It is one of the most anticipated drama series of the Quebec TV season. Halfway between film noir and comics, inspired by the mythical pulp Fictionseries IXE-13 and the race for uranium delves into a little-known episode in the history of Quebec: post-war Montreal saw the birth of one of the first episodes of the Cold War against a backdrop of bloody clashes between Russian and Quebec spies.
This series, presented starting Thursday on Club Illico, is unlike any other tour in Quebec. They smoke, they drink, they swear, blood spurts and knives fly low. Much of the action takes place in the hazy atmosphere of Montreal nights in the 1940s.
“Here, everyone get out. And it’s not the end of the world,” sums up one of the characters.
This reinterpretation of the musical IXE-13, made in 1971 by Jacques Godbout, has little to do with the original, which featured The Cynics in a cardboard set. The absurd humor of 1971 gives way to a historical drama that still triggers laughter in the audience, judging by the reactions during the press viewing of the first two episodes on Tuesday.
Screenwriter Gilles Desjardins (The countries above) drew inspiration from two sources: “My fascination with the popular literature of the 1940s and 1950s, including IXE-13 is the ultimate representative, and the secret history of the Cold War in Montreal,” he explained on the sidelines of the viewing.
This history freak has faithfully reconstructed the factual framework of the series. IXE-13, “the ace of Canadian spies”, is inspired by a real character. Montreal was the scene of rivalries between Russian and Quebec spies. The Soviet empire, which was allied with the Western powers against Hitler’s regime during the Second World War, became the new enemy: Stalin sought to get his hands on enriched uranium to equip himself with the atomic bomb. And there is uranium in Canada.
An ambitious series
The spy IXE-13 (dark and tormented Marc-André Grondin) and his comrades who secretly fought the Nazis in Europe (Julie Le Breton, Vincent Leclerc and Hugolin Chevrette, all in post-traumatic shock) find themselves, against their will, at the center of a plot heralding the East-West confrontation that marked the second half of the last century.
“We always say that a period series is expensive to film, but if we are not able to tell stories in the past, let’s stop [de faire des séries] “, says director Yan Lanouette Turgeon. He invested body and soul in the adventure IXE-13, to the point of losing seven kilos and gaining quite a few white hairs, by his own admission. But the satisfaction of having accomplished a duty is incomparable.
It is true that at a little less than a million dollars per episode, the series rivals any foreign production which would benefit from a much bigger budget. The same series in English Canada would probably have cost four times as much; in the United States, between 10 and 15 times more; as for productions like The Crownthey are supported by a budget 70 times larger than our IXE-13 of 2024, underlines producer Josée Vallée, of Sphère Média.
The team showed ingenuity to deliver a high-flying work with a budget for a small market like Quebec. The sets have been carefully thought out, many exterior scenes were shot in the evening (limiting the risk of anachronism), the closed doors are numerous (and striking), there are many close-ups, which deliver dramatic intensity.
Between realism and comics
Gilles Desjardins, who carried out extensive research in the past for a documentary on espionage in Quebec, inserted a series of real facts into a scenario which nevertheless is fiction. The key to a briefcase is hidden in the sole of a shoe, a section of wall opens – and closes – on the hero’s room, the spy played by Julie Le Breton hides a knife between her shoulder blades (and he lands with lightning speed in the thigh of a bad guy), a former soldier retrained in burlesque shows, a Canadian soldier sold secrets to the Germans…
Marc-André Grondin was seduced by the depth of the characters and the visual style of the series. “The tone is somewhere between realism and comics,” he says. We see this type of series a lot abroad, but very little in Quebec. »
The artisans ofIXE-13 make no secret of it: they believe that the series has the potential to tour the world. However, it is a work anchored in the history and culture of Quebec.