David (Patrick Huard, left) and Martin (Henry Czerny) in Bon Cop, Bad Cop.MJ Bergeron/Supplied
Bon Cop, Bad Cop is back on the screens of the two solitudes. The hit Canadian bilingual buddy-cop film franchise returns for a third instalment as a six-part television series on Crave this week.
While creator Patrick Huard once again plays reckless Sûreté du Québec police officer David Bouchard, Henry Czerny (Mission: Impossible) has slipped into the shoes of his more uptight Ontario counterpart Martin Ward and is now working for the RCMP. Czerny replaces Colm Feore, who played Martin in the 2006 and 2017 action-comedy movies.
The case that reunites the francophone/anglophone pair begins with a missing person in Gesgapegiag, a Mi’kmaq community on the Gaspé Peninsula. This, naturally, leads David and Martin to join forces with Indigenous cop Joe Broom (Joshua Odjick).
In the spirit of the franchise, our conversation with Huard went back and forth entre les deux langues officielles with a little franglais sprinkled in.
Why did you decide to return to Bon Cop, Bad Cop on TV rather than make a third film?
The friendship story between David and Martin had come sort of full circle. As they started the first one, they didn’t like each other; at the ending of the second one, they’re like brothers. I wanted to bring David’s daughter too and a third cop from a solitude that I forgot in the movies – the Native people of this country.
If you want to have the room and the space for all of those characters in all of those relationships, a movie would have been too quick.
Ces jours-ci, on écoute beaucoup de télévision avec les sous-titres – Shogun, Squid Game – mais il y a peu de séries bilingues français-anglais au Canada. Est-ce que c’est difficile de produire une série bilingue au Canada à cause du financement – ou quelque chose d’autre?
La difficulté, c’est au niveau de l’écriture, de trouver une fluidité naturelle pour que les gens puissent le regarder. Mais moi aussi, je suis un peu étonné qu’on n’en fasse pas plus. Quand j’ai fait le premier film, je pensais que ça deviendrait un peu une tendance.
C’est tellement naturel et c’est riche. Il y a des gags qui sont plus drôles en anglais, puis il y a des gags qui sont plus drôles en français et cette espèce de clash là, il y a quelque chose de charmant dans tout ça. Moi je suis très content qu’on ait réussi à faire ça et on a mis un petit peu de Mi’kmaq aussi dans la série pour ajouter cette espèce de feeling de multiculturalisme.
Another culture added to the new series is Acadian. You have the first Acadian Prime Minister of Canada played by Robin-Joël Cool, who also did some of the music.
I cannot remember a prime minister, in real life or in fiction, being Acadien. This is also a Canadian reality. They have a language that they call chiac. That’s not what I wrote, because I don’t know chiac and there are some strict rules about it. What I did is more a new generation kind of language that they have and Robin helped me.
Tu as eu plusieurs conseillers et conseillères; la scénariste autochtone Eva Thomas est une “conseillère à la scénarisation”?
J’avais un consultant, Quentin Condo, qui était avec nous dans le writers room et qui est maintenant un des credited writers. C’est un de mes amis, ça fait presque 20 ans. C’est avec lui que j’ai eu l’idée. Et comme on parlait de sa communauté de Gesgapegiag, je voulais qu’il soit là du début jusqu’à la fin. Dans le cas d’Eva Thomas, elle nous a donné plus une opinion extérieure de comment les autres communautés pourraient réagir à certains trucs qu’on dit dans la série. Et puis du côté anglophone, je travaille avec le même depuis le premier Bon Cop, Bad Cop qui est Adam Pettle de Toronto.
On the bilingual writing process: 'There are gags that are funnier in English, then there are gags that are funnier in French,' Huard says.MJ Bergeron/Supplied
Some of the jokes don’t directly translate because of cultural references. Like in the first episode, Martin encounters some drag queens, and one of them calls another one Passe-Carreau – a reference to the Quebec kids’ show Passe-Partout. But then I saw in the subtitles, the drag queen’s name was “Reading Rainbow,” which is itself a good joke in English. Who translates the jokes in the subtitles?
It’s mostly Adam that will go through all of this and give us some of the right references. And also we have some people here in Montreal who will say, maybe you should go for this one or that one. I don’t have all of those references myself, for sure. We wrote the series à l’américaine. There were six, seven writers total – a real writers’ room.
Colm Feore, the original Martin, had to leave the show in production. That was to do Landman?
Exactly. We were three weeks away from beginning the shooting when we learned that Colm couldn’t come with us on the project.
Henry Czerny, son remplacement, n’est pas bilingue. Est-ce que ça a rendu le tournage plus difficile?
Non. Il parle un peu français. Et plus la série avançait, plus il était confortable. Il comprend bien. Mais au niveau de la dynamique, je pense qu’il est formidable. Il est attachant. Il y a un timing comique naturel. J’ai adoré la chimie qui s’est installée avec lui, rapidement. C’était comme si ça faisait des années qu’on tournait ensemble.
When Martin first re-encounters David, he says, “Did you change your hair?” And David says, “No, c’est le moustache.” Tell me about Henry’s moustache. Was that to distinguish him from Colm?
That was Henry’s idea. He said, if we’re going to propose something new, let’s go all in and have a new face, not try to mimic what Colm did. I decided to go all in and address it right at the beginning of the series. It’s a different look. It’s a different actor. Let’s move on and let’s have fun.
Bon Cop, Bad Cop’s two-episode premiere is on Crave on May 7.
This interview has been edited and condensed.