Amazon MGM Studios’ limited series The Glass House, Series Mania’s three-episode closing gala is a double milestone for Prime Video and the latest proof that Quebec’s premium series TV talent and stories are connecting with international companies and audiences in innovative ways.
Glass House, a six-part drama by Montreal stand-up star Martin Matte about an entrepreneur whose hard-won success confronts social change in 1990s Montreal, is the first scripted French-language series in the studio’s Canadian shop and the first Canadian Prime Video original to earn the festival’s coveted closing spot.
“The selection of ‘Vitrérie Joyal’ (the series’ French title) shows that locally-based stories can have global appeal when executed with great skill,” Brent Haynes, head of local original production at Amazon MGM Studios in Canada, told Variety earlier this week.
That importance is not lost on Matt, the creator, writer, and lead actor. Matt’s previous series was the autobiographical Les Beaux Maraise, in which he played himself navigating work and home life in a comedy. The production ran for four seasons and became a must-see TV show in Quebec, and was licensed in several countries, including France, Serbia, and the Baltic States.
“For me, this was a story about Quebec and for Quebecers,” Matt says. “If you told me this would be shown to people in other countries, I wouldn’t believe it.”
When Prime approached him in 2023, Matt had been pitching ideas for a similarly personal but more ambitious series for a decade.
“I wanted to write about the 1990s, when my dad was 53 and I was 25 when I quit his job and went into comedy,” he says. (He worked in a glass factory and as a salesman until he quit.) “As I wrote, 30 years ago, when my father was having serious problems in his business, I could hear the way my father spoke when my brother had a serious accident.”
With the help of Les Beaux Maraise producers Encore Television and Amazon MGM Studios, Matt began writing the screenplay alone and with longtime writing collaborator Francois Avard. Inspired by the struggles of a father’s life, business, and family, this story is an emotional journey that unfolds over six chapters from stylish sitcom to dark reality.
“People in Quebec may be surprised to see a different style because they know me, but going there was an important evolution for me,” Matt says. “I admit that I was crying as I wrote this near the end.”
Guillaume Lonergan, whose directorial career skyrocketed after Empathy won the 2025 Series Mania Audience Award, knew from the first time he read the script that The Glass House was for him. “It’s a period that I know very well,” he said from Lille in a conversation earlier this week.
“Martin and I were both in our early 20s during the 1995 Quebec referendum (over Quebec’s sovereignty), and I remember a sense of how society was changing,” he says. “The central theme of this series is about refusing change and how to embrace change in your life.
“If you don’t embrace change, change will hurt you, and it might not be for the better.”
Lonergan half-jokingly says that stories that move from comedy to drama, light to dark, are “becoming my specialty.” “It has to be rooted in the script. It’s not something I can make, but there are things I can do to make it work. So casting is a big part of that.”
The first day of production for “The Glass House” was a table reading of the entire show. All the actors sat around a large table, and the staff sat around them, listening to the characters the actors played. “Everyone was able to binge-watch the series for the first time with the script in hand,” Lonergan says. “I’ve worked this way before, and it helped set the tone.”
While the attention to detail in the locations, sets, costumes, and music may be reminiscent of Mad Men and other period workplace dramas, the inspiration was Matt’s family photos and memories that he shared with Lonergan during pre-production chats.
“Culturally, Montreal was at an intense time because of the referendum in the fall, and that’s when Martin sets the story,” says Lonergan. “A third of the series is set in offices, and most of the offices in 1995 would have been built in the ’70s.”
The glass workshops found during scouting were all too modern, so a replica office was built on set. “For me, it was like a museum,” Matt says. “Rolodex, phone! And on my desk was a high-end calculator from the ’90s. My dad always had the same calculator in his pocket.”
