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Featured, Nurses

Nurses gets personal in Episode 2

Nurses may have only just debuted but with Global’s unprecedented order of a second season, the medical drama has a lot to live up to. That security of a sophomore year could’ve allowed for the writers to have more time to develop the five main characters—Grace Knight (Tiera Skovbye), Ashley Collins (Natasha Callis), Keon Colby (Jordan Johnson-Hinds), Nazneen Khan (Sandy Sidhu) and Wolf Burke (Donald MacLean Jr.)—but viewers will instead get quite a bit of insight into what makes these newbies tick, and how they got to where they are now in the second episode.

The description for “Undisclosed Conditions” is pretty generic stuff: “When a guest of honour at a St. Mary’s fundraiser collapses, Grace grapples with the patient’s refusal to tell her family her secret, while Ashley confronts Grace about her own secret.” That’s what it’s all about with these five: secrets. And for Grace and Ashley, a bit of a rivalry as well, both professionally and personally.

“It’s a misunderstanding,” Skovbye clarified when I met with the five actors at Corus’ headquarters to chat about the show. “It’s two people, coming in, one thinks they know what’s going but when the truth is revealed, they end up forming a bond.”

It’s the final heartbreaking scene in Episode 2 that Callis calls the “turning point” for Grace and Ashley, and will move them “a step in the right direction.” But if you’re hoping they’re going to be besties (which they are in real-life, FYI), think again. “It levels the playing field,” added Skovbye. “But it’s not like they’re going to be buddy-buddy.”

As for Ashley’s actual buddy, we get a peek into Wolf’s past, which MacLean Jr. described as “a life-defining moment.”

“Wolf seems like a goof, kind of wears everything on his sleeve, and maybe gets judged for that, but then you realize that this guy has something figured out within himself from when he was a child,” revealed MacLean Jr., who found parallels between himself and his character. “Before I even auditioned for it, I was searching for that feeling of fulfillment and zeroing in on what’s important and spiritually being enlightened, and then this came across my table and I fell in love. And I think I matured with the character.”

Sidhu shares those same sentiments about her time on Nurses, specifically where her character came from, and what lies ahead. Nazneen may come across as spoiled (OK, technically, she kind of was), but she tries to prove she’s anything but. Some things, though, you can’t fake.

“What I really love about her journey is it’s really a reinvention story,” she explained. “Why is she in Canada, and why is she a nurse? How does someone like that, who comes from such a wealthy family in India, and has had a life of privilege, decide to transplant herself into a totally new environment where she doesn’t know anyone and chooses the most selfless occupation ever?” Sidhu promised her story would be unraveled as the season plays out.

We also got answers as to why Keon would give up a possibly lucrative football career for nursing (“a freak accident” is how Johnson-Hinds described it), but as far as the actor is concerned, he’s only looking towards his—and Keon’s—futures.

“I think once [creator and showrunner] Adam [Pettle] and I sit down and see where he wants to take Keon’s story, more layers will be pulled back,” said Johnson-Hinds. “It’ll be interesting to see where the writers take that. Because I’ll be ready to chime in and say, ‘Yup, this is what I wanna be fighting for for this character.'”

It’s safe to say they’re all going to be fighting for their characters.

Nurses airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Global.

Images courtesy of Corus Entertainment.

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Featured, Reality, Lifestyle & Documentary

High Arctic Haulers: “The work they do is so necessary and important”

Last week, I wrote a preview about the debut of High Arctic Haulers. The documentary series, broadcast Sundays at 8 p.m. on CBC, spotlights the captains and crews of ships delivering supplies to communities in Canada’s far north, as well as the people who rely on those supplies to arrive.

It turns out I previewed the wrong episode. Networks swap episodes all the time, and that was the case with High Arctic Haulers. The bad news? Anyone who read last week’s story and tuned into the debut was probably a little confused what they watched didn’t match what I wrote. The good news? It gave me the opportunity to cover the show again, this time by chatting with High Arctic Haulers‘ director and production consultant, Indigenous filmmaker Kelvin Redvers.

You grew up not only hearing the stories but also witnessing these ships coming in, right?
Kelvin Redvers: Sort of. The community that I grew up in was one of the starting points for some of the deliveries that went to the Arctic. And so that company doesn’t exist anymore, called NTCL. But it was a main industry in my town, which was the summer deliveries to the Arctic community. When I was a teenager, I’d actually done some documentary work on the boats that deliver up to the Arctic and I’ve always been amazed at the story. The work that they do is so necessary and important and, often, southerners know very little about this mode of delivery and actually just very little about the north in general.

It’s so foreign for someone living in Toronto to learn what these communities really rely on and if the weather’s bad, maybe they don’t get this stuff.
KR: It’s full of little small things as well too. What I love about the show is each episode kind of opens up a new layer of the complexity of challenges that we wouldn’t ever really think about. There are just so many different aspects to what these ships do and what makes it challenging that this format of having seven episodes is really fantastic. Each one opens up a new puzzle that these crew members have to solve. I love watching people who are really good at their job have to solve very difficult challenges.

What are some of the specific challenges that you had to deal with, with regard to equipment or production or weather just wreaking havoc?
KR: The production team, the team in the office figuring out logistics, had some of the hardest jobs out there in media because everything would change constantly. From day to day, even within a day, there’d be changes in terms of weather, in terms of when a ship is due to arrive. At one point we had, I think, 25 crew members spread out across five different communities in the Arctic.

And in each of those places, there are flight delays. Sometimes a bag doesn’t come in. There was a team that got stuck in for, I think, four or five days. I was stuck trying to get to Cape Dorset because there were flight delays there. Everything would change constantly. We sort of had to be really nimble and in the show you see the ship’s crew having to make decisions about where to go and what they can do based on the weather.

Even with all those challenges, anytime footage came back to the production office, it was emotional, it was moving, it was funny. It had all the elements that you would need under some of the most incredible pressures that you could ever face in a documentary series.

Can you give me a little bit of background on We Matter?
KR: My sister and I started, back in 2016, a nonprofit designed to support Indigenous youth who are going through mental health issues. And one of the main reasons is there is a lot of mental health challenges for Indigenous young people across Canada, the First Nation community and Inuits. And one of the reasons we started that was because of our own experiences being Indigenous folks growing up in the North, feeling that there weren’t many resources for Indigenous youth, but also there just weren’t many portraits of positive Indigenous role models in the media generally.

We never got to watch ourselves on TV in dramas or even the superheroes. The organization uses videos, predominantly on social media, of people talking about mental health issues and talking about positivity, overcoming challenges.

I think that affects some of the work that I do in media. And I think the sort of crossover between what this show does is that it really does present Indigenous folks, Indigenous young people, and Northerners in such a positive, inspirational way. In the premiere episode, one of the main stories is these Inuit high schoolers learning how to build kayaks and they are so excited about building kayaks and bringing in some of the materials that they need. Through the stories of what it takes to get material out, you also get to spend time with these young people and hear their humour and learn a little bit about them and see them on screen and their excitement and happiness to get these materials.

And I think that that has an impact in our country, generally, both for Indigenous folks to get to see ourselves in our homes and in our areas presented in such a positive way. But also it helps people in the suburbs or in Toronto to see a different side that you might not normally see in a news article or something more negative slanted and at the same time it’s also just a part of this incredible story that’s exciting and interesting in itself. It brings people to the table because the stories are so captivating. Then along the way, we’re teaching Canadians about themselves, showing others that yes, this is a part of your country. These are people who are contributing to what it means to be a Canadian in unique and interesting ways and really powerful ways.

High Arctic Haulers airs Sundays at 8 p.m. on CBC.

Images courtesy of CBC.

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Featured, The Detectives

CBC’s The Detectives shows “this can happen to you, to someone in your family”

One of the most compelling series on CBC is The Detectives. The documentary series is heading into Season 3 on the public broadcaster, revisiting true crimes in this country, the families involved and the law enforcement officers who capture the killers who commit heinous acts.

Returning Thursday at 9 p.m. with a visit to New Brunswick, viewers recall the death of a woman and her son, and the lengths former RCMP detective Gerry Belliveau (played in re-enactments by Allan Hawco) goes to solve it. Produced by Montreal’s WAM Media GRP Inc.—who also make the U.S. counterpart Real Detective, available on Netflix—we spoke to showrunner and executive producer Petro Duszara about the series and Season 4.

You’ve been working professionally in TV and film since 1998. How did you get into the TV and film industry? 
Petro Duszara: I actually studied anatomy and some biology at McGill. And in my last year, I shocked my parents and said I was quitting, and applied to communications at Concordia, and did communications studies there and then started working in TV after that. I’d definitely had a change of course. My whole background was science, science, science, science, science, and then I knew I always wanted to do TV and made the decision a little late in the game. Not too late, I guess.

Biology and science really play a part in The Detectives, because it’s all about the forensics, and DNA in a lot of these cases. 
PD: True. I never thought of it that way, but you’re absolutely right. There is definitely that link. And I find what I’ve really liked, and the team has really liked, in terms of doing the shows is, you really need to piece things together, for detectives reading these things together. And I find that’s very scientific as well. And then, of course, the human drama.

How do you go about choosing the stories that you’re going to cover?
PD: It’s a multi-pronged approach. We’re looking always for cases that represent across the country. You don’t want to stay centric in a particular city. We’re looking for stories that will hold an hour of television. There are a lot of excellent cases that are open and shut, or there isn’t as much investigative work that has to be done, so we’re looking for stories that we can last.

You’re looking for detectives that are emotionally connected to the story, and also eloquent enough to share their story, and they have the charisma to carry a story onscreen. You have to find cases where there is a really solid and important reason to tell that case, to reopen those wounds. We’re looking for landmark cases that changed things in the legislature, or how policing works, or open the eyes to a department, in terms of seeing things in their blind spot. So that’s a critical part.

And then, the linchpin is you look for stories where we speak to the families. We make sure the families know what we’re doing, and are supportive of what we’re doing. And then, once all of those boxes are all checked off, then we go ahead with the story.

The season premiere takes place in New Brunswick. I’m learning more about the country through this show.
PD: Our researchers love that too. Because we travel to these locations, when we meet these detectives, and we’ll often meet the families as well. And so, you’re seeing different parts of the world that you’re trying to capture and share with the rest of the country. So it’s neat.

Part of the storytelling is done through reenactments and some details are altered. Why? 
PD: There are different reasons why things are altered. Sometimes details are altered to protect the identity of people that, although they were specifically involved in their case, their names have never been published and made public. Sometimes in an investigation, an investigator will interview five or 10 different witnesses, who’ll give them one bit of information each. Rather than having five or 10 different scenes with five or 10 different people, we’ll create a composite character who provides all those tips in one shot. The same thing happens with investigators.

Often, in reality, you don’t have necessarily a partner working a homicide case with you. You’ll have a variety of people on a team. So sometimes, we create a composite character that represents several of the officers that worked on the team with the lead investigator, that kind of stuff. And then, there are some instances where there are some police techniques that were used in the investigation, that they’d rather keep confidential.

When people are tuning in to watch the show, what do you want them to take away from it? Do you want them to see these police officers and the heroes that they are? Do you want it to be the community, the families?
PD: This is really a show about the consequences of violence. You’re seeing how that violent act affects the family of the victim, how it affects the community, that whole thing. So when we watch the shows we look at it as, ‘This is what happens when violent crime happens in the community. It affects the detective, it affects the family, it affects the whole community. And this can happen to you, and this can happen to someone in your family, it can happen down the street.’

The Detectives airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. on CBC.

Images courtesy of CBC.

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Featured, Fortunate Son

CBC’s Fortunate Son recalls a history that fits in the present

Being born in 1971, I didn’t know much about the Vietnam War. I learned about it through music and the movies, from First Blood to Platoon, Apocalypse Now to The Deer Hunter and countless others. But all of those films dealt largely with the U.S. angle. It turns out Canada had a role in that conflict as well.

I learned about it through Fortunate Son. Bowing on Wednesday at 9 p.m. on CBC, the eight-part drama is based on the life of Tom Cox, a Canadian TV producer most recently known for his work on Heartland and Wynonna Earp.

Created and written by Andrew Wreggitt, Fortunate Son stars Kari Matchett as Ruby Howard, an American activist in Canada who isn’t merely happy with vocally protesting the Vietnam War; she does something about it. Also starring Stephen Moyer, Darren Mann, Rick Roberts, Patrick Gallagher, Ty Olsson and Kacey Rohl, Fortunate Son is as much a history lesson as it is an examination into what the world is going through today.

We spoke to writer, showrunner and executive producer Andrew Wreggitt about the project.

When Fortunate Son was first announced, the thing that jumped out at me was Tom Cox’s name because it’s based on his life. Did you know Tom before you were attached to this? 
Andrew Wreggitt: Tom and I have been colleagues for, oh, I want to say 30 years. I actually first met Tom in Calgary. We happened to be neighbours and I didn’t have any idea he was in the same business as me. We were neighbours and we got to be friends and he and I worked together on North of 60 and so we go back a long way together.

I always knew Tom’s background and he had this very interesting family and Seven24 got in touch and said that they were interested in developing a show that had to do with Tom’s background. Tom grew up in a household where his mother was an activist and she brought up the kids to make protest signs and be out there every Saturday morning protesting something or other. And they were involved in bringing draft dodgers and deserters across and helping them settle in Canada.

They were definitely a kind of a halfway house and so they were involved in that and that’s kind of how Tom grew up, in this household where they were being watched by the police and they were very active in many causes. I’ve always loved that era and that story and so we kind of took it from there and developed the idea of this show around that idea.

I can’t believe that it’s taken this long to be made.
AW: Ten years ago I don’t think you could have made this show, the way the television industry was. People were looking at different things. A period piece would have been extremely difficult to make. So in a way, it’s a story that it really required the times to be the way they are for it to, for one thing, to resonate the way it does with what’s actually going on in the world.

Some of the things that are happening politically in the world are starting to feel pretty darn familiar to things that were happening 50 years ago.

I knew virtually nothing about draft dodgers being smuggled into Canada and the danger involved.
AW: Yeah, it was a big deal. You know, the anti-war movement in the U.S. was a huge, huge political deal and there were over 30,000 draft dodgers, which is incredible when you think of it across the country. I remember in university there were … I had a teacher in high school who was a draft dodger.

There were university professors who came up. There were people that brought a whole perspective to Canada in a lot of different ways who wouldn’t have been in Canada under any other circumstances. So yeah, it was a big cultural shift in the U.S. and it had a big impact on Canada.

How much is Tom’s story and how much has been adapted? Are there characters that are a combination of people in this time period? 
AW: Well, yeah, for sure. Tom’s actual family was a bit of a jumping-off point, so I kind of made up a lot of the people around it, but it was based on, they were composites of course of what was really going on at the time. The Catholic church was obviously very involved in the U.S. in the anti-war movement and so we had our church and our priest was very, very involved in the community. It was pretty common that people came through the churches and they were very involved in as they are now bringing refugees from Syria, for example.

Did Kari Matchett audition for the role? She’s the perfect fit to be playing Ruby.
AW: She really is. When we first saw her audition, we were just blown away. She was just Ruby. She totally embodied that role and so for me, as soon as I saw her, I felt like, ‘Yeah, this was Ruby.’ And you can feel her, she’s a mom, she’s committed politically, she’s trying to hold all these things together and it’s not easy. It’s hard to be politically committed and doing stuff, especially as a woman in 1968 there were expectations of you that she certainly didn’t fit.

The music of this time period is great and really helps with the storytelling. How did you decide what songs you were going to use? I imagine maybe licensing had something to do with your choices.
AW: We knew music was going to be a big, big part of the show. You can’t say the 1960s without music coming up, so we knew that from the beginning and luckily we had a reasonable budget to bring to the table so we were able to license some songs and get some stuff. I have to admit, as I’m writing, I’m looking at these scenes thinking, ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be amazing if we could have Magic Carpet Ride. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could have In A Gadda Da Vida’ … and of course you can’t have everything you want because there are certain limitations on music and what we can afford and can’t afford and so on. But I’m absolutely over the moon about some of the songs that we’ve gotten for the show throughout.

What type of writer are you? Are you the type that needs to shut yourself in a room? Can you do writing in a coffee shop with a cacophony of noise around you? How does it work for you?
AW: I can write just about anywhere. I made a 1968 playlist and I’ve played it a thousand times and I’ve got lots of Jimmy Hendrix, lots of my favourite tunes and so I’ll put that on and blast it away and start working, so I’m totally cool writing to music. I’m totally cool with writing in a coffee shop or. I’ve even driven across the country, my wife driving and she’ll put on a radio mystery station or something. And I’ll get in the back with my headphones on and I’ll write in the back of the car, so I’ll write anywhere.

Fortunate Son airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on CBC.

Images courtesy of CBC.

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Burden of Truth, Featured

Kristin Kreuk previews Burden of Truth’s “emotional” third season

Burden of Truth is billed as a legal show, but in reality, it’s an intricate family drama that uses a deeply flawed—and systemically unequal—legal system as its highly-effective backdrop. 

This character-driven approach has been a big hit with both critics and viewers. It’s also one of the reasons series star and executive producer Kristin Kreuk initially wanted to do the series.

“I wanted to do something serialized, and I wanted to be able to delve into the lives of the people affected by these cases as well as our regulars,” Kreuk tells us in a phone interview. “On our show, we just happen to have legal cases that trigger all of our characters, and as the seasons have gone on, I feel that all of our leads are related to each other, like they’re all family in a way, so we kind of get to be This Is Us, but also a legal show, which I really like.”

Over the course of two seasons, Kreuk’s character—corporate attorney-turned-socially woke lawyer Joanna Chang—has experienced some This Is Us-level personal drama. At the start of Season 1, she was an emotionally disconnected corporate attorney working at her ruthless father David Hanley’s (Alex Carter) big-city law firm. However, after she teamed with small-town lawyer Billy Crawford (Peter Mooney) to investigate an environmental case in her rural hometown of Millwood, Manitoba, she discovered she had a secret step-sister named Luna (Star Slade), who was the product of a sexual assault committed by Hanley. As if that wasn’t enough to deal with, in the second season, Hanley was murdered, and Luna was falsely accused of the crime by racist cop Sam Mercer (Paul Braunstein). In the taut Season 2 finale, Joanna proved Luna’s innocence and—in a huge display of personal growth—gave up a posh corporate law gig in Singapore to pursue her budding relationship with Billy in Winnipeg.

During the Season 3 premiere, which airs Wednesday at 8 p.m. on CBC, we find a year has passed since Joanna missed her overseas flight, and she and Billy are in love, living together and running their new socially-conscious law firm, Crawford Chang. It all appears blissful at first glance, but as usual, there are new legal issues brewing that could shake things up.

“The beginning of Season 3 is this crazy time for Joanna,” Kreuk explains. “She’s started a business, and it’s probably not the smartest business choice to start a boutique law firm in Winnipeg and work primarily on cases that speak to a social conscience.” 

The fledgling law firm’s precarious position is immediately highlighted when Joanna and Billy lose a workplace negligence case, devastating their clients, forcing them to cut staff, and causing Joanna—who has never lost a case in her life—to be plagued by self-doubt.

“Joanna is being forced to reckon with the parts of herself where she perceives herself to be weakest,” Kreuk says. “She’s not as good at the things she’s chosen to do as the things that she’s done before, and she has a lot of people who are relying on her in a way that working in corporate law didn’t previously come into play. She’s the most vulnerable that we’ve ever seen her by far, and she’s starting to have a bit of anxiety rumble up.”

That anxiety is made worse when Kodie (Sera-Lys McArthur), an old high school friend, has her children taken away by Millwood Family Services, forcing Joanna to delve further into unfamiliar areas of law and, worse, face more family skeletons.

“There are some secrets in Joanna’s past that affect the way she perceives everything and that she’s kind of buried,” Kreuk hints. “Joanna’s mom was taken from her—not in the same way as Kodie’s kids are taken away—but her mom was taken away. And Joanna’s really mad because she thinks it’s her mother’s fault that her mother abandoned her, so there’s all this personal stuff with family for her: Who gets to have the kids? Who gets to keep them? Why did Joanna’s father get to keep her? What makes it possible for someone to raise their children and why? Who decides?”

Kodie’s struggle to regain custody of her children also continues the show’s exploration of the way the Canadian legal system treats indigenous individuals and communities.

“I have to be delicate here, but in Canada, in the foster care system, we have a lot of Indigenous children, and this storyline will represent that to some degree,” Kreuk explains.

In addition, she says that Owen Beckbie (Meegwun Fairbrother), who is now the Millwood police chief, will be increasingly pushed “to the edge” in Season 3, as he comes to terms with the light prison sentence his former boss Mercer received for causing the death of an Indigenous man. Meanwhile, Luna will be dealing with the aftermath of her false imprisonment, “trying to find her place in the world after seeing the reality of what her situation [as an Indigenous woman] in the country is.”

Luna’s journey of self-discovery—which includes working at Crawford Chang—will also cause some disagreements with her sister.

“Joanna is very strong-willed and can put a lot of pressure on people, like her father before her,” she says. “Despite her growing humanity, she still feels that the job is the job is the job. You do what it takes to make sure your client wins, and that is the most important thing. How you feel about it is irrelevant. And Luna isn’t that person—which is good in who she is—but that will result in conflict.”

The events of Season 3 will also be hard on Billy, who is unaware of the family secret that is driving Joanna to take on Kodie’s “unwinnable” case.

“She’s obviously choosing this for emotional reasons, but she won’t tell him what it is,” Kreuk says. “And indeed the audience won’t know the real reason until probably the end of the season.” 

The situation will lead to “the most intense period of difficulty” Joanna and Billy have ever experienced, she says, but despite this, their arc “is really gorgeous and culminates in a very moving way. This is the most emotional case that we’ve done.”

Burden of Truth airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on CBC and CBC Gem.

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