CBC’s Saint Pierre squanders an original setting on a generic cop show | Canada Voices

Saint-Pierre and Miquelon has long been on my bucket list.

The French overseas collectivity, an archipelago an hour-and-a-half ferry ride away from Fortune, N.L., is an odd little remnant of New France in the Gulf of St Lawrence.

Times being what they are, however, I don’t expect I’m going to make it there any time soon – so I’ve been eager to travel there through the new CBC cop show Saint Pierre since seeing the first moody promo shots.

The spot seemed a promising setting for an original, off-kilter police drama, having a built-in history of skulduggery such as smuggling during prohibition and Nazi collaboration during the Second World War.

Alas, Saint Pierre, premiering on CBC Gem and CBC on Jan. 6, is a generic and goofy procedural put in front of a unique backdrop it rarely glances over its shoulder at.

There’s some enticingly European establishing drone shots of brightly coloured buildings lining narrow streets – but, on the ground, everything is familiar and the particularities of place and culture are treated as obstacles to avoid, rather than fodder for freshness.

Saint Pierre stars a couple of telegenic veterans of island-investigation shows that had a little more vim and vigour.

Allan Hawco plays Fitz, a Royal Newfoundland Constabulary inspector reassigned to work with the Saint Pierre police for extremely convoluted reasons. The Newfoundlander, of course, previously played a PI with panache on Republic of Doyle.

Josephine Jobert, meanwhile, plays Saint Pierre’s deputy police chief Arch – a Parisian transplant whose middle initial and last name, I was disappointed to discover, are not I. Pelago.

The French actress was previously a detective sergeant on seven seasons of Death in Paradise, a crime dramedy set on a fictional British outpost with French colonial history, so she certainly knows the overseas territory.

But it’ll be hard for viewers of Saint Pierre – which was created by Hawco, Robina Lord-Stafford and Perry Chafe, and sees Hawco and Lord-Stafford share the role of showrunner – to get over the hump of the poorly structured first episode.

After an unnecessary flash-forward to Fitz bleeding on a gurney, the reasons for his exile are outlined in a brief, confusing montage. It has something to do with him arresting the premier of Newfoundland, who’s dating his ex-wife and living with his kids.

Fitz’s actual arrival in Saint Pierre is consumed by a bit about him suffering from seasickness – and dialogue focusing on the eye-rolling reasons why everyone on the French island will be speaking English with varying degrees of decipherability almost all the time, around him or not.

Saint Pierre’s creators seem concerned that viewers will tune out not just if there’s too many subtitles, but if there’s not a case of the week right away. So Fitz doesn’t even get a tour of his new police HQ before a cult leader and local crime kingpin get into a fight in the centre of it. A scene later one of them is dead, and Fitz and Arch – who you’ll be surprised to learn are initially at odds with one another – are investigating.

After its unusually shaky pilot, the form of Saint Pierre comes into focus in the second episode: an outlandish crime of the week, cliché banter and a little chipping away at an overarching plot involving Saint Pierre’s big baddie, played by a British actor whose face you’ll eventually place putting on an Irish accent.

There will be assassins whose perspectives we see through cheesy crosshairs and sequences expensively underscored by Billie Eilish’s Bad Guy (despite the song now being more associated with cartoon animals than the “mature subject matter” CBC warns about here, but never delivers).

Episodes will end with the police team – a diverse bunch of actors filling out two-dimensional roles – having a pint of beer or a shot of tequila at the pub, per French custom.

I’m not opposed to a little fromage, but Saint Pierre lacks the true sense of fun that you found on Hawco Productions’ previous big CBC venture. Republic of Doyle, which ran from 2010 to 2014, was nothing deep, but its unwasted setting and joie de vivre made it an enjoyable romp.

While the sly, up-for-it Jobert seems to be having a good time on Saint Pierre, Hawco shows little spirit and at times looks like he’s going to nod off in the middle of a scene. This is partly about the character he’s playing: Fitz is a middle-aged man who has lost his wife and kids and is lonely in exile.

But, sending mixed messages, Hawco also seems to want to remain a hot-stuff lead, rather than lean into his journey toward his Slow Horses years. A sleepwalking subplot means he wanders around in his underwear at least once an episode, and there’s a recurring bit where a twentysomething female police officer openly ogles him, saying things such as: “Il est trop chaud.”

Hawco could absolutely anchor a detective drama with some real darkness, as anyone whose seen his work on stage can attest. But his new procedural makes Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent look like prestige TV.