From a media release:
Production has begun on the second season ofShaftesbury’s 1920s-set FRANKIE DRAKE MYSTERIES, a co-production with CBC and UKTV and distributed by Kew Media Group. Season one saw secrets emerge from Frankie’s tightly hidden past, from discovering her mother alive and working as a con woman, to her friends uncovering her past as a spy. In the sophomore season, cases will take Frankie and her team of gal pals across prohibition-era Toronto, from renowned museums and high fashion houses, to dance halls and baseball leagues. Season one of the series garnered an audience average of 782,000 on CBC, making it CBC’s second-most-watched drama of the current broadcast season*. Starring Lauren Lee Smith (The Shape of Water, The Listener, The L Word), the homegrown hit series will film on location in Ontario this summer.
FRANKIE DRAKE MYSTERIES stars Smith as the private eye with a mysterious past, Frankie Drake; Chantel Riley (Race, The Lion King) as Frankie’s fearless and clever partner, Trudy Clarke; Rebecca Liddiard (Alias Grace, Slasher: Guilty Party) as keen police morality officer, Mary Shaw; and Sharron Matthews (Mean Girls, Odd Squad) as spirited morgue attendant, Flo Chakowitz. Wendy Crewson (The Detail, Slasher, Saving Hope) will return as Frankie’s occasional-con-woman mother, Nora; as well as Grace Lynn Kung (Mary Kills People, The Carmilla Movie, Star Trek: Discovery) as café and speakeasy owner, Wendy Quon; along with new guest stars for this season including: Natalie Brown (The Strain, Dark Matter, Channel Zero), Steve Byers (Slasher, Shadowhunters: The Mortal Instruments, Far Cry 5), Lara Jean Chorostecki (Designated Survivor, X Company, Hannibal), Alan Davies (Jonathan Creek, Damned, The Bromley Boys), Anthony Lemke (Blindspot, Dark Matter, The Listener), Romane Portail (Fearless, Sense8, Urban Jungle), and Vincent Walsh (The Fall, Played, Deception).
FRANKIE DRAKE MYSTERIES series one launched on UKTV’s Alibi channel in January 2018. The show remains one of Alibi’s top-performing shows of the year alongside Murdoch Mysteries and is up 210% on slot on average.
Season two episodes will be directed by Ruba Nadda (helming five episodes as lead director), Cal Coons, Peter Stebbings, and Sudz Sutherland, and written by co-creator Carol Hay, showrunner James Hurst, Andrew Burrows-Trotman, John Callaghan, Cal Coons, and Jessie Gabe.
Set in 1920s Toronto, FRANKIE DRAKE MYSTERIES follows the city’s only female private detectives as they take on the cases the police don’t want to touch. In a time of change and hopefulness, their gender is their biggest advantage as they defy expectations and rebel against convention. Their cases take them through every cross-section of Toronto, meeting people of all backgrounds and means, as well as historical characters, along the way. Frankie and Trudy’s fearless sense of adventure gets them into all kinds of trouble, but they always manage to find a way out. They are new detectives for a new world – but is the world ready for them?
Created by Carol Hay and Michelle Ricci, FRANKIE DRAKE MYSTERIES is executive produced by Christina Jennings, Scott Garvie, Carol Hay, and James Hurst, who also serves as showrunner; Ruba Nadda serves as lead director/co-executive producer, John Callaghan and Jessie Gabe co-executive produce, and Teresa Ho is producer. For CBC, Sally Catto is General Manager, Programming; Helen Asimakis is Senior Director, Scripted Content; and Melanie Nepinak Hadley is Executive in Charge of Production. Bonnie Brownlee is Executive Director, Marketing.
A CBC original series, FRANKIE DRAKE MYSTERIES is developed and produced by Shaftesbury in association with CBC and UKTV, with the participation of the Canada Media Fund, the Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit, and the Ontario Film and Television Tax Credit. Kew Media Group is the global distributor of the series.
