Hugh Dillon is a tough-talking, punk-loving, bald-headed actor who fires off profanities like a Deadwood gunslinger.
But even he is humbled that a TV series as dark as Durham County not only survives, but thrives.
"It's like a goat looking at lightning!" Dillon says about watching in awe as his producers turn their risky project into a Canadian success story. It appears on TMN and Movie Central.
This is a country where quality TV is too often strangled by bureaucracy and indifference. Yet Durham County, a surburban police thriller with serial killers, conflicted cops and domestic melodrama, is on a roll.
"That is an effing mystery!" the 45-year-old Dillon says. "I look at them and I don't get it," Dillon adds, referring to how co-creators Janis Lundman, Adrienne Mitchell and Laurie Finstad Knizhnik keep the magic going.
Durham County: Season One was just released on DVD. The three-disc box set covers the six original episodes (which were nominated for 13 Geminis, including best dramatic series). Among extras are two songs that Dillon, co-founder of The Headstones, wrote and performed with his latest band, The Redemption Choir.
Season two -- another six episodes -- is currently in production in Montreal. Dillon shoots into December before returning to another edgy series, Flashpoint. On the phone from Montreal, Dillon says he is stoked at what can be done in Canada, against the odds.
"It comes back to the producers. They just set up these productions with so much integrity that you just want to bring everything, and be honest, and be straight-up, and be there for these people, and to give a s--- and do all the things that always seem like a good idea but never usually happen, you know? So it is happening now and it translates into successful television."
Shows such as Durham County, as disturbing as the macabre Dexter, are intruding into territory most mainstream movies avoid, Dillon says.
"They don't have the guts to do it. Yet people want to see something like what we're making and we want to do it. That's why it's exciting to be a part of it as opposed to: 'Yeah, I got a job and I'm paying my mortgage and I'm just adding to the heap of s--- that's out there!'
"It's a giant heap, you know. But, to get to do this incredible work, it just makes you feel alive and everybody's excited and passionate and this is what it should be. There should be rules: It should be good before people give you money to make it."
Durham County is good. Yet it still needs to be discovered by a wider audience. So DVD is critical, Dillon says. "It is about getting those images out. The DVD is huge! There is so much stuff out there right now and people don't know what to truly spend their time on.
"This reminds me about how it used to be with 45s and the great records people would pass around. By word of mouth, they would go: 'Now, that's good!' " He personally just discovered The Wire on DVD this way.
Durham County works because it depicts a harrowing reality with a gritty realism, yet it also has touches of the surreal and a melancholy mood, Dillon says. His own character is a Toronto cop who moves back to Durham Region, where he grew up and still has secrets lurking. Now he is married, with a family, and lives near an old rival who may be a killer. Life gets complicated.
Dillon is keen that his cop, Mike Sweeney, is into hockey, not music. "When we did the first season I was very happy about that because, at the time, I wanted to get away from any music references. I just wanted to get into it. It's not method acting but (a matter of) not having any of my old life bleed into it."
Today, Durham County is a continuing thrill. "It's just such a gift," Dillon says. "It changed everything in my life, really."
