Amazon MGM Studios’ ‘The Glass House’ Premiere Breaks New Ground as Series Mania Closing Gala (EXCLUSIVE)

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 evidence that the talent and stories of Quebec premium series TV are connecting with international companies and audiences in a game-changing way. 

“Glass House,” Montreal standup star Martin Matte’s six-part dramedy about an entrepreneur whose hard-won success bumps up against societal change in ’90s-era Montreal, is the first scripted French-language series from the studio’s Canadian shop and also the first Canadian Prime Video Original to nab the festival’s coveted closing spot. 

“The selection of ‘Vitrerie Joyal’ [the series’ French title] demonstrates that locally rooted stories have global appeal when executed with exceptional craft,” Brent Haynes, head of local originals, Amazon MGM Studios, Canada, told Variety earlier this week. 

The significance is not lost on creator, writer, and lead actor Matte, whose previous series was the autobiographical “Les beaux malaises,” in which he plays a version of himself navigating the comedy workplace and family life. It ran four seasons and was must-see TV in Quebec, licensed in several countries, and also adapted in France, Serbia, the Baltics and more. 

“To me it was a story in Quebec and for Quebec people,” Matte says, “and if you told me it would be shown to people in another country I wouldn’t believe you.” 

When Prime asked for a meeting in 2023, Matte had been turning over his equally personal but more ambitious series idea for 10 years. 

“I wanted to write about the 1990s when my father was 53, and I was 25 and quit my father’s business to go into comedy,” he says. (He worked in the glazier shop and in sales before he quit.) “As I wrote, I could hear the way my father talked about things 30 years ago—when he had serious problems in the business, when my brother had a major accident.” 

With “Les beaux malaises” producer Encore Television and Amazon MGM Studios on board, Matte began working alone and with his longtime writing collaborator François Avard on the scripts. The story, inspired his father’s life and business and family struggles, is an emotional journey that moves from stylish situational comedy to darker realities over six chapters. 

“People know me in Quebec, so they might be surprised to see a different style but was an important evolution for me to go to that place,” Matte says. “I admit I was crying while writing near the end.”

Guillaume Lonergan, whose directing career went into hyperdrive after “Empathy” won the 2025 Series Mania Audience Award, knew “Glass House” was for him when he first read the scripts. “It’s a period I know well,” he says from Lille, during a conversation earlier this week. 

“Martin and I were both in our early twenties during the 1995 Quebec referendum (about the province’s sovereignty). I remember the feeling of that time, how society was changing,” he says. “The central theme of the series is the refusal to change and about the way you embrace change in your life.

“If you don’t embrace change, change will take care of you and maybe not in a good way.” 

A story that moves from comedy to drama, from light to dark, is becoming “kind of my specialty,” Lonergan says, half-joking. “It has to be rooted in the script; it’s not something I can create but there are things I can do to make it work. So casting is a big part of that.” 

The first day of production on “The Glass House” was a table read of the entire show, with all the actors around a large table, and the crew with seated around them, listening to the actors play the characters. “Everyone was able to binge-watch the series for the first time with the script in their hands,” Lonergan says. “I’ve worked this way before, and it helps set the tone.” 

The attention to detail in locations, sets, costumes and music may remind some of  “Mad Men” and other period workplace dramas but the inspirations were Matte’s family photos and memories, which he shared with Lonergan during pre-production chats.

“Culturally, it was an intense time in Montreal because of the referendum in the fall, which is when Martin sets the story,” Lonergan says. “A third of the series is set in the offices, but most 1995 offices would have been built in the ’70s.” 

Every vitrerie (glazier’s shop) they found during scouting looked too modern, so a replica office was constructed on set. “For me it was like a museum,” Matte says. “The Rolodex, the telephones! And on my desk was the top-rated calculator from the ’90s. My father had the same one, always in his pocket.”