Raymont makes leap into drama with The Border
Toronto-based documentary filmmaker Peter Raymont is leaping into the world of drama with the debut of his new TV series The Border on CBC Television on Monday.
The show is about a fictional Canadian federal agency dealing with immigration and customs issues. Raymont, who is executive producer of the series, has called it "24, but with a conscience."
National security and border issues are rich fodder for TV drama, Raymont said in an interview with CBC Radio on Monday.
"Our series deals with all sort of things that happen along the border, not just national security — trafficking of people, money, smuggling of armaments, child soldiers," he said.
Raymont has produced and directed more than 20 documentaries over the years. He's likely best-known for Shake Hands with the Devil (2004), which followed retired Canadian Forces general Romeo Dallaire's return to Rwanda 10 years after he was in charge of the United Nations peacekeeping forces in the midst of the genocide.
Raymont and his late wife, Lindalee Tracey, have explored border issues before, with their 2002 documentary about the Canada-U.S. border, The Undefended Border.
But he said a fictional series gave him more latitude to explore issues that are often ripped from the headlines.
"In the post 9/11 world, it was getting more difficult to really get inside with a documentary camera," he said. "Our films were based on access, on how to get behind the scenes, how to film things no one else gets to see.
"We decided that we might get closer to the truth, closer to reality by dramatizing. I think that's what we've been able to do with The Border."
The show begins Monday with a story of extraordinary rendition, in which a man suspected of terrorism and discovered travelling in Canada is sent to a Syrian prison.
The story is fictitious, and not based on any one case, Raymont said, but stories of rendition, especially from the United States, are common in the news since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
"Often the writers would find when they were writing one of these scripts, that the next day in the newspaper on the front pages, that story that they were dealing with was there."
The show stars James McGowan as head of the Canadian Immigration and Customs Security team and American actress Sofia Milos of CSI Miami as the U.S. Homeland Security representative in Toronto.
The cast also includes Graham Abbey, Mark Wilson, Jim Codrington, Jonas Chernick, Nazneen Contractor and Catherine Disher.
Raymont describes the series as "unapologetically Canadian and unapologetically Toronto" with agency headquarters set in the former terminal in Toronto harbour that served the short-lived ferry to Rochester.
The series has been sold to French TV, but Raymont also has his sights on a U.S. deal.
He's hoping that with the writers' strike slowing the flow of new series on U.S. networks, viewers will tune in as CBC launches a slate of fresh new programming this week.
The Border debuts Monday at 9 p.m. The CBC will also be launching the comedy series Jpod on Tuesday and debuting Sophie and the hockey soap MVP later in the week.