Seeing as how Season 3 is going to be starting soon, I have a feeling I'll be posting an awful lot about this, so I'd rather have a single thread than flooding the forum with various DC related items.
So first I'll post up the basic info, and whatnot, and then I'll post up my reviews I did for the DVD seasons + the interview I just did with the producers of the show.
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They say there's only six degrees of separation between you and anyone else in the world, but sometimes it's not even that. Sometimes the most brutal evil you can imagine is already in your world. Sometimes he's just across the street. Durham County is an emotionally powerful six one hour dramatic series that revolves around Detective Mike Sweeney and his family as he hunts a serial killer he's certain is the guy across the street. You'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference between the cop and the killer or between them and you. They have a shared history, one that goes all the way back to high school. You think you can leave your past behind. But you can't...
Season 3 of Durham County begins this October in Canada.
“In Season 3, Durham County focuses on a task force that covers crimes along the 401 highway corridor. Mike Sweeney, now the Superintendent of the Durham police precinct, is on this force, which, when the episode opens, is investigating the murder of two young drug runners. Mike wonders whether these deaths are warnings to other runners or the beginnings of a gang war. Mike’s challenge is how to get through the language barriers and trace the crimes to sources, which may be here or overseas. Durham, because of its proximity to the 401 corridor, is a transportation hub, one stop on a crime corridor. Nothing has roots here, but everything passes through.
Ivan Sujic (ex-military), partners with Mike on the task-force, is investigating the drug-trafficking murders. Mike quickly learns that Ivan is distraught because his wife, Katya, is missing and didn’t return from a trip to the United States. The friendship between the two men, a friendship that grows and deepens, also becomes for Mike, a murder investigation. Mike suspects that Ivan’s troubled brother-in-law, Miro, may have something to do with Katya’s disappearance and that Ivan may know something about it.“
A few years ago I discovered this show called "Durham County" which is shown in Canada. Soon after I began watching it I realized this is a special type show. It was like nothing I had really watched before, as most shows, at least here in the US, tend to be "Safe". There are exceptions such as Sons of Anarchy or Dexter or The Shield, but by and large most shows have a "we won't cross this line" mentality that prevents it from seriously going in a direction that might be seen as offputting to a number of viewers.
Thankfully Durham County's network does not have that mentality, and so it has allowed this brilliant show to be crafted in a way that is unsettling and not at all "safe". The show is completely unpredictable and in fact the one thing that IS predictable is how you will feel afterwards. Kinda icky. And that's a great thing I think. Anytime a show can create these emotions inside you that make you question what you just watched is brilliant in my mind.
The only show that really approaches this in the sense of "oh my God he's not going to...oh he just did!" is probably Dexter. Dexter is a show that essentially has you rooting for a serial killer to get away with it. Perhaps because the people that he kills are all bad people. We know this watching it, so when he kills a pedophile or a child killer or a guy who killed his wife, we don't really feel that bad. We know killing is wrong, but we know 100% that the people he's killing are guilty and are getting away with it. So that makes it okay, if even in a questionable morals type of way.
Durham is much the same, only in a different way. Durham is about Detective Mike Sweeney, played by Hugh Dillon (TV's Flashpoint) who after his partner is killed relocates with his family to the suburbs of Durham County. Unknowingly he moves across the street from his old high school nemesis Ray Prager who is played by Justin Louis (TV's Stargate Universe). Louis' Prager is a creepy and easily angered guy who never really made anything of himself. His kid hates him, his marriage is falling apart, and as the show opens up he's spying on a man who kills two girls in the woods.
And he does nothing. Except watch. You get the impression that he's turned on by this combination of sex and violence, which can not be a good thing. Anyone that's watched any episodes of Law & Order: SVU knows that this is not a healthy combo.
Soon the girls are discovered, and Sweeney begins to set his sight on his old enemy, and has his motives questioned due to their uneasy history.
The interactions between Hugh Dillon and Justin Louis are spectacular and you can absolutely just taste the dislike between their characters. Their hatred of each other is palpable, all the while they dance around and and act like they want to make things work out.
There's an especially great scene near the end of Season 1 where Prager is being interrogated by Sweeney and these two great actors just nail every single moment, making what could have been a routine scene that we've seen a hundred times, into something great with unbelievable tension hanging in the air thick as smoke.
Unfolding over six episodes the series is filled with moments that make you squirm, that disturb you and make you want to take a shower quickly after it's over. However what the show won't do is leave you without thinking about it. It's so well done, so excellently shot and presented that it's impossible to watch this show and not have some thoughts about it. It's not a show that you watch it and just forget about it. It stays with you long after watching it, for good or for bad. It is filled with moments that reach out and grab you and forces you to look at yourself and how you feel about the things you're seeing.
It's not violent for violent's sake. It's not brutal for the sake of brutality. It's not done in a gratuitous way where you look at it and think "now did they REALLY need that?" It's all done in a deliberate way in order to provoke thought and discussion.
Unlike many shows here in the states, there is only six episodes to a season, so there's no room for filler. There's no episodes that don't further the mystery or the storylines, like you see in series that run on for 20+ episodes a season. This means that every episode means something. Every episode has something to say and it's up to you to pay attention and follow everything.
Viewers should be warned that in addition to the disturbing content involving murders, there is also a good deal of adult language and there is some nudity/sexual situations. This is DEFINITELY not for kids or those who are easily offended.
However it IS for those who love intelligent television that doesn't treat it's audience like idiots that need everything handed to them on a plate in the way of an explanation. The show ends on a note that doesn't wrap everything up. Some of the story continues in Season 2 especially concerning Ray Prager and his effects on Sweeney's family life.
Both Sweeney and Louis were outstanding in this show and both were rightly nominated for Best Actor Gemini awards, (kind of like the Canadian Emmys) with Justin Louis winning it for his complex portrayal of a very bad person who perhaps has a reason for why he's so bad.
Helene Joy (who portrays Mike Sweeney's wife) won for Best Actress as well, and Sonya Salomaa (Ray Prager's Wife) and Laurence LeBoeuf (Mike Sweeney's daughter) were both nominated for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress respectively.
SEASON 1 DVD DETAILS:
The set comes with three discs, each packaged inside a slim pak, with three slim paks inside the outer slip cover. I took some pictures to show what I mean. Pardon the glare.
Now there is a Season 1 set released in both Canada and the USA, however there's a few cosmetic differences. First off, the cover artwork are different. Secondly the Canadian release has bilingual covers and disc menus. This means that the information will be written on the covers and dvd menus in English and French. If that bothers you to have bilingual covers (and I know many who don't want their movies or games to have them), then your best bet might be to order the Season 1 set from Amazon.com or find it at your local store, if they happen to have it.
I own the Canadian version and I much prefer the artwork on that one. The bilingual stuff doesn't bother me, and on the Canadian one, when you load up the discs it prompts you for what language you want the menus to be in. So once you choose English it won't show anything in French (and I'm assuming vice versa).
NOTE: The blue set on the right is the United States version, the orangish one on the left is the Canadian issued set with bilingual packaging.
Each disc has a couple static menus with music, and the main menu showing the "Episode List" and "Play All Episodes" is an animated menu showing the clouds moving across the sky as the theme score plays.
There are six episodes split up over the first two discs (three on disc 1 and 2) with the third disc being for extras.
EXTRAS:
1. Behind The Scene Featurette
2. Character Bios
3. Two songs by Hugh Dillon (Mike Sweeney) and the Redemption Choir
4. Season 2 Synopsis
The Behind the Scenes Featurette is a nicely put together piece that has interviews with the various people responsible for bringing the show to the screen, from the co-creators Janis Lundman, Adrienne Mitchel and Laurie Finstad-Knizhnik and stars like Helene Joy and Laurence Leboeuf, along with shots of the show being filmed. Pretty interesting stuff. Runs about 25 minutes.
The Character Bios are text on screen of the descriptions of the various characters that inhabit Durham County and an image of each character on their pages.
The two songs by Hugh Dillon are audio tracks of the songs "Sorry Town" and "Puzzle I Am" played over a slideshow of images from. Hugh Dillon is a singer as well as an actor and has his own band called "Hugh Dillon and the Redemption Choir" which draws inspiration from various types of music.
The Season 2 Synopsis is also a text on screen synopsis of what will happen in Season 2. It's pretty brief and standard so there's no real spoilers there.
Overall this is a great series, and is one of my top 5 television programs ever, only trailing brilliant shows like The Wire (#1), Lost (#2), Carnivale (#3) and Dexter (#4). That's great company to be in, I think.
The tagline of Durham County season 1 was "Smaller the town, Darker the secrets", and that was a very fitting tagline, as it seemed everyone was hiding something, whether they were "good" or "bad" characters.
With the DVD release of Season 2, we have a new tagline of "Same Town, Darker Secrets", and once again that's a very apt description of this series.
Returning with a second set of six episodes, we pick up with the Sweeney family as they try to somehow salvage some semblance of a familial structure in the aftermath of Ray Prager.
It seemed that Ray has left his fingerprints on virtually everyone in the show as the show begins.
Sadie is dealing with her interactions with Ray in the finale of last season and just like her father, we don't exactly know what went on. She's obviously still dealing with the lingering affects of what happened, and you can see it's tearing her apart inside. And while we don't know exactly what it was, although we have ideas, it's way too much for her to hold inside, which is what she's trying to do.
Mike is struggling to come to grips with how his family has disintegrated in the wake of the events of last season. His marriage is practically over, he's having to move out, and he's constantly bouncing back and forth between a bubbling rage and constant anxiety over the possibilities of what Ray Prager did to his daughter before he got there to save her.
She won't answer his questions, which only makes him more on edge.
Then there's Ray's son, Ray Jr. He's in love with Sadie, however Mike isn't having any of that. There's obvious parallels between Ray Jr/Sadie and Romeo/Juliet, only the relationship between Ray Jr. and Sadie wanders away from the "meant for each other" aspects and more into the "this is a bad idea" areas.
You can tell they sort of have feelings for each other, however Ray Jr's father's actions towards Sadie, and Sadie's father's actions towards Ray Prager have created this huge wall between them that it's hard to see anyone overcoming.
Sadie's so internally damaged over what happened, and her decision to keep the crux of the encounter to herself, leads her to try to deal with this in any way she can. This includes trying to coax Ray Jr. into helping her recreate the encounter with his father, which freaks out Ray Jr.
Sadie is trying to come to grips with her feelings and her trauma by meeting with a therapist, Pen Verity (Michelle Forbes), who is an old acquaintance of her father's.
Verity has some issues of her own dealing with the death of her son which may or may not have been an accident, the divorce from her husband which is growing more and more acrimonious by the day, and an affair with Sadie's father, while treating her.
Forbes is an amazing actress, and shows once again that she's heavily underrated when it comes to this acting game. She played the role of Verity with such humanity and intensity that you totally understood her actions, even while finding yourself repulsed by them.
You see her doing reprehensible things, and yet much like Ray Prager in Season 1, you can almost see the method to the madness. And with Verity there was a definite sense of madness about her, a result of trauma in her past.
At one moment you find yourself empathizing with what she's gone through and what she's currently going through, and then you see her poisoning some chocolates to harm someone close to Mike and your feelings change, and you see that this same person you're sympathizing with earlier you can see her in her full on evil mode, and then you can STILL feel for her later in scenes where she's falling apart. It takes a special kind of actress to pull that off, and not just make a one dimensional villain.
Her confrontation with Mike after he finds out what she did with the chocolates stands out as my favorite scene of Season 2, and it is a nice showdown between two very strong willed actors.
Season 2 of Durham County happened to be airing at the same time as True Blood's second season which also featured Forbes as an insane Maenad destroying the town of Bon Temps. If there was any question before about her acting, those two back to back shows should definitively put that idea to rest.
In all, every character in this series is damaged seemingly beyond help. At times it's difficult to imagine a scenario in which they can ever be whole again.
The entire season is building towards the endgame, which is Sadie testifying against Ray Prager (played this season by Romano Orzari due to Justin Louis' role on Stargate Universe), which is something she's dreading and not sure if she can do.
Complicating her decision is friends of Ray's (some of which are in the police department) are determined to make sure she doesn't testify.
While the first season was a dark and disturbing look into Suburbia and the secrets it hides under it's idyllic image, this season goes even deeper and presents these characters as even more flawed. You see how they react to adversity and hurdles, and the results are often not pretty.
There were a few things that I had reservations with, mainly Orzari's replacing Louis as Ray Prager. Louis was fantastic and just flat out owned that role, and while it was difficult to imagine someone else playing it, Orzari did a capable job.
In fact he was covered in makeup to illustrate the burns that the character suffered after setting himself on fire out of seeming remorse for his actions. During the first several episodes he was mostly hidden in shadows, and until he was fully shown I didn't even realize it wasn't him. That might be a combination of the fact that I didn't pay attention to the credits, and hadn't heard that Louis wasn't back, and also because Orzari was very good in this role.
Not as good as Louis, but good nonetheless.
Justin Louis (Left) in Season 1 and Romano Orzari in Season 2.
All in all this was another fantastic season to what quickly became one of my top five television shows of all time. The upcoming third season, scheduled currently to air in October, will be the final season according to the show runners. This is a disappointment to fans of the show, as of course we want to see what we love as much as possible. However there's a delicate balance between ending a show too early, and staying too late.
Many popular shows tend to overstay their welcome, because they're still getting decent ratings, but creatively they've been stagnant or declining for years. And then you look back on the show and think "well it was good, but man was it bad at the end".
With Durham County, unless this upcoming season is a disappointment, and there's no reason to even imagine that being possible, we'll see the show off in style, still at the height of it's creativity and brilliance in acting, writing, direction and presentation.
Besides, we'll still have the scheduled movie finale, so we still have at least a year or two before Durham County is done for good. Maybe more, depending on how the movie is received.
SEASON 2 DVD DETAILS
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Unlike last season which came in slimpaks inside a slipcover, this one has only two discs with three episodes on each disc, and one of each of the two behind the scenes videos on each. It also comes in a standard amaray dvd case, with an insert that holds a second disc inside. There's also a slip cover for your dvd case that features the same artwork as the main case.
I have to say that it seemed they were perhaps saving money this time around on the packaging. I don't know if that's because the first season didn't sell as well or what, but it's a noticeable difference. Doesn't change the quality of the show, which is top notch, just something I noticed.
The Bonus features are lighter this time around as well, with two videos. One is an "Interview with Cast & Crew" which is pretty enlightening and a nice insight into the making of the show, and the other is a "Making of" Durham County.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
This remains one of my favorite shows of all time, and definitely one of the best shows on TV now. A slight hiccup with the replacement of Justin Louis for Ray Prager, although it was an unavoidable situation seeing as how Louis got a lead role on Stargate: Universe. Hopefully he'll return sometime for Season 3 or the movie, but there's no guarantees of that.
Great show, decent packaging, a little skimpy on the extras, but the extras that are there are very good and very insightful on the making of this great show.
Buy with confidence!
NOTE: For all the latest news on Durham County: Season 3 check out the official Facebook page for Durham County by clicking HERE. The show is maintained by two of the exec. producers of the show.
Janis Lundman and Adrienne Mitchell are the ladies behind the production company Back Alley Films, which has put out critically acclaimed and award winning Canadian programming such as Durham County, Bliss and the documentaries Talk 16 and Talk 19.
Every project they've put out has received high accolades from critics and viewers alike. They were both kind enough to answer some questions on "Durham County" and various other things.
***NOTE: Some of the answers provide spoiler-ish tidbits regarding Season 3 which is coming in another few months. I'll spoiler tag those***
SFCB: I wanted to thank you both for agreeing to this interview. First off, what was the impetus to the creation of Back Alley Films?
JANIS: Adrienne and I had been working independently as directors and producers when we met through LIFT (the Toronto film co-op). Both of us were looking for a creative partner to help share some of the workload and with whom we could start to create longer form projects. It’s very difficult in this industry – as it is with any collaborative medium - to find a creative synergetic connection with someone. At the time that we met, Adrienne was also a cinematographer and she shot a short film I was producing and directing. There was an immediate sense of yin and yang in our work and personalities so we decided to pool our individual talents and work on a project together - a feature documentary called ‘Talk 16’. That was over 20 years ago and we’re still working and creating projects together.
SFCB: I first discovered Durham County a few years ago, I'd say around midway into the first season, and fortunately was able to start from the beginning. I was instantly hooked on it due to the fantastic writing and acting. Unlike a lot of shows on the air, none of the characters were simply there. All of the characters brought something to the table, and were instrumental in the plot, which was proven by everyone in the main cast being nominated or winning Gemini awards.
I liked that neither Mike Sweeney nor Ray Prager are entirely good or entirely bad, especially in the case of the character of Ray. I think it's a testament to Justin's acting that he could make someone as vile as Prager seem if not sympathetic, at least you can understand why he is what he is. For a show that has only six episodes in a season, that's remarkable in that the characters have so much depth, more so than characters in other shows that have 20 episodes a season.
ADRIENNE: Yes this is a testament to Laurie Finstad Kniznik's writing and her keen ability to plunge into the depths of her characters’ psychological terrain. Her process is fascinating - she first discovers and explores the narrative within the psychology of the character then builds from the inward to the outward in terms of how the characters express themselves in their actions.
She is a novelist at heart and thinks that way so that’s why I think there is such complexity in her characters. Also, the casting process is so crucial. As a director, I know that 80% of the success of my directing is tied into making sure we cast the right actor for the part. There is only so much you can do to bring out a nuanced performance during a rigorous TV schedule that demands high production value and a very stylized cinematic approach with limited time and budget.
So we really begin casting far in advance of the shooting schedule to find our “Durham” type actor who can take on the complexity of Laurie’s writing. I look for an actor who can express those subtle shades of grey, those unpredictable pockets of human behaviour that can set you on edge in ways that haunt and disturb. Then I rehearse with the actors like mad ( which is unusual for television – albeit this is PAY TV – so we have more flexibility)
The preparation for an actor on our series is extensive, intense and maybe even a little brutal. Ask Hugh Dillon how hard he prepares for his character Mike Sweeney. And Michelle Forbes in season 2 totally immersed herself in the role. I remember Michelle saying, after reading the scripts, “ My God, it’s like reading Dostoevsky’s “War and Peace”. It’s a testament to our actors’ intrinsic talent, their preparation, Laurie’s writing that makes their characters leap off the screen. And wait until you see the character of IVAN, played by the fabulous Scottish actor Michael Nardone – he’s incredible!
SFCB: One of things I like about the show is that it doesn't seem to have a predetermined line that it won't cross. For a long time shows had some imaginary line that they wouldn't show. For years it involved things like children being killed or even going as far back as I Love Lucy with a married couple in two separate beds. Even though these days it seems you can show just about anything on television, there still even today seems to be a line that networks don't want to cross out of fear of alienating a portion of their audience. Were there any limits that the network imposed on you for Durham County? Was there anything you wanted to do that the networks came back and was like "We can't do this you have to change this"?
JANIS: We developed Durham County with the Canadian pay networks, TMN (The Movie Network) and Movie Central. The creative heads that we worked with at the time of Season 1, Michelle Marion and Shelley Gillen, were amazingly supportive of what we wanted to do creatively and their notes were all about making the series better.
Given that they’re pay networks and subscriber based, we were able to stretch the envelope more than if we had been working solely for a conventional network. Having said that, Global Television came on board as we were moving into production so at that point we made the decision to do two versions of Durham – one for the pays where we had more freedom creatively, and one for conventional networks.
The differences between the two were pretty simple: no ‘*****’ for Global; we had to make it clear that the school girls in episode one, Season 1, were 18 years old; and some of what they considered “disturbing scenes”, we had to cut down. The Global version needed to be shorter in length to accommodate commercials so the last decision to cut down on some of the scenes was relatively easy to do, as we needed to cut down on time.
SFCB: As I watch the show I get this strange feeling. It's one of the few shows that I've watched, along with Showtime's Dexter where you're watching some reprehensible things happening, and it forces you to acknowledge your feelings about what you're seeing. Such as the opening scene of Season 1 where you're seeing Ray spy on the guy in the woods as he brutally kills those two girls. There's such a high level of uncomfortableness watching that combination of sex and violence, and this overwhelming feeling of knowing what was coming but being unable to stop it. Then you contrast that with Ray who is spying on this and is seemingly turned on by it.
There are other moments like that in the series that really causes the viewer to sort of have some type of analyzing of how they feel and think about what they're seeing. That can be too much for some viewers, and I've seen some reactions to the show that express discomfort in what they've seen. They're outraged by what they see, and I wonder if maybe there was something that they didn't like, not about the show, but their feelings and thoughts about it. Was that the intention of the show, to inspire these types of reactions?
ADRIENNE: That’s a great question and analysis. So in a nutshell “Yes”. Especially in Season 1 we were reacting against certain television series and media presenting images of dead women in a kind of slick glamorous and expendable way – where you get a quick hit of the death, beautiful sexy dead women, and then we snap back into the investigation or commercial without any kind of post-mortem.
So in our series we wanted to explore the more visceral reality and consequences of death and then through presenting Ray as watching the murder , we wanted to question how we watch scenes of death on television. Are we being desensitized? What is happening to us in how we experience violence in the media – is there a complicit passivity there? But we knew this was going to be a bit of a slippery slope in how we depicted that scene and hope we haven’t traumatized too many people out there.
SFCB: I have to comment on the opening theme to Durham County. The first time I heard it I got chills because it has this very haunting feel to it. It gives this sense of terror and a kind of foreshadowing of what is to come. Who is responsible for the music?
JANIS: In Season 1 we worked with an amazing composer, Tom Third. He set the musical tone for the series and also wrote the opening theme music – we loved him! For Season 2 and 3 because Tom was engaged in another series, we worked with a protégé of his, Peter Chapman. Again, another amazing composer who did an incredible job on the last 2 seasons.
SFCB: What is the process of putting Durham County together? From the writing stages to the filming stages to the time that it airs.
JANIS: The process is a lot of hard work! My favourite parts of any production are the beginning, when everyone is sitting around a table throwing out ideas, and then the end when I see the final show on the screen. The part in between is simply work, work and more work! As the producer, for me it’s always a balance of trying to keep the initial creative vision that Laurie wrote with the logistics of production. And the logistics begin early. There is first, of course, the writing. Laurie has the ideas and characters in her head and starts thinking about the series months ahead of production. Like all writers, she spends days and weeks alone in her office, typing away, to come up with the incredible scripts that make up Durham County. She’ll have regular meetings with Adrienne who’ll give her feedback as a director, and the story editors, as well as meetings with the broadcasters. They’ll give her feedback on what she’s done to date and then back she goes to her room to write some more. Somehow, at the end of it all, she’s produced final scripts that we then take into production months later.
However, the logistics of production begin before Laurie is finished with her scripts. In Durham the landscape and locations end up being characters in themselves: suburban landscapes of houses, hydro towers, commuter trains. For us to find the right locations that will coincide with our vision of the series, we start looking almost 4 months before we go into official pre-production and way before we have all the scripts written. Adrienne works very closely with the Locations Manager reviewing photos, going to locations, filming various possibilities with a camcorder. She discusses all of these with our Director of Photography, the remarkable Eric Cayla for Season 2/3 and Steve Cosens for Season 1. The choices are then narrowed down so that when we begin prep we have our main locations already chosen. The same goes for casting, which also starts about 3 to 4 months prior to prep. It’s so important to find an antagonist who can embody the role so completely that the audience is both horrified and empathetic at the same time with their actions. We have a great casting director, Marissa Richmond, whom we’ve worked with for almost 10 years and she’s been instrumental in finding our main players. We’ve also worked with Wendy O’Brien and Libby Goldstein in Los Angeles who’ve also brought some great talent to the table.
Once prep starts it’s all about choice – what do we want to do vs. what can we afford to do. Everyone works very closely trying to make these choices the best they can be. We have the directors who guide this process and we’ve been very fortunate to work with some of the best directors. Of course, there’s Adrienne who’s directed 7 of the 18 episodes and has worked on all 3 seasons; Holly Dale who started Season 1 and who worked with Adrienne to set the tone of that season; Rachel Talalaly and Alain Des Rochers for Season 2; and Charles Binamé for Season 3. The director works with Laurie (the writer), the production designer, line producer, director of photography, costume designer - everyone is constantly meeting and constantly talking. There’s a lot of tradeoffs, for eg: we’ll use fewer extras in one scene to get an extra police car in another scene; we’ll cut one scene to have more lights on the next exterior night scene; and so on.
Once in production, its more of the same except now everything has speeded up and the conversations are more intense, the decisions have to be made faster yet we still have to be true to the original vision. It’s during this time that I’m glad to say that we have had an absolutely fantastic craft service that’s kept us all together, especially during the shooting of Season 3 when we were shooting outside in the cold, in December.
Finally we make it into post-production where we can see everything being put together. We’ve been very fortunate to be working with the same editors for almost all 3 seasons (Teresa De Luca, Annie Ilkow, Michele Conroy) –gifted, talented, I can’t say enough about them. For me, in post-production, the process now starts to be a bit fun and it’s great to see it all coming together with the music and sound FX. And, finally, about 4 months later it’s all delivered to the networks and our distributor. And I’m a happy person once again.
SFCB: When we first see the Sweeney family in Season 1, Sadie's sister is wearing an Anime style mask. what was the significance of that? I've seen various suggestions by fans, and then there were other fans saying they had no clue what it was.
ADRIENNE: Lets say it is open for interpretation. Don’t want to nail that down to the wall. I quite like all the speculation out there. If Durham can get a discourse going, then excellent. Janis, Laurie and I are all fans of Japanese Anime. Visually Durham deals with the hyper real , pristine, suburban public face versus what goes on behind those pretty doors. The Anime mask has that hyper-real quality and it ties into that aesthetic. That’s as much as I’ll say. Maybe that’s too much already!
SFCB: One thing that I've seen a lot of fans mention online is that the guy who killed the two girls in the opening scene, while popping up here and there, hasn't been caught. It's been two seasons now and he has played such a miniscule role, and I think a lot of people are wondering if he'll be back and if so if he could perhaps face his just due, or whether he was simply a Maguffin of sorts. That it doesn't as much matter who he is, but that his actions set in motion the battle between Mike and Ray.
ADRIENNE: In a way, yes he’s a Maguffin. He exists in so far as he brings forth the plot elements that allow Mike and Ray to collide with each other. Even though we don’t find out what happens to him, we feel his impact as he sets the wheels in motion for everything to come to a head between Mike and Ray. And on a little tangent this ties into something I talked about on our Facebook page in regards to season three.
Even though we don’t see Ray Prager in season three, Ray lives on in how Sadie now deals with her life and her role as
a rookie cop in training.
You feel him alive and well in her, haunting her and almost motivating her actions as if he is whispering in her ear. We love playing with those kinds of elements in the series. And we know there is going to be the rallying cry – of “ how could you not show Ray this season!!!” but, trust us, you’ll get just as wrapped up into season 3’s new antagonist IVAN, played by Michael Nardone, as you did with Ray and Pen, but in a very different way.
SFCB: At the end of Season two we see Ray Prager escape, and leave a gift for Sadie in the back of their car. Will we see the character of Ray again in either Season 3 or the movie afterwards?
JANIS: Absolutely! In Season 3 Ray doesn’t make a physical appearance but the effect he’s had on the characters is always present. None of our main characters can escape from the torment or memories that they have of him. As for the Durham County movie – he’s definitely back!
SFCB: There's a scene in Season two where Mike and Pen are talking and you have the feeling that their relationship is heading to a more intimate level. And he's frustrated because of his rage when dealing with someone he was trying to arrest, and she makes the comment about "I remember you telling me this in our session last year", and the look on his face as he simply responds "did I?", just briefly, caused me to realize how uncomfortable this could be. In a lot of relationships the partners don't tell each other everything. They may love the other person 100% and trust them 100% but there's always going to be things that they don't or feel they CAN'T tell the other person.
And here Mike's in a situation where he has said things to his therapist that he perhaps could never bring himself to say to a lover, and now he's put himself in that very situation, and it doesn't seem to be something that he is entirely comfortable with. Opening himself up that much to another person. I was wondering if that was a conscious idea in the writing and filming, or is that just something that is perhaps open to interpretation?
ADRIENNE: This was absolutely intentional. I think it’s a very human trait to not be honest and real with the people closest to you because there’s the fear that that honesty will be too hurtful or brutal and will cause you to loose everything that you have invested in those relationships. So it’s easier to come clean with a stranger. And that’s certainly the case with Mike Sweeney.
SFCB: An interesting dynamic for me in Season two was the fact that this therapist in Pen Verity, was herself, for lack of a better word, damaged. Here's a woman that is tasked with helping others through their trauma, and she herself is unable to properly handle her own. This brought to mind the fact that even therapists have therapists, and it sort of makes you wonder whether she was either in denial of her issues, or perhaps just felt like many people do, that she could somehow manage it on her own, and discovered too late that she couldn't.
ADRIENNE: Gary, you are answering your questions superbly! Well-considered. Pen is in a very strange emotional place – because she is actually watching herself becoming unhinged . She is viewing herself from her objective therapist’s perspective. She can see how she is burying herself in denial and even outwitting herself with rationalized justifications for her behaviour. She is in a strange controlled state that is starting to unravel, which later in the series goes out of control. It’s a testament to Michelle Forbes’ brilliance as an actor to be able to play such a fascinating multiplicity here.
SFCB: I was on the IMDB page for Durham County and I saw a post by someone that had titled their message board post "Why the hell are nearly all the cast and crew Canadian?" and thought that was hilarious. It was someone that obviously didn't get the memo on the show, and perhaps envisioned a Canadian takeover of television. It made me wonder, what was the most memorable feedback you have gotten on the programming that you have done?
“The first season scared the hell out of me... Check your neighbour before you start the new round! Second season, I'm ready!!!” - XfloryelmustangX Youtube.com
“What a mind trip this one is!! I had to tape every episode and watch it again to catch everything I missed the first time. This one is SPOOKY!” – carolynsimons60 Youtube.com
“I actually really like Penn's character (or Michelle's character, actually). Talk about complex and conflicted…very hamlet - descent into madness...” - Terri Facebook.com
“Epic and haunting. I felt the darkness coming out of me.” – SartaqKhan tv.com/durham-county
SFCB: What can you tell us about what is in store for the upcoming third season of Durham County?
(Synopsis of Season 3)
“In Season 3, Durham County focuses on a task force that covers crimes along the 401 highway corridor. Mike Sweeney, now the Superintendent of the Durham police precinct, is on this force, which, when the episode opens, is investigating the murder of two young drug runners. Mike wonders whether these deaths are warnings to other runners or the beginnings of a gang war. Mike’s challenge is how to get through the language barriers and trace the crimes to sources, which may be here or overseas. Durham, because of its proximity to the 401 corridor, is a transportation hub, one stop on a crime corridor. Nothing has roots here, but everything passes through.
Ivan Sujic (ex-military), partners with Mike on the task-force, is investigating the drug-trafficking murders. Mike quickly learns that Ivan is distraught because his wife, Katya, is missing and didn’t return from a trip to the United States. The friendship between the two men, a friendship that grows and deepens, also becomes for Mike, a murder investigation. Mike suspects that Ivan’s troubled brother-in-law, Miro, may have something to do with Katya’s disappearance and that Ivan may know something about it.“
Adrienne: It was a fascinating process to cast Ivan, who is the main antagonist this season. What we were looking for was someone who could emanate the kind of person who had been through the unspeakable in war and had actually crossed the line in committing unspeakable acts, yet still projected, and was able to express, a sense of humanity about him, which is a very difficult balance and tension to find. We found this actor in Michael Nardone, who had this incredible ability to project a man who’s lived a thousand life-times, yet you are so drawn to him. You see him in the series do an unspeakable act of violence and yet you can’t dismiss him. There is something about him and his need to experience an awakening and to redeem himself that is extremely compelling to watch. And the dynamic between Hugh Dillon and Michael Nardone is spell-binding.
Janis: Although we’d started the audition process very early, we were only a week away from prep and we still hadn’t found our main antagonist. Finally, we got in touch with Michael’s agent in the UK (he’s Scottish) and he did a self tape. But at that time he was doing a children’s show so what he had to do was go into a storage room and get his friend to read the other lines. They put a camera up on an ironing board and he did this fantastic audition for the character of Ivan and we thought, ‘If he can be that emotional and be that empathetic and do such a great job when he’s basically playing to an ironing board, think what he can do if he has a crew and director.’ And he’s been fantastic.
SFCB: I've noticed that you two have done a lot of projects together. One of those that you two worked on was the series "Bliss". This was an interesting project, as it explored women's sexual desires and fantasies from the female perspective. Often we see films or shows that are made by men and for men and everything is sort of geared towards a male audience. And so it's kind of interesting, at least to me, to see people out there like yourselves, or others like Susie Bright who also has put out anthologies of erotic short stories, and even audio recordings as well.
And I think that the reason why there isn't more is perhaps our society has tried to push preconceived notions of what women think like. For years it seems that women were not looked at as having "those thoughts", and it's interesting to me how that was such a prevalent school of thought, so much so that when someone like Nancy Friday, for example, comes out with her book "My Secret Garden" in the early 70's it caused quite a reaction.
How do you view the progress that has been made in that regards where today there seems to be more programming and literature out there that reinforce that that is not the reality?
ADRIENNE: It seems now that the female characters depicted in literature and media are being portrayed with more depth around who they are as sexual beings – warts and all. THANK GOD! Look at Lisabeth Sandler in “THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO” - hers is a very complicated sexuality – largely in reaction to how she was subjugated to the horrors of confinement by a sadistic psychiatrist at a psychiatric Institution. It’s all about Lisabeth trying to claw herself out of that. And she goes to some very controversial places. I love that these books were written by a Man – Stieg Larsson. It just makes total sense in terms of reality and sophisticated drama to give the sexual side of the female characters a complexity that is rich, raw, unpredictable and not so pretty at times. That’s what’s real.
SFCB: So what does Back Alley Films have in store, post Durham County?
ADRIENNE: There are lots of exciting things on our plate. We are developing an awe-inspiring series with Karen Walton, the writer of the movie GINGER SNAPs. It’s her first original television series called ODARK – that will bend the minds of loyal viewers.
We have two movies in development with HBO CANADA: DURHAM COUNTY the movie written by Laurie, as well as a movie called THE LOVELIES written by Sharon Riis about five women who, while visiting their men in prison, get stuck in a room together with a dead woman during a prison riot. We’re closing deals on a few other exciting feature films and also developing a new series from Laurie Finstad. So lots of fabulous irons in the fire!!!!
SFCB: Thank you very much for your time, and I look forward to seeing more of your work in the future.
ADRIENNE: Thanks for spending the time to come up with so many thought provoking and intelligent questions. It’s refreshing.
