Club illico holds in its hands a television bomb loaded with powerful elements. And I hope that the breath of his explosion will infect as many viewers as possible.
The first radiations will escape from Club illico on Thursday with the posting online of the first two episodes ofIXE-13 and the race for uranium by the brilliant screenwriter Gilles Desjardins, the TV magician who reinvented The beautiful stories of the countries above in a modern western for Radio-Canada.
This king of historical detail repeats the same process of updating with the novels of Pierre Daignault (the father of the cultural journalist Daniel Daignault) devoted to the agent IXE-13, the ace of Canadian spies. What emerges is an excellent eight-episode period miniseries – consider Peaky Blinders –, which borrows the codes of a film noir from the 1940s, with intense music, touches of humor and plenty of suspense.
If you fell for The countries abovethis IXE-13 will fall under your cathode mushroom. Seasoned and well-directed actors, punch at the end of the episodes, gripping plot, flamboyant characters, everything works in this intelligent and entertaining work, which will undoubtedly appear on TVA in the coming months.
It must. We need a wide audience to see what our creators do best when we provide them with the right tools and means to achieve their ambitions. In short, this is high-end, accessible and popular television.
And for older readers, who still associate IXE-13 with The Cynics and filmmaker Jacques Godbout’s absurdist musical comedy from 1971, forget it. The Club illico miniseries, of which I watched the first two episodes, the only ones offered, is more akin to a James Bond thriller than to funny burlesque. No one rolls their “r’s” in an exaggerated way.
The first episode ofIXE-13 and the race for uranium begins in Montreal’s Red Light, in the fall of 1945. The Second World War has ended a few months ago and agent Jean Thibault (Marc-André Grondin), nicknamed IXE-13, has put his career as a spy on the line. ice. He now operates the Crystal Club, a cabaret hotel located on the Hand.
The retirement of our friend Jean Thibault is abruptly interrupted, as you can imagine, when an expert in Russian codes arrives at the Crystal in panic: a network of Soviet spies is operating in Montreal with the aim of obtaining enriched uranium, the only element that Stalin lacked to make an atomic bomb. Code red!
PHOTO PROVIDED BY CLUB ILLICO
Marc-André Grondin as Jean Thibault, aka secret agent IXE-13
Three former spy comrades of Jean Thibault, who evaded several Nazi generals in occupied France, will also resume their clandestine work. They are the secretary of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Roxane Racicot (Julie Le Breton), the director of counter-espionage services, Victor Laporte (Vincent Leclerc), as well as the tough guy Marius Lamouche (Hugolin Chevrette), which operates a boxing gym attached to Club Crystal. They form a disparate, but devilishly effective quartet.
In addition to this threat from the USSR, another scourge hovers over Montreal, that of the Nazis, who are organized around the sordid Rick Gallaher (Martin Dubreuil), a former Canadian soldier who dreams of resurrecting the Third Reich of Hitler.
IXE-13 will not be idle, he who must also arbitrate a war of egos between the variety singer Denise Picard (Catherine Paquin-Béchard) and her rival Loulou (Pier-Gabriel Lajoie), a transvestite artist, as they were called the time.
Don’t take the leap: the characters ofIXE-13 chain-toking cigarettes, which is almost no longer shown on TV these days. Other times, other manners. It was smoking hot in the 1940s.
To further spice up the story, a journalist from The star gazetteGisèle Tuboeuf (Marianne Fortier), will stick her nose into an affair that is thrilling for her readers, but dangerous for national security.
Screenwriter Gilles Desjardins presents his secret agent Jean Thibault, the famous IXE-13, as a man destroyed by war and haunted by the atrocities he saw in Europe. Which adds a layer of complexity to the character, which thus gains depth. Incognito on the ground, yes, Jean Thibault puts on wigs and changes his accent to extract information from suspects. But when he lays his head on the pillow, terrible nightmares overcome him.
In broad daylight, IXE-13 even hallucinates a disfigured child, whom he has probably already encountered, during a perilous mission. That spinne in the head of the best secret agent in the country, who plays the drums frantically like in the film Whiplashby Damien Chazelle.
This mix of serious, frivolous and historical facts works equally well for IXE-13 that for The countries above. And who says spy series says secret rooms, deadly poison, gadget weapons, and it’s crazy fun. It’s both mainstream and very niche.
Videotron’s Club illico releases episodes ofIXE-13 and the race for uranium by two. Two are released on February 15, two more will follow on February 22, and so on.
I don’t hate this distribution strategy, which allows you to better savor the episodes, to speculate on the twists and turns and not to burn through all the material in one evening of bingeing. It would be a shame to devour such a refined menu in just one bite. Why then not space out the (secret) services?