Everything about Sort Of, eh?

CBC and HBO Max renew Sort Of for a second season

From a media release:

CBC and HBO Max have renewed SORT OF for a second season, it was announced today. Created by Bilal Baig (Acha Bacha) and Fab Filippo (Save Me), the critically acclaimed CBC and Max Original comedy debuted on HBO Max in November 2021 following its Canadian premiere on CBC Gem in October 2021. The series was an official selection of the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival and made The Hollywood Reporter, The Globe and Mail and Vanity Fair’s Best TV Shows of 2021 lists. SORT OF also leads this year’s Canadian Screen Award nominations with 13 nods, including Best Comedy Series.

“We are so thrilled that we are able to dive back into the worlds of SORT OF, and to keep exploring the evolution of all our characters (including some new ones!) as they continue to investigate who they are in the world as friends, family members, lovers and human beings,” said Bilal Baig, co-creator, showrunner, executive producer and lead actor.

“SORT OF speaks to the complexity of being human in the world with wit, warmth and an authentic sense of inclusivity, thanks to the distinct voices of Bilal and Fab,” said Sally Catto, General Manager, Entertainment, Factual & Sports, CBC. “SORT OF has struck such a powerful chord with audiences, and we are thrilled to work with HBO Max and Sienna Films on the next chapter of Sabi’s story.”

“Baig and Filippo’s honest and insightful storytelling is a lesson in unraveling conventional views of identity,” said Jeniffer Kim, SVP, International Originals, HBO Max. “We could not be more excited to partner with CBC and Sienna Films on another season of this very special show.”

“It’s been a wonderful experience to develop this show from the ground up with Bilal and Fab, and now to have the opportunity in Season 2 to dig even deeper,” said Jennifer Kawaja, executive producer, Sienna Films.

Called “funny, tender, and humane” by NPR, “the kind of representation everyone deserves” by Mashable, and “a small masterpiece of contemporary urban storytelling” by The Globe and Mail, SORT OF follows the journey of “Sabi Mehboob” (Baig), a gender fluid millennial who straddles various identities from sexy bartender at an LGBTQ bookstore/bar, to the youngest child in a large Pakistani family, to the de facto parent of a downtown hipster family. Sabi feels like they’re in transition in every aspect of their life, from gender to love to sexuality to family to career. A coming-of-age story, SORT OF exposes the labels we once poured ourselves into as no longer applicable…to anyone.

The series is created by Bilal Baig and Fab Filippo, who also serve as showrunners and executive producers, and produced with the participation of the Canada Media Fund. Sienna Films’ Jennifer Kawaja is also an executive producer on the series. SORT OF is distributed worldwide by Sphere Media. Abacus Media Rights handles sales outside of the United States and Latin America.

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Nominations announced for the 2022 Canadian Screen Awards

From a media release:

The Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television (the Canadian Academy) announced today the nominees for the 2022 Canadian Screen Awards in 145 film, television, and digital media categories. The awards will be presented over six days during Canadian Screen Week, including the 2022 Canadian Screen Awards show, which will be broadcast on CBC and CBC Gem on Sunday, April 10 at 8:00 PM (9:00 PM AT / 9:30 PM NT).

The inaugural season of the CBC series Sort Of leads both television and overall 2022 Canadian Screen Award nominations with 13, followed by CBC’s Pretty Hard Cases and CTV Sci-Fi Channel’s Wynonna Earp with 11, and CBC’s Coroner and Kim’s Convenience with 10.

In film, Shasha Nakhai and Rich Williamson’s Scarborough and Danis Goulet’s Night Raiders top nominations with 11 per film, while Michael McGowan’s All My Puny Sorrows sees eight and both Bretten Hannam’s Wildhood and Ivan Grbovic’s Drunken Birds | Les oiseaux ivres receive six.

21 Black Futures and For the Record both lead digital media nominations with eight, followed by The Communist’s Daughter with six. 

With hosts and live acceptance speeches, the majority of the 2022 Canadian Screen Awards will be presented in a nine-part series of genre-based virtual shows throughout Canadian Screen Week 2022, all streamed live on Academy.ca — as well as the Canadian Academy Twitter and YouTube channels — from Monday, April 4, 2022, to Friday, April 8, 2022. 

The week will culminate in the 2022 Canadian Screen Awards show on CBC and CBC Gem. With a selection of prominent categories and tributes to this year’s Special Award recipients, the show will be a star-powered, creatively curated treat for fans of our homegrown entertainment, highlighting Canadian content and its notable moments that made us laugh, cry, and reflect over the past year. Featuring the talents of the multi-award-winning sketch comedy troupe TallBoyz (Guled Abdi, Vance Banzo, Tim Blair, and Franco Nguyen), this promises to be an award show like you’ve never seen before, with an eclectic variety of artists coming together for the love of storytelling and a deep appreciation for the power of our film, television, and digital media — and everyone who enjoys it. 

The full schedule for the 2022 Canadian Screen Awards is as follows:

Monday, April 4
7:00 PM ET – The Broadcast News Awards

8:30 PM ET – The Documentary & Factual Awards 

Tuesday, April 5
7:00 PM ET – The Sports Programming Awards, presented by CTV

8:30 PM ET – The Digital & Immersive Awards

Wednesday, April 6
7:00 PM ET – The Children’s & Animation Awards, presented by Shaw Rocket Fund, supported by 9 Story Media Group  

8:30 PM ET – The Lifestyle & Reality Awards, presented by CTV 

Thursday, April 7
7:00 PM ET – The Drama & Comedy Crafts Awards

8:30 PM ET – The Scripted Programs & Performance Awards, presented by CTV

Friday, April 8
8:30 PM ET – The Cinematic Arts Awards, presented by Telefilm Canada, supported by Cineplex

Sunday, April 10
8:00 PM (9:00 PM AT / 9:30 PM NT) – 2022 Canadian Screen Awards on CBC and CBC Gem

The 2022 Canadian Screen Awards will also pay tribute to the 2022 Special Award recipients, a group of eight Canadians who have had a tremendous impact on our media industry. Honourees include Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Bob Cole, Gordon Sinclair Award for Broadcast Journalism recipient Rassi Nashalik, Radius Award (presented by MADE | NOUS) recipient Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, and the inaugural recipients of the Changemaker Award: Kayla Grey, Kathleen Newman-Bremang, and Amanda Parris.

The 2022 nominations were chosen by voting members of the Canadian Academy and by nominating juries, conducted virtually with representatives from the film, television, and digital media industries. The membership will now cast their votes between Tuesday, February 15, 2022, and Friday, March 4, 2022, to determine the winners. 

For the full list of 2022 Canadian Screen Awards nominees, please visit Academy.ca/nominees; view the full schedule for Canadian Screen Week 2022 at Academy.ca/schedule.

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Links: Sort Of, Season 1

From Debra Yeo of the Toronto Star:

Link: In ‘Sort Of,’ a straight white male and a queer brown trans-feminine creator combined to make a groundbreaking TV show
What do you get when a straight, cisgender male actor and director, and a queer, trans-feminine actor and playwright create a television show together? Something that hopefully anyone can relate to. Continue reading.

From Glenn Sumi of NOW Toronto:

Link: TIFF 2021, Day 7: CBC show Sort Of is all kinds of great
After the fallout over the way Kim’s Convenience abruptly ended, the new CBC show Sort Of is doing things right. Continue reading.

From Glenn Sumi of NOW Toronto:

Link: Bilal Baig is ready for their close-up
Bilal Baig is taking me on a mini-tour of Little India – their Little India. It’s early afternoon on a weekday, so the patios are closed and there’s none of the liveliness that comes at night when this stretch of Gerrard resembles a bustling, brightly lit urban street in India or Pakistan. Continue reading.

From Victoria Ahearn of the Canadian Press:

Link: ‘Sort Of’ is about transition in all walks of life, says star/co-creator Bilal Baig
In deciding to not only co-create but star in a comedy series about a gender-fluid millennial nanny in Toronto, Bilal Baig was nervous. Continue reading.

From Melissa of The Televixen:

Link: Bilal Baig and Fab Filippo on their trailblazing new series, Sort Of
“There was a very steep learning curve that I feel like I’m still on, but it’s amazing and rewarding.” Continue reading.

From Leora Heilbronn of Brief Take:

Link: Interview: Sort Of’s Bilal Baig, Fab Filippo and Jennifer Kawaja
Sort Of was so important to us that we made a concerted effort to participate in the press junket for the CBC, and soon to be HBO Max, series. Continue reading.

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Sort Of: Bilal Baig and Fab Filippo tease CBC’s most ambitious show

It’s part of CBC’s mandate to tell Canadian stories. To reflect the faces we see in our communities from coast to coast. So it was a true pleasure when the public broadcaster announced Sort Of would be headed our way.

Debuting Tuesday on CBC Gem before bowing next month on CBC, Sort Of is ambitious, hilarious and heartfelt. Co-created by Bilal Baig and Fab Filippo (Save Me), Sort Of tells the story of Sabi Mehboob (Baig), a fluid millennial who straddles various identities from a bartender at an LGBTQ bookstore/bar, to the youngest child in a Pakistani family, to the de facto parent of a downtown hipster family.

In the debut episode, “Sort Of Gone,” Sabi contemplates an opportunity that would change their life until an accident puts their new plans in jeopardy. With a cast boasting Grace Lynn Kung, Supinder Wraich, Alana Bale, Amanda Cordner and Gray Powell, Sort Of is definitely great. We spoke to Bilal Baig and Fab Filippo ahead of the show’s debut on CBC Gem.

Bilal, the idea for Sort Of came while you and Fab chatted during breaks a play you were both performing in, Theory. What was it about those conversations that got you excited about working with Fab?
Bilal Baig: I appreciated the sense of humour. I thought there was something really fun in figuring out what tickles each other. We had a similar sensibility in that our humour isn’t slapstick. I had also consumed both seasons of Save Me and got a sense that his sense of humour could be twisted too, and I’m all about that.

The other part of it was that he not only met me at every point in the making of this together, but he really brought his heart into it and I really appreciated that as a collaborator. It was really important that this was something we were really going to pour ourselves into.

Fab, what excited you about collaborating with Bilal?
Fab Filippo: Right off the bat, I got the sense that Bilal had an unusually clear voice for someone their age. I was taken by how they moved in the world and how much generosity they had in the world toward other people in helping see who they are.

At first, it was getting together to hang. And then, when we discovered we laughed at the same stuff and started to pitch ideas back and forth, it became really clear that there was a kinship and a kind of understanding of how to move forward in collaboration.

Sort Of co-creator Fab Filippo

Bilal, there is a lot of heart in Sort Of. Near the end of Episode 1 is a wonderful and funny scene between Sabi and their mother. Can you talk about walking the line in those moments?
BB: The word I’ve been using is truth. We didn’t go into this looking to load every episode with as many huge, knee-slapping jokes as possible. It was more, ‘What feels truthful in this moment? What would these characters actually say and do?’ What I love about that scene, in particular, is that there are these other messages inside the words that actually come out of peoples’ mouths and to strive for that is really exciting. It goes back to the type of humour Fab and I like and working with the writers we did—Jenn Engels, Ian Iqbal Rashid and Nelu Handa—they all got on board too.

Fab, how did the writing room work, with COVID?
FF: A lot of marathon Zoom meetings. [Laughs.] It was interesting to open it up to a writing room. It was, for the longest time, Bilal and I with the project. And then there is this vulnerability when you bring it to a room with the thoughts and ideas we had in our own, private, world. But they brought so much and added some much texture and dimension.

BB: It was kind of hard to step into my power because I was so in awe of these people who had come to serve this story. It’s one thing to create something on your own, but a whole other thing to have a room full of people dedicated to wanting to honour the vision. It was actually through Fab bringing me more and more into the process and reminding me that people want to hear from you and your voice is essential to all of this. I think I had forgotten that because I was so enamoured and scared.

Having two other South Asian folks in the room, the onus wasn’t just on one of us to get it right 100 percent of the time. If I missed something from our community, Nelu or Ian would step in. That was such a privilege.

Sort Of is available for streaming on CBC Gem on Tuesday. Sort Of debuts Tuesday, November 9, at 9 p.m. on CBC.

Images courtesy of CBC.

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CBC greenlights Sort Of, from creators Bilal Baig and Fab Filippo

From a media release:

CBC has greenlit new original comedy SORT OF (8×30) from Sienna Films (Trickster, Cardinal). Created by Bilal Baig (Acha Bacha) and Fab Filippo (Save Me) and starring Baig, SORT OF is a big-hearted series about Sabi Mehboob (Baig), a fluid millennial who straddles various identities from sexy bartender at an LGBTQ bookstore/bar, to the youngest child in a large Pakistani family, to the de facto parent of a downtown hipster family. Sabi feels like they’re in transition in every aspect of their life, from gender to love to sexuality to family to career. The half-hour single-camera comedy begins production in Toronto today.

In addition to Baig, the cast includes Gray Powell (Hudson & Rex, Designated Survivor), Amanda Cordner (Baroness von Sketch Show, The Expanse), Ellora Patnaik (Kim’s Convenience, Schitt’s Creek), Grace Lynn Kung (Transplant, Star Trek: Discovery), Supinder Wraich (The 410, Crawford), Kaya Kanashiro, Aden Bedard, Gregory Ambrose Calderone (This Movie is Broken, Salvation) and Alanna Bale (Cardinal, Killjoys).

When Sabi’s best friend 7ven (Cordner) presents them with an opportunity to live and find themself in the “queerest place in the galaxy,” Sabi instead makes the decision to stay and care for the kids they nanny after their mom has a serious bike accident. Do they regret it? Sort of. A coming-of-age story, SORT OF exposes the labels we once poured ourselves into as no longer applicable…to anyone. A show about how each and every one of us is in transition. Sort of.

A CBC original series produced by Sienna Films, SORT OF is created by Bilal Baig and Fab Filippo, who also serve as showrunners and executive producers. The series is written by Baig, Filippo, Jenn Engels, Nelu Handa and Ian Iqbal Rashid, with Filippo and Renuka Jeyapalan (Kim’s Convenience, Workin’ Moms) directing. Sienna Films’ Jennifer Kawaja and Julia Sereny are also executive producers.

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