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Featured, Vikings

Vikings heads to new heights

Last week, I’d reflected on how we’d never seen Ragnar Lothbrok so soundly beaten. Aided by Rollo, Count Odo and his troops not only beat back the river attack but wiped out several viking boats and countless warriors. That marine battle sequence was one of the most impressive in Vikings so far. Until this week. Yes, Thursday’s new episode, “Portage,” is the most visually stunning so far … and intense too.

Here’s what to expect on Thursday night:

Ragnar and Floki’s bromance rekindles
It’s been no secret Floki was upset about being supplanted by Athelstan. So much so he killed the Christian. But after being strung up by Ragnar and suffering the death of his daughter and near-death of wife Helga, Floki is back in Ragnar’s good graces. And not a moment too soon: the duo come up with the most technologically impressive feat ever to plot against the French. Rollo’s warning to Emperor Charles that Ragnar will return is indeed prophetic.

Viking visions
Dreams are a huge part of Vikings‘ storytelling, and Torvi has a doozy involving Erlendur and Bjorn. So far everything The Seer has told our main characters has come true; does Torvi have that same gift, or was it all a (day)dream?

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Count Odo vs. Rollo
The past few weeks have been taken up by Roland and Therese plotting Odo’s demise. That all comes to a head during “Portage” and Rollo suddenly finds himself to be a very powerful man in the Emperor’s court.

King vs. Queen
Ecbert’s journey has been an interesting one this season. Whereas I miss the days when he and Ragnar hung out, got drunk and caroused, it’s been fun as heck watching him make chess moves not only around his kingdom but within his own palace. Now that Judith is more or less in his back pocket, Ecbert announces he is the king of Mercia and Wessex. That does not sit well with Kwenthrith, and we know what she gets like when she’s angry, don’t we?

Ragnar clears his head
Ragnar’s dependance on Yidu’s herbs has been sad to watch. They’ve dulled his senses and made him a weak warrior. That’s not the Ragnar I like, nor the one his people enjoy hanging around. The good news? He’s down to his last bit and will be able to work with a clear head against the French. The bad news? Yidu won’t make him any more.

Vikings airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET on History.

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Featured, X Company

X Company’s creators discuss the heartbreaking finale and look towards Season 3

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Spoiler alert! Do not continue reading until you’ve watched X Company‘s season finale, “August 19th.”

War has its casualties, and unfortunately, the X Company team suffered a big one during Wednesday night’s episode. Tom Cummings (Dustin Milligan), the fast-talking former ad man, suffered a fatal fall from Dieppe’s cliffs while fighting off Germans alongside Neil and Harry. Pair that with Aurora and Alfred successfully (it seems) getting Franz Faber to turn against his own country, and X Company delivered a stunning season-ender.

We got co-creators Mark Ellis and Stephanie Morgenstern on the phone to talk about it—including some things viewers didn’t see—and where the show goes from here.

Stephanie, how did you and Mark come to the conclusion that Season 2 would cover a month-long period ending in Dieppe?
Stephanie Morgenstern: We knew from the beginning that we wanted to pick up the split-second we left off from Season 1, to have Alfred and Faber face to face finally and to have the entire team in disarray and the chaos of unforeseeable events landing on them. We wanted to start from a point of maximum disaster, so if we had fast-forwarded a couple of weeks in story time it really would have been a missed opportunity. It’s partly the way we like to write; when the events unfold almost in real-time it just feels like you hit the ground running and you don’t have time to inhale.

Let’s talk specifically about the season finale. Within the first few minutes, I was hoping Sabine and Faber would escape Germany.
Stephanie Morgenstern: One of the things about elaborating their story this season is that it really is a love story. It’s hard to imagine a more conflicted love story considering the secrets they’ve had to hold onto and I think if people are rooting for them not to be lined up and shot as traitors we’ve done something right. Obviously, we want a whole array of portraits of Germans. Some will be full-on bad guys and some will be conflicted and some will be complete innocents.

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You had Alfred and Aurora kiss. Why did you decide to do that?
Stephanie Morgenstern: It’s something that we talked about for a long, long, long time and also, ‘If they do kiss, what is that like?’ Do we play it straight and let viewers think about what it feels like for a synesthetic man? I think what landed us in favour of finally having them kiss, after a lot of debate, was that I think everyone does want to see it happen. But at the same time we’re confident that it’s the opening of a can of worms rather than the resolution of anything. It’s the beginning of where you go from here and that’s something I think we’re going to have a lot of fun with in Season 3.

Mark, let’s talk about the decision to have Tom die. How did you come to that conclusion? Did Dustin Milligan ask to leave?
Mark Ellis: There’s a little bit of both. From the very first season, our network executives at CBC have pushed us to put our money where our mouth is when we say that the average like expectancy for an agent in the field is only six weeks. And we have tons of impossible gunfights where Germans die and none of our guys do. [Laughs.] So it felt in some way we needed to bring that authentic layer to the show. We wanted to push the characters that surrounded Tom to a new place that involved not only seeing the devastation at Dieppe but also losing someone close to them. It’s a great springboard for our other characters and will galvanize them, Neil especially, in Season 3.

It was a tremendously difficult discussion between the two of us and Dustin. He has family that live in the States and on the west coast, so I think that was part of the decision as well. But if we were ever going to kill a character, we wanted to create an arc that justified that death. We didn’t want a sudden exit. We had a great conversation all season long and even in the table read for that episode, to discover what those final moments would be for Tom. Dustin is a very sharp, very smart actor, and encouraged us to peel away his dialogue and final words and leave him with things unsaid.

So, you originally had lines for Tom on the beach?
Stephanie Morgenstern: Yeah, we did. We had a longer speech, and then we had a shorter speech and then a couple of lines and then nothing. It just seemed like that would be the most powerful statement to make. This is a life that should have continued, a breath that should have continued.

Mark Ellis: It underlines the agony for all of us, and for Harry and Neil especially.

Stephanie Morgenstern: But then we had the letter delivered to Camp X two days later and Krystina was able to share it with Sinclair.

Mark Ellis: We had a lot of debate over that as well as to whether we would hear Tom’s words in his voice as Krystina read the letter and we played with the sound mix a lot and decided this was the way to go.

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Tom’s death was immediately followed by the young German soldier collecting the dog tags of his fallen comrades.
Stephanie Morgenstern: We’d known for awhile that this would be the breaking point for Harry, that he would take it out on this sort of doppelgänger of himself. We even gave him Harry glasses.

By the end of the episode Faber has presented himself to the team and offered his services. That was another shocking moment.
Mark Ellis: We wanted to marry the scene from earlier in the series where Faber is face-to-face with Alfred. We weren’t sure whether he would turn or not but we knew there would be a showdown. I don’t think we can know for sure whether he’s turned or not until we see things play out in Season 3.

Where do we go from here? What can you say about Season 3?
Mark Ellis: Whether Faber turns or not is the central question to Season 3. We’re interested in creating some great scenes with Sinclair and Faber. Hugh Dillon is such a great actor and he’s delivered a huge season for us and we want to keep pushing that role. But we should never feel certain that Faber is on our side.

Faber isn’t headed for Camp X?
Mark Ellis: He is staying in Europe.

Is Sinclair headed to Europe then?
Mark Ellis: I think it’s too much fun for him not to do that.

What’s the situation with Scuba Man? Will he be back?
Stephanie Morgenstern: We’re not done with Scuba Man. [Laughs.]

What about new characters?
Stephanie Morgenstern: Now that Faber is potentially on our side, we do need a major new threat and we have something up our sleeve that we’re very excited about.

Mark Ellis: There are two new characters that we’re imagining that are going to scare the pants off you.

What did you think of X Company‘s season finale? What do you want to see happen in Season 3? Comment below or via Twitter @tv_eh.

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Children's Programming, Featured

The amazing race to make Family Channel’s Backstage

Lara Azzopardi has been a producer on such shows as Lost Girl, The Listener, The L.A. Complex and Combat Hospital, and totally switched genres when she became showrunner, writer and director on Backstage, Family Channel’s series about the artistic kids attending an arts high school.

Pregnant with her third child, she expected the usual six to eight-month show development so she could give birth before filming would begin. Nope: Producers Fresh TV accepted her series bible and pilot script on a Friday and greenlit it the following Monday. Filming 30 episodes of Backstage in 30 days was tough enough, but Azzopardi had just given birth, meaning baby was on-set through the entire process. Combine that with the fact her cast was made up of singers and dancers with little formal acting training, and Azzopardi’s ride has been a wild one.

I’m fascinated with the behind-the-scenes of television, and I think you’ve got to be the only showrunner I know that was hauling a newborn around during production.
Lara Azzopardi: It was not planned that way! [Laughs.] I would never have been able to do that if it was my first baby. I don’t think I would have had the courage. It all kind of worked out in a crazy way and I felt I knew kind of what I was doing. But when I think about it now, it was pretty insane.

Fresh TV pitched this “Fame for kids” idea to you. What was it that excited you about their idea?
They had put together a two-page document that had a very general synopsis of the school and stock characters of the people they wanted to see in it. I had never done a kid’s show before. I had written a freelance script at the beginning of my career for Degrassi and that was eight years ago. When I met them, they had read a spec script and a script from The L.A. Complex, and they wanted to meet me from that. I’m a huge fan of shows like My So-Called Life and Friday Night Lights, and I told them, ‘I’m interested in doing a Fame that’s grounded and, as a parent, I’d love to watch too.’ I went off and wrote a pretty big bible. I wrote fast. I’m a pretty big fan of ensemble series, so I was excited. We sent in the script on the Friday and it was greenlit on the Monday and I was due three weeks after that.

I’ve been in development before, and it usually lasts at least a year if you’re lucky. So, when I took this on I figured I had time to get notes, do re-writes and see what happens.

Lara Azzopardi
Lara Azzopardi

Not only did they greenlight it, but they greenlit it for 30 half-our episodes.
Thirty episodes.

I’ve seen the first two, and you pack so much into those two episodes that it seems daunting to write 30. Was it daunting? How did you do it?
At the time, I didn’t know what I was in for and it was happening so fast. By the end of it—and we have three stories per episode—we wrote about 97 stories. That’s credit to my writing team Kate Hewlett, Lauren Gosnell, Matt Schiller, Scott Oleszhowicz and Jennifer Pertsch. I had my baby in my arms when we started the room and were breaking an episode a day, sometimes an episode and a half a day. We wouldn’t leave the room until it was done. The baby was in the writers’ room in a sling and we were breaking from 10 a.m. until, sometimes, midnight.

The reason for the rush, too, was that we wanted to get that Friday Night Lights look, which meant filming on location, which meant a real school … which meant we would only have the school from when it let out in the spring until it went back in for the fall. We shot using two crews at the exact same time in the same location shooting four episodes as a time. We filmed 30 episodes in 30 days. I have to give credit to the cast and crew; these kids had four scripts in their heads and once and the crew were passing the scripts between them.

At the end of the day, Backstage is a coming-of-age story for all of these kids. They are figuring out who they are until graduation and even then some of them might not know who they are.

Do the 30 episodes represent one year of studies at Keaton School of the Arts?
Yes.

Let’s talk about working with the kids in your cast. I’m assuming not very many had acting experience?
We cast real dancers and real singers, so I think because they all had a discipline they had worked at, they brought a drive and professionalism with them. I was nervous because we were casting non-actors and had a crazy schedule. They were up for the challenge. We had two acting coaches on hand and had done an acting workshop beforehand and I was available anytime they needed.

I like the usage of the characters speaking to the camera, like a confessional.
That came from necessity and from creative. For me, it was backstage not only in these kids’ lives but also backstage in their heads. It’s what they’re really thinking and feeling. It allowed us to be very subtle when we’re in the moment in the show and that subtext is said in the confessionals. We shot all of the confessionals at the end of production.

We meet Vanessa and Carly right away and see the first day of school through their eyes. But they have a major fallout and are at odds. Will they become friends again?
It’s a journey. I have three daughters and I really tried to write a friendship in terms of how I’d love to react with my girlfriends or daughters. There are going to be arguments and I just hope we made a show where both girls are right and wrong. There will be lots of ups and downs.

Jax is an interesting character. You want to like him, but right now he’s an arrogant jerk.
Jax is someone who has had some success and then goes to a school where everyone is good and he’s not better. There is quite a journey that he goes through over the 30 episodes and he learns a lot about himself.

At the end of the day, Backstage is a coming-of-age story for all of these kids. They are figuring out who they are until graduation and even then some of them might not know who they are.

Backstage airs Fridays at 7 p.m. ET/PT on Family Channel.

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Featured, Slasher

Slasher’s latest suspect/victim: Katie McGrath’s Sarah Bennett

It’s pretty hard for Katie McGrath’s Sarah Bennett to be Slasher‘s serial killer. After all, The Executioner was chasing her during last Friday’s debut episode, “An Eye for an Eye.” Still, Sarah may very well end up the killer’s final victim (or the murderer) by the time Season 1 closes out. Sarah and her husband, newspaper reporter Dylan (Brandon Jay McLaren), have moved to the town of Waterbury to live in the house Sarah’s parents were murdered in decades before. Within hours of their arrival, dead bodies pile up.

In our first instalment of interviews with the cast of Slasher, McGrath talks Canada, her character’s relationship and getting Merlin’s Morgana out of her system.

Welcome to Canada.
Katie McGrath: Thank you. The weather here isn’t that different from Ireland, but it is hot. And there are the bugs. Apparently, I’m delicious because they are eating me alive!

How did you get this role?
My agent called me up and said she’d been approached by Shaftesbury about this project. She was a huge fan of Being Erica and said, ‘I want you to sit down and read it because I loved Being Erica and I really respect this creator.’ I sat down with my cup of tea and went through it. I had the whole thing done in 30 minutes and I got on the phone with everyone on my team and we all loved it. That’s never happened. It’s just really good writing and that’s rare, especially when you’re a woman. Female characters can be very much a caricature in a horror project. I see a lot of them and they are very genre-specific and typecast and Sarah wasn’t, and I liked that. I spoke to [creator] Aaron [Martin] and [director] Craig [David Wallace] about we all thought.

I was petrified by it because we were going to shoot all eight episodes at once. That scared me. But I figure that if something scares the hell out of you, you should do it because it means it’s important. I said, ‘Let’s do it. Let’s go to Canada.’

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What’s happening to Sarah and the town isn’t great, but it is for Sarah’s husband, Dylan. It means furthering his career with the newspaper story of his life.
He’s probably quite conflicted between the story and wanting the murders to happen, but as time goes on he sees that his wife, who he does love, is central to this.

With the worldwide success of Merlin, did you find yourself seeking out roles that were totally different?
I played Morgana for so long and people were so familiar with it, what was so hard was going into meetings after it and not playing roles as Morgana. That was my go-to because I had played her for five years and over 60 episodes. It took a good six months for me to shake it.

Are you at the point in your career where you’re starting to look towards writing your own characters, producing and directing?
Oh god, I can barely string a sentence together! My brother is so talented when it comes to words and I love them because my whole life is words, but when it comes to doing it everything becomes verbose. Completely overwritten and I just have to step back. I’d very happily employ somebody else to write. I love the idea of being in control but then I think that my ideas aren’t that good! [Laughs.] I don’t know if it would be a good idea if I thought that I was right all of the time! I guess at some point I should think about it, because I can’t rely on my eyebrows and distracting jawline forever. [Laughs.]

What do you want viewers to get out of Slasher when they tune in every week?
Fear. I want them to get chills. Especially by horror, we want people to be affected by it. The genre gets such a bad rap because a lot of it is made on such a low budget that it can be formulaic. Horror is hard because you have to keep people in a heightened state of fear for a long time. And it’s extremely hard to film because you’re in that heightened state of emotion for a long time.

But if you ask people about a horror movie that really affected them, it stays with them. I’m still petrified of The Descent and it’s been 10 years since I’ve seen it. If you get horror right, it stays with you.

Slasher airs Fridays at 9 p.m. ET on Super Channel.

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Featured, Podcast

TV Eh B Cs podcast 44 – Jackson Davies’ Constabulary

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JacksonDaviesJackson Davies has acted in most of the major theatres in Canada. He has appeared in well over 350 TV shows and movies and for 16 years starred as Constable John Constable in CBC’s THE BEACHCOMBERS (check out a petition to bring it back here). He is also an award winning film writer and producer. Jackson is a member of the B.C. Entertainment Hall Of Fame, past Vice Chair of the BC Arts Council, Vice President of UBCP, and on the Faculty at Capilano University Stage and Film Program. He is one of only two Canadians who were made Honorary Sergeants in the RCMP and still plays right wing for the Vancouver Canucks Alumni.

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