''The Collaborators'' is a Canadian

police procedural The police show, or police crime drama, is a subgenre of procedural drama and detective fiction that emphasizes the investigative procedure of a police officer or department as the protagonist(s), as contrasted with other genres that focus on eith ...

crime drama Crime films, in the broadest sense, is a film genre inspired by and analogous to the crime fiction literary genre. Films of this genre generally involve various aspects of crime and its detection. Stylistically, the genre may overlap and combine ...

television series A television show – or simply TV show – is any content produced for viewing on a television set which can be broadcast via over-the-air, satellite television, satellite, or cable television, cable, excluding breaking news, television adverti ...

which aired on

CBC Television CBC Television (also known as CBC TV) is a Canadian English-language broadcast television network owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcaster. The network began operations on September 6, 1952. Its French-l ...

between December 1973 and December 1974.

Premise

A team of Metropolitan Toronto Police Department

forensic scientist Forensic science, also known as criminalistics, is the application of science to criminal and civil laws, mainly—on the criminal side—during criminal investigation, as governed by the legal standards of admissible evidence and criminal p ...

s investigate

crime scenes A crime scene is any location that may be associated with a committed crime. Crime scenes contain physical evidence that is pertinent to a criminal investigation. This evidence is collected by crime scene investigators (CSI) and law enforcemen ...

, frequently in conflict with the hard-boiled detectives and street cops who work on the front line.

Cast

*Michael Kane as Detective Sergeant Jim Brewer *Paul Harding as Dr. Charles Erickson (season 1) *

Toby Tarnow Toby Tarnow (born June 15, 1937, in Gravelbourg, Saskatchewan, Canada) is a Canadian actress. She was the first actress to portray the popular Anne Shirley of Anne of Green Gables in Canadian radio then in Canadian television in a 1956 televisi ...

as Liz Roman *Lawrence Benedict as Detective Quinn *

Les Carlson Les Carlson ( Leslie Merle Carlson; February 24, 1933 – May 3, 2014) was an American-Canadian film and television character actor who acted on stage in Canada, the U.S. and England. His films include the horror films '' Deranged'', '' Black Ch ...

as Detective Kaminski * Donald Pilon as Detective Sergeant Richard Tremblay (season 2)

Production

Concept

''The Collaborators'' has been described as an example of how the CBC "continually tried to find an angle in the professions of its investigators." The titular collaborators are the forensic scientists who work with the police. The program ostensibly attempted to deal with the investigative process in an "egalitarian way, from the scene of the crime to the police station to the lab." When Paul Harding left the series after the first season of eight one-hour episodes (before they had even aired), however, he noted that Michael Kane had dominated the show as the principal crime solver.

Personnel

The show drew on many of English Canada's distinguished directors, including Peter Carter, Don Owen,

René Bonnière René Gabriel Bonnière (born 10 March 1928) is a Canadian film director and editor, originally from France. He has had a prolific career, working in television and film in both French and English productions. Biography Bonnière was born in Lyo ...

("All The King's Men," "A Touch of Madness"), Don Haldane ("Beyond All Reasonable Doubt"),

Graham Parker Graham Thomas Parker (born 18 November 1950) is an English singer-songwriter, who is best known as the lead singer of the British band Graham Parker & the Rumour. Life and career Early career (1960s–1976) Parker was born in Hackney, East L ...

Allan King Allan Winton King, (February 6, 1930 – June 15, 2009), was a Canadian film director. Life Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, during the Great Depression, King attended Henry Hudson Elementary School, in Kitsilano.Don Shebib Donald Everett "Don" Shebib (born 27 January 1938) is a Canadian film director. Shebib is a central figure in the development of English Canadian cinema who made several short documentaries for the National Film Board of Canada and CBC Televisi ...

("Deedee," "Once Upon A Time In Genarro"), and Stan Olson. Show writers included Grahame Woods, George Robertson, Lyal Brown, Tony Sheer, Claude Harz, and Carol Bolt. Creator Richard Gilbert left the series over a salary dispute and the fact he had not been allowed to direct. Head of Drama

John Hirsch John Stephen Hirsch, OC (; May 1, 1930 – August 1, 1989) was a Hungarian-Canadian theatre director. He was born in Siófok, Hungary to József and Ilona Hirsch, both of whom were murdered in the Holocaust along with his younger brother I ...

replaced Gilbert with a veteran director but novice producer René Bonnière who intended to "lighten" the series.

Casting and characterization

Michael Kane played the "gruff and instinctive" Brewer, who, with his rugged looks, looking harassed and given to strong emotional expression, fit the type of the television cop or detective. Kane described the character as a combination of various film or television police, like

Columbo ''Columbo'' () is an American crime drama television series starring Peter Falk as Lieutenant Columbo, a homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. After two pilot episodes in 1968 and 1971, the show originally aired on NBC f ...

and

John Shaft John Shaft is a fictional character created by author/screenwriter Ernest Tidyman for the 1970 novel of the same name. He was portrayed by Richard Roundtree in the original 1971 film and in its four sequels, ''Shaft's Big Score!'' (1972), ''Shaf ...

, but with an "earthly appeal", somewhat like

Johnny Cash John R. Cash (born J. R. Cash; February 26, 1932 – September 12, 2003) was an American country singer-songwriter. Much of Cash's music contained themes of sorrow, moral tribulation, and redemption, especially in the later stages of his ca ...

. Kane appeared in only three episodes in the second season, leaving for health reasons as he found filming series television too much. His character's disappearance was left unexplained. Kane's replacement, Quebec actor Donald Pilon, is introduced in a forty second scene. Supposedly from

Kirkland Lake Kirkland Lake is a town and municipality in Timiskaming District in Northeastern Ontario, Canada. The 2016 population, according to Statistics Canada, was 7,981. The community name was based on a nearby lake which in turn was named after Winnifre ...

and unable to speak French, the actor nevertheless spoke with "a francophone lilt" and "Gallic charm and warmth." Pilon plays Tremblay as a different sort of police officer: rational and relaxed to the point of

stoicism Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium in Athens in the early 3rd century Common Era, BCE. It is a philosophy of personal virtue ethics informed by its system of logic and its views on the natural world, asser ...

. Pilon said he wanted the character to be the type of man who makes mistakes and sometimes "doesn't get his man."

Filming locations

Episodes were filmed in

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

Marketing

Publicity releases for ''The Collaborators'' emphasised suspense and "the strange world of modern crime detection techniques" as well as plot intricacies and intrigue.

Release and reception

''The Collaborators'' aired in the "prestigious" Sunday 9 pm time slot, which may have given it a boost: its eight episode first season eventually reached an audience of 2 million, or a 20% share of all the audience watching that night in that time slot, with an enjoyment index average of 70. Audiences liked Kane and Harding, the "naturalistic action and design" and "true to life" plots.

Critical response

Contemporary

Jack Miller, writing for the ''

Toronto Daily Star The ''Toronto Star'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper. The newspaper is the country's largest daily newspaper by circulation. It is owned by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Torstar Corporation and par ...

'', called the first season the "slickest commercial adventure series" produced to date by the CBC. The second season received mixed reviews and its audience share declined to 13%.

Retrospective

Ed Conroy remarks on the series' "seatbelt-less high-speed chases" in yellow police cars and "a menagerie of exotic villains that ranged from gay Nazi bikers to roaming gangs of mute children," asserting that it could only have ever been made in the "brown and orange haze of 1970s Toronto."

References

External links

*
The Collaborators
at the

Canadian Communications Foundation The Canadian Communications Foundation (CCF) is a Canadian nonprofit organization which documents the history of broadcasting in Canada, particularly radio and television. Since 1995, the organization has distributed its collection via an intern ...

Queen's University Directory of CBC Television Series
via archive.org) {{DEFAULTSORT:Collaborators, The 1973 Canadian television series debuts 1974 Canadian television series endings CBC Television original programming Canadian police procedural television series 1970s Canadian crime drama television series