage life and those all-important student-teacher relationships, which lie at the heart of everyone’s formative years. Fitting in, falling out, exam pressure, peer pressure, first love and last chances—The School uses warmth and humour to describe steps on the journey towards self-knowledge, at a time when both the present and the future remain uncertain.  The School is distributed by Endemol Shine and will premiere on CBC in fall 2016.

TRUE NORTH CALLING – New
7×30 (Winter 2017) – Proper Television
True North Calling will reveal the north to audiences in an entirely new, modern and surprising way. The series follows one season in the lives of several young, dynamic Arctic dwellers carving out a life for themselves and their families on the frozen tundra. We follow the daily dramas as each deals with unforgiving terrain, and unpredictable weather, hunting, guiding, fishing and farming, travelling by snowmobile and dog sled, mixing traditional ways with modern technology, all while making a living in Canada’s most spectacular and treacherous environment.

These newly announced series will debut during the 2016-2017 season, along with previously announced new shows, including: Shoot The Messenger; Workin’ Moms; Kim’s Convenience; and Baroness von Sketch Show.

RETURNING TITLES:

CANADA’S SMARTEST PERSON – Season 3
6×60 (Fall 2016) – Media Headquarters
Canada’s Smartest Person is an original competition series that inspires and entertains Canadians. Each week, competitors go head-to-head in a series of mind-bending challenges that redefine what it means to be smart. Based on the Theory of Multiple Intelligence, the series explores six categories of smarts including linguistic, physical, musical, visual, social and logical.

CRASH GALLERY – Season 2
5×30 (Winter 2017) – Lark Productions
Hosted by Sean O`Neill of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Crash Gallery is a high energy, immersive television series that brings art to life.  In each episode, three talented artists face-off in a real-time creative arena, giving the audience a front row seat and the opportunity to share in the creative process.

EXHIBITIONISTS – Season 2
26×30 (Fall 2016)
Exhibitionists is a vibrant series that pulls back the curtain on people who create, and why they do it. Hosted by actor, writer and educator Amanda Parris, this weekly show features Canadian artists as they reshape our country’s artistic landscape. Topical, innovative and entertaining, Exhibitionists explores the most exciting cultural happenings across Canada through a passionate lens.

HEARTLAND – Season 10
18×60 (Fall 2016) – Seven24 Films and Dynamo Films
Heartland continues the saga of a Western family as they chase big dreams and manage life’s setbacks, while holding on to what matters most: courage, love, family, and a home you can always come back to. Starring Amber Marshall, Graham Wardle, Alisha Newton, Michelle Morgan, Shaun Johnston and Chris Potter.

HELLO GOODBYE – Season 2
13×30 (Fall 2016) – Pivotal Media and Forte Entertainment
Bustling airport arrival and departure terminals see thousands of people every day, and each and every traveller has a unique story to tell. Host Dale Curd meets people from all walks of life who are in the midst of welcoming home or saying goodbye to their loved ones. He witnesses heartwarming, emotional moments that demonstrate the universal themes of love, loss, family, friendship, grief, and joy through each intimate story of arrival and departure.

INTERRUPT THIS PROGRAM – Season 2
5×30 (Winter 2017) – Noble Television and Storypark Inc.
Interrupt This Program returns with new episodes revealing the surprisingly vital cultural underbellies of unsettled, global cities. In each compelling episode, passionate young artists display art as a form of protest, as a means of survival and as an agent of change. Viewers are guided through parts of the world they have most likely never seen and experience the creativity and vitality of some of the planet’s most intriguing, resilient cities.

THIS LIFE – Season 2
10×60 (Fall 2016) – Sphere Media
Based on the original Radio-Canada hit, Nouvelle adresse, This Life is a family saga set in Montreal that focuses on Natalie Lawson (Torri Higginson), an accomplished columnist and single mother in her early forties whose terminal cancer diagnosis sends her on a quest to prepare her teenage children for life without her. Her tight-knit family – sister (Lauren Lee Smith), two brothers (Rick Roberts, Kristopher Turner) and parents (Peter MacNeill, Janet Laine Green), do the best they can to help her, while coping with their own responses to this revelation.

MURDOCH MYSTERIES – Season 10
18×60 (Fall 2016) – Shaftesbury Films
Season 10 of Murdoch Mysteries, marking 150 episodes of the series, will continue to follow the heroes at the Toronto Constabulary as they solve crimes inspired by Canadian history and international celebrities of the early 20th century. Detective Murdoch (Yannick Bisson) will continue to use his cutting-edge forensic methods and scientific inventions to catch criminals and find unexpected adventures in his home life with wife Doctor Ogden (Hélène Joy) and his colleagues at Station House Four, while last season’s newcomer Miss James (Mouna Traoré) takes on more responsibilities at the morgue.

THE ROMEO SECTION – Season 2
10×60 (Fall 2016) – Haddock Entertainment
Season 2 of The Romeo Section finds freelance intelligence agent Wolfgang McGee (Andrew Airlie) tasked with a covert investigation of a terrorist incident. The trail leads him forward into the dark side of intelligence services and backwards into his own past history of serving in that realm, and its tragic personal and social consequences.  Meanwhile, Lily Song (Jemmy Chen) is now a recruit for the Intelligence Service and working her way up the ladder, while taking drastic action to prevent her discovery as a double agent. Up and coming drug gangster Rufus (Juan Riedinger) gets caught in an escalating city-wide turf war which upsets the gangster hierarchy and triggers an attempted coup d’etat at the top of the heroin food chain.

X COMPANY – Season 3
10×60 (Winter 2017) – Temple Street Productions
Inspired by remarkable true events, X Company is an emotionally driven character drama set in the thrilling and dangerous world of WWII espionage and covert operations. During World War II, a real life spy training school existed on the shores of Lake Ontario. The series follows the stories of five highly skilled young recruits torn from their ordinary lives to train as agents at an ultra-secret training facility, Camp X.

These renewed titles join an impressive list of returning series that have already been announced, including: This Hour Has 22 Minutes (Season 24); Rick Mercer Report (Season 14); Schitt’s Creek (Season 3); Mr. D (Season 6); Dragons’ Den (Season 11); Still Standing (Season 2); Michael: Tuesdays & Thursdays (Season 2), and When Calls The Heart (Season 2).

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Link: ‘X Company’ star Connor Price previews ‘huge’ two-part finale

From A.R. Wilson of Digital Journal:

‘X Company’ star Connor Price previews ‘huge’ two-part finale
“There was pressure because I had to portray and explore something that people have gone through, and if I wasn’t able to portray that properly, it was almost offending to the people that had to go through that. So there was always kind of that voice in the back of my head reminding me to make sure that I’m exploring every option and keeping it as real and as honest as possible.” Continue reading.

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X Company’s Connor Price describes Harry’s dark journey

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Harry James has been through a lot in Season 2 of X Company. He fell in love with a woman who revealed he and his team’s location to the Germans, putting them in mortal danger. Then the Germans attacked the camp they were using to train members of the Resistance while team leader Aurora was away on a train ride with Sabine. The result? A bitter, emotionally hardened young man who doesn’t trust Aurora and wants to slit the throats of all Nazis.

We spoke to Connor Price, the soft-voiced actor who has portrayed Harry so masterfully this season.

Before we get into this season in particular, can we go back? How did you end up playing Harry?
Connor Price: I remember getting an email from my Canadian agent for a new CBC series called Camp X. I had no idea what to expect. I didn’t know what Camp X was and did some research into it. I learned that it was spy training facility in Whitby, Ont., that was really close to me, growing up in Markham, Ont. I thought it was fake; this really cool spy story. To find out that it was real and that real people in history had trained there … Roald Dahl, directors of the CIA, Ian Fleming … there is so much history and it’s cool. From there I read the first script and was introduced to this amazing world that Mark Ellis and Stephanie Morgenstern had created. Of course, this was before the show’s name was changed to X Company.

You didn’t audition for any other roles, correct? It was always Harry?
Right. Harry appeared, right off the bat, very real to me. In the breakdown, Mark and Stephanie had described him, I think, as “a nerd or geek.” From their retelling, a lot of kids had come in to audition acting more like a geek, pushing up on their glasses. But what I got from him was a quiet intelligence. He wasn’t the typical geek or nerd. He was very smart, very mature, he knew what he wanted and how to get it, but in a very smart way. From their words, I brought in something they hadn’t seen yet and was refreshing. Luckily, I had the same idea they did when it came to how to play Harry.

X_Company

Let’s talk about Harry’s journey. In the first episode on Season 1, I viewed him as somewhat innocent. He has definitely hardened over the two seasons, thanks to being betrayed by Siobhan. He’s put up some pretty firm emotional walls. It’s been tough to watch as a viewer; what’s it been like to see this evolution through the scripts?
Seeing that transition and reading the scripts between Season 1 and 2 has been something … the arc the writers have created is something they’ve done so well. In between the first and second seasons, Mark and Stephanie told me there would be a huge change. Harry would reach a breaking point and be in fits of range and commit murder. I thought to myself, “How are they going to make that work?” Of course, within five episodes they’re able to plant those ideas. Even in Episode 1 with Siobhan, this nurse he had affection for, is ripped apart by a car in front of him … that was such a great way to set the tone for Harry. This person that was somewhat naive became hardened and disturbed and angry, but in a very chilling, calm way. To see him go from not wanting to blow up a bridge of Germans because they’re fathers, brothers and sons to now saying, “We’re going to slit every Nazi’s throat and watch them bleed,” that transition is so huge.

We forget how much these people are affected by the horrible things they see almost every day in war.
It’s something that I don’t have any experience in and I hope I never do. There is pressure as an actor to portray something that millions of young people experienced the things Harry did.

Seeing Harry going against Aurora’s orders and challenging her leadership has been tough to watch too.
Tension and a contrast of emotions is always important in developing character and developing story. There is no way to advance without a problem to solve. The big problem this year has been Aurora. He’s questioning leadership on all fronts, something he never would have done in Season 1.

X Company has a large ensemble cast, yet the writers have given an interesting storyline to everyone. That doesn’t always happen on a series with many cast members.
It is great and has become a lot more evident this season. In Season 1 the way the episodes were kind of set up so that every character had their own episode. This season, there are all these timelines existing all at once so every character has an opportunity in every episode to shine or develop or show something new.

What can you tell us about X Company‘s season finale?
It’s going to be the strongest test the five spies have ever had. There will have to be a conversation or an event within the next couple of episodes that causes them to band together or not. Will they or won’t they? You’ll have to wait to find out.

The first part of X Company‘s season finale airs Wednesday at 9 p.m. on CBC. The second part airs Wednesday, April 6, at 9 p.m. on CBC.

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Link: ‘X Company’ star Evelyne Brochu gets lost in translation

From A.R. Wilson of Digital Journal:

‘X Company’ star Evelyne Brochu gets lost in translation
Sometimes Evelyne Brochu’s career gets lost, quite literally, in translation.

When the Montreal native first began acting in English four years ago, few people in anglophone Canada — and even fewer in the United States — knew about her impressive French-language career in Quebec, which includes not only extensive TV credits, but film work with top-tier directors Denis Villenueve (Polytechnique), Jean-Marc Vallee (Café de Flore), and Xavier Dolan (Tom à la ferme). She was viewed, she says, as a “blank slate.” Continue reading. 

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