By BRENDAN KELLY, The Gazette

Following my column last week about the lack of anglos on local French TV, a number of folks responded by noting that English-Canadian TV isn't much better when it comes to representing francophone Quebec. And they are absolutely right.

Dramas and sitcoms from the ROC (Rest of Canada) hardly ever feature francophones, and that is a real shame. But funnily enough, just days after the column, I was sitting in an Old Montreal hotel suite listening with fascination as great Quebec actor Remy Girard and producer Virginia Thompson told me how easy it was to sell CBC-TV on the idea of a comedy series starring Girard.

The show is InSecurity, a very funny spoof of all those procedural series out there, from CSI to 24, and it follows a group of rather incompetent spies bumbling their way through top-secret missions in the nation's capital. It premieres on CBC Jan. 4.

Girard -whom you know and love from Les invasions barbares, Les Bougon, and Jesus de Montreal -plays Claude Lesage, the most seasoned member of the spy team, a guy who speaks with a Quebec accent and, as early as the second episode, shows that he can make a mean souffle.

The creators and executive producers of InSecurity are Thompson, Robert de Lint and Kevin White, all three of whom spent much of the past decade working together on the hit CTV sitcom Corner Gas. Thompson, who grew up in Dorval, says she just felt it was natural to cast Girard.

"When we came up with the concept of creating a show about a fictional spy agency, naturally it would happen in Ottawa," said Thompson. "And Ottawa is a bilingual city. So the first two characters we came up with was the (spy played by Natalie Lisinska) and the Remy character. He was going to be a French-Canadian, he was going to be a veteran. It was a natural choice. It seemed completely organic. It's kind of what should be. It's our country, you know?"

CON'D

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