Dix-Neuf Deux

 

The Beloved Spouse™ and I recently discovered the French-Canadian series 19-2 and watched all thirty episodes in a week. (Full disclosure: Bruce Robbert Coffin told us about this show last July. It took until January for us to get around to it. That’s entirely on me.)

 

19-2 is the story of two patrol officers in Montreal; they ride in Car 19-2. Nick Berrof (Réal Bossé) is a bit of a cowboy who lost his partner to a serious brain injury in a shooting that occurred under suspicious circumstances. The bosses don’t like Berrof; some think he’s dirty. They partner him with an officer transferring in from the Quebec Provincial Police, Benoît Chartier (Claude Legault). Their relationship is problematic for multiple reasons which I’ll not go into as knowing too much will spoil the fun. Suffice to say they come to an understanding and the relationship grows.

 

I was never a cop but everything I’ve heard and have learned about street patrol and internal politics indicates 19-2 is as realistic a show as you’re going to find and is a sterling example of how realism, applied properly, does not make fiction any less compelling. Season 2 opens with Berrof and Chartier as first on scene at an active shooter event in a high school. I have never seen a more compelling episode of television.

 

There is plenty else to like. Unlike most American shows, these cops’ first impulse when arriving at a scene that does not lay out as they expected is to call for backup.  The friction between cops who want to do things right and those who expect their failings to be ignored is expertly examined. The storylines that deal with personal lives never become soap opera-ish and always have the ring of truth to them.

 

19-2 is also a wonderful example of how to be artistic in service of the story rather than being artistic just because the director knows how to do it. The school shooting episode is full of little things that put you right there. A later episode shows Berrof and Chartier approaching a house. The camera shifts to their backups as they seek another entry point; the two leads then appear in the foreground, out of focus at first, in an elegant way to show multiple things are happening without a lot of distracting jump cuts.

 

The show is in French—well, Canadian French, which the Francophone Sole Heir will tell you is not “real” French—with English subtitles; the subtitles are not always easy to read. That said, we discovered early on there was a parallel English version using different actors and we chose to stick with the French, as we had already come to identify with the actors and their characters. I don’t feel as though I missed anything by having to read the subtitles, as the photography allows ample time to also read the actors’ faces.

 

The only TV show I can think of that is on a level with 19-2 is The Wire, and you all know how I feel about The Wire. Placing 19-2 a notch above NYPD Blue is no slam to David Milch’s brilliant show. 19-2  is that good.

 

(We have since watched the entire series again after learning it was leaving Netflix later this month. The second time I took notes.)