Orphan Black, 19-2 and Spun Out topline TV Canadian Screen Award nominees

The stars and series Orphan Black, 19-2 and Spun Out were among the top nominees for the 2015 Canadian Screen Awards, announced in dual press conferences in Toronto and Montreal.

Space’s Orphan Black was the big winner, grabbing a total of 13 nominees on Tuesday morning (including nods for co-stars Tatiana Maslany and Jordan Garvaris), with Global’s Bomb Girls: Facing the Enemy and City’s Seed nabbing five, Sensitive Skin with six, Motive with eight and 19-2, Call Me Fitz and Mr. D garnering 10.

Among the snubs for this year’s major TV awards? Kim Cattrall for Sensitive Skin, Rookie Blue, The Listener, Murdoch Mysteries, Heartland, Bitten and Republic of Doyle.

Kicked off by Academy CEO Helga Stephenson, part of the presentation was highlighted by a reel spotlighting the series and films created in Canada; it will be shown in Cineplex theatres (check out the trailer below). Canadian Screen Awards host Andrea Martin was on hand to not only accept a nomination for her role on Working the Engels but to express her excitement at hosting.

“This is a really strong year for Canadian television and film and I’m thrilled to be hosting the awards,” she said, while making a nod to attending the packed world premiere event for CBC’s Schitt’s Creek on Monday night.

Announced by Strange Empire actress Cara Gee and 19-2‘s Jared Keeso (who was nominated), here are the key television nominations:

Best Dramatic Series
19-2
Continuum
Motive
Orphan Black
Remedy

Best Comedy Series
Call Me Fitz
Mr. D
Seed
Spun Out
Tiny Plastic Men

Best Reality/Competition Program or Series
The Amazing Race Canada
Big Brother Canada
MasterChef Canada
The Ultimate Fighter Nations – Canada vs. Australia
Unusually Thicke

Best Children’s or youth Fiction Program or Series
Degrassi
The Next Step
Total Drama All-Stars

Best Dramatic Mini-Series or TV Movie
Babysellers
The Best Laid Plans
Bomb Girls: Facing the Enemy
Bunks

Best Factual Program or Series
Cold Water Cowboys
Ice Pilots NWT
Emergency Room: Life and Death at VGH
Scam City
Tessa and Scott

Best International Drama
Vikings
The Great Martian War

Best Variety of Sketch Comedy Program or Series
Rick Mercer Report
Funny as Hell
Seth Rogen: Hilarity for Charity
This Hour Has 22 Minutes

Best Performance by an Actor in a Continuing Leading Comedic Role
Gerry Dee, Mr. D
Adam Korson, Seed
Don McKellar, Sensitive Skin
Dave Foley, Spun Out
Mark Meer, Tiny Plastic Men

Best Performance by an Actress in a Continuing Leading Comedic Role
Joanna Cassidy, Call Me Fitz
Julia Voth, Package Deal
Carrie-Lynn Neales, Seed
Kacey Rohl, Working the Engels
Andrea Martin, Working the Engels

Best Performance by an Actor in a Continuing Leading Dramatic Role
Adam Beach, Arctic Air
David Sutcliffe, Cracked
Jared Keeso, 19-2
Michael McLeod, Forgive Me
Dillon Casey, Remedy

Best Performance by an Actress in a Continuing Leading Dramatic Role
Meaghan Rath, Being Human
Tatiana Maslany, Orphan Black
Megan Follows, Reign
Jennie Raymond, Sex & Violence
Jackie Torrens, Sex & Violence

The complete list can be found here.

What do you think of the nominations? Who do you think will win? Comment below or via @tv_eh.

Hosted by Andrea Martin, two-hour Canadian Screen Awards air Sunday, March 1, at 8 p.m. on CBC.

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9 thoughts on “Orphan Black, 19-2 and Spun Out topline TV Canadian Screen Award nominees”

  1. It’s not just in the United States where TV awards can be so effed up. Continuum was hosed, snubbed, robbed, jobbed. One lone nomination to Orphan Black’s 13? Where’s the justice in that? If Tatiana Maslany played only one role, OB would have a micro-meter of the buzz that it gets now because of its gimmick.

  2. Can someone please explain to me why Vikings isn’t just in the regular Best Drama category? Why is it in the Best International Drama category with only one other series? I thought as a co-pro it still qualifies as a Canadian drama and having Vikings put into a separate category seems silly to me, especially considering it is competing against other Canadian series in other categories. Speaking of co-pros, is Reign considered one seeing as it snagged a few noms? I never realized before that it was. None of this makes sense to me. In the drama race should be Orphan Black, Vikings, Continuum, 19-2 and Hard Rock Medical or if Reign is considered a co-pro, then Reign. As for the acting categories, I would have liked to see some of the cast of Vikings get noms–there was some really impressive acting on the show. Finally, I am curious to see what gets nominated on next years Screenies. CBC has 3 mini-series debuting this midseason (X Company, Book of Negroes, Ascension) plus Strange Empire, Blackstone and Killjoys will be in the drama race too. I find I could care less about the Best Comedy race. To date, there’s only one Canadian comedy I actually like, Mohawk Girls, but I doubt it’ll get noms even though I find it really funny with at times really clever writing. I might really like Schitt’s Creek though and I anticipate that show cleaning up at next year’s Screenies.

    1. They introduced International drama after the embarrassment of a couple years in a row having to declare barely Canadian The Tudors and/or The Borgias as best Canadian drama. Simplistic explanation is there’s 10/10 Cancon and 6/10 Cancon and they wanted only the 10s to be eligible as best drama. I agree it’s ridiculous to have a category with 2 nominees.

      This was the first I’d heard of Reign as a coproduction but I see it does have at least a couple of Canadian production companies among the many behind it (Whizbang and Take 5). Likely a 6/10 and the Canadian network (is it CTV?) has never claimed it as original (maybe because the network wasn’t involved in production.)

      Too much parsing of Cancon rules and award eligibility tends to make my head explode.

      1. If that’s true, then why is Orphan Black considered a 10/10? It’s a co-pro as well. As is Continuum. I think separating the categories was a bad idea. Either something is considered Canadian or it’s not. If a show is 50% Canadian then it should be eligible. In today’s day and age, at least half of Cancon is co-produced with other countries. Another thing I wonder is if Reign is a co-pro, why isn’t it in the Best International Drama with Vikings? There’s like 3 empty slots in that category for nominations. Thirdly, Vikings still competes with the “regular Canadian shows” in other categories as they got noms for Best Visual Effects, Best Sound and Best Direction with Reign getting Best Achievement in Makeup. Beauty & the Beast got a nom for Best Production Design too. Why is Vikings considered Canadian enough to get noms in other the other categories but not in the Best Drama one? Sounds like bulltweed to me.

        1. Orphan Black and Continuum are 10/10 because they comply with 10 of the CAVCO requirements in their point system (see #2 here: http://oldfraser.lexi.net/publications/forum/1998/august/canadian.html) A co-pro isn’t automatically 6/10 – in fact many of them are 10/10. It’s all about the points, and Tudors and Borgias didn’t have Canadian writers, lead actors, etc. the way those 2 do. And there is a difference between co-pros, co-ventures and a US network buying a Canadian show.

          We quizzed our resident wonk Kelly Lynne Ashton at one point and in short there’s also issues about who owns the copyright and how much of the budget is spent in Canada.

          Re the “empty slots” there’s no requirement to fill up the number of available nominations, which I think is a good thing. I’ve criticized Canadian awards for that in the past when it looked like there weren’t 5 good shows for a category so all you have to do is make a show to get nominated. And I’m not sure if that one is 5 – it might be 3.

          They can’t win – people HATED it when the best drama category was full of shows that were only nominally Canadian. This year there aren’t as many that merited a nomination so it looks silly. It’s an awards show – what would we do if we had nothing to complain about?

  3. This is the case where a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

    There’s an error in every one of these responses. Not gonna go through them all, but assumptions about what’s a co-pro, what’s not a co-pro etc etc.

    Best International Drama was established for the reason that Diane enumerated above. The feeling was that the much greater resources, often the American or international led PR and larger budgets, created a scenario where Big Money Shows would always have a structural advantage over “Canadian” shows, which would work against the Academy’s mission. If you’re a big International Series you presumably don’t actually need the promotional advantage of the CSAs. It would make a difference for smaller and Canadian series, which is what the CANADIAN Academy of Cinema & Television is supposed to be about.

    The determination was made that the Best Series category should be driven by and open to those shows where the primary creative personnel are Canadians. This would normally be the producer, the writer/showrunner, if there is a Directing Producer. Ie: where was the show conceived and primarily developed? These shows would include Made in Canada fare like 19-2, Flashpoint, Continuum, Motive, Orphan Black.

    Series that have Canadian involvement at the industrial or craft level but whose writers, directors, and key decisionmaking come from elsewhere are eligible for the Best International Series Award, recognizing their unique position as pulling from labor and crews and artists from all over the world. In this way, the division is modeled after a similar split at the BAFTA Awards (the British Film & TV Awards) They basically do the same thing.

    It’s easy to get confused because when people come in with money sometimes it’s said that they’re a “co-production.” That can mean maybe a US or American channel gave money to the show, or bought presale or whatever.

    But there’s a separate, legal defined term called a “treaty co-production” — which are governed by treaties Canada has with a number of countries. These treaty co-productions under the terms of the treaty count for 100% 10/10 content for the purposes of the Canadian broadcaster….but they might actually also include shows that are actually “Minority co-productions” ie: where Canada as the partner has the lesser of the investment, and in these cases most often most of the primary Creative decisionmaking (showrunner, lead writer, directors, stars) is made outside of Canada.

    So…sometimes a show like Orphan Black is called a ‘co-production’ because it has a financial partner — but if you look at the production it’s actually legitimately 10/10 Canadian because the writing staff, the producers etc are Canadian.

    And sometimes a show like the Borgias can be “deemed” under the international co-production treaty as being “10/10 Canadian” for the broadcaster, though when you look at it further, most of the creative decisionmaking isn’t made here. In cases like this, as per the way the BAFTAS do it, it can compete for International Series but not Best Series.

    Once you get beyond the series level to the craft categories, none of that matters… and all craft categories are treated similarly. So you can have Costume Design or Sound or Editing on Orphan Black compete against the same artists working on The Borgias, so long as that work was done by a Canadian as the Canadian part of the international treaty co-production.

    I know it sounds horribly complex and byzantine, because it is, but that’s the basics of how and why it works. Some years you have more co productions and more international series, some years you have less.

    But it preserves the principle that the Canadian Screen Awards reward Canadian creativity on screen.

    And, as I said, it’s a well-established distinction based on the BAFTA model.

    Now feel free to bitch about it. But I strongly feel that the Academy got this one right. It’s the fairest solution.

    Snark away.

  4. Denis, thanks for taking the time to explain all that. I still don’t agree with it but now I at least understand the process somewhat, at least as much as my 5-year-old understood a few minutes ago why I can’t put cracker chips in her lunch kit for tomorrow because they are considered more chips than crackers by her school’s healthy lunch policy which bans chips but allows crackers, which are really no healthier if you look at the nutrition labels.

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