Marketplace, CBC – Season Finale
Tom Harrington investigates Canada’s biggest group buying website.
The Fifth Estate, CBC – “Rate My Hospital” season finale
Bob McKeown hosts the fifth estate’s sweeping cross-country investigation into Canada’s best and worst hospitals and what they don’t want you to know.
From Kidscreen:
Murdoch Mysteries star to front The Adventures of Napkin Man
Yannick Bisson, the leading actor on CBC juggernaut Murdoch Mysteries, will also have a starring role on an upcoming kids series from Little Airplane Productions and Breakthrough Entertainment. Read more.
This year’s Writers Guild of Canada Screenwriting Award winners will be announced on April 22. We’ve been catching up with many of the writers nominated in the comedy and drama categories. Todd and the Book of Pure Evil‘s Ian Malone is nominated (along with Craig David Wallace and Charles Picco) for their episode “B.Y.O.B.O.P.E.”
Can you describe the episode “B.Y.O.B.O.P.E.†and how it fit into the Todd & the Book of Pure Evil season?
The episode started out as a chance to see what our heroes are like after hours. What do they like to do when they’re not fighting monsters? How do they relax? We thought a great place to take them (a quintessentially high school place) would be a house party. I think this was the longest period of time we got to see our kids outside of the high school, so it was exciting if you were a fan of the show. It opened up the world a bit. We also knew that this was always going to be a mythology-heavy episode, with some big answers to lingering questions, so that stuff was serviced. Those reveals launched the story toward the events of the finale (an awesome episode written & directed by Craig).
What was the biggest triumph in this particular episode?
On top of getting all the mythology stuff into the story and making it surprising and satisfying, it’s an episode about a house party, and a house party needs to look and feel like jam-packed non-stop good times. Usually it’s one kid a week using the book, but we thought, “If the house is packed, let’s have a million kids use the book!” That’s hyperbole. But we did end up having the book fall into three or four different hands. I’m particularly proud of how we kept the various story threads intertwined. There’s everything going on with our gang, and everything going on with the kids at the party, and all the stuff with Atticus pretending that he’s a teenager named Scooter. And it all tracks! I hope.
What does this recognition mean to you?
It means a lot to me. A couple years ago I was a sweaty, nervous story coordinator trying to find the courage to pitch lines in a story room. Now I’m a sweaty, nervous WGC Award nominee for my second produced script ever! It’s nice to be recognized by other writers, and if nothing else it’s a pat on the back that says, “Hey you, you’re alright.”
If there was one Canadian show that is no longer on the air that you could see honoured at this year’s awards, what would it be? (If you have a specific episode, even better).
How about a show that’s still on the air? Degrassi has been running for thirteen seasons and they’re still finding compelling character-driven stories to tell. I think people probably take it for granted because it’s been on for so long, but they shouldn’t. Ramona Barckert wrote two amazing episodes in season twelve (“Bitter Sweet Symphony” 1 & 2) that are up there with the most riveting hours of drama.
From a media release:
MULTIPLE AWARD-WINNING ACTRESS ALFRE WOODARD JOINS THE CAST OF SHOWCASE’S COPPER
There’s a new face in the Five Points…Showcase, BBC America and Cineflix Studios announced today that critically-acclaimed actress Alfre Woodard (Steel Magnolias, Twelve Years a Slave, True Blood) will guest star in the second season of COPPER, the Showcase original drama set in 1860s New York City.
COPPER is created by three-time Emmy® Award-winner Tom Fontana and Academy Award-nominee Will Rokos and executive produced by Academy Award-winner Barry Levinson, Fontana, Rokos, Cineflix Studios President Christina Wayne and Thomas Kelly (Blue Bloods).
Winner of four Emmy® Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards and a Golden Globe®, Academy Award-nominee, Alfre Woodard joins the cast as Hattie Lemaster, a former slave who has recently arrived to the Five Points to start anew. Jarred by raucous city life, Hattie must reconcile her past against hope for a future.
COPPER, an American saga set in 1865 New York City, returns for a second season on the brink of Lincoln’s assassination – with shifts in politics and society altering the landscape for Irish immigrants and African-Americans. At the center, Detective Kevin Corcoran (Tom Weston-Jones, MI-5) struggles to tame the wartime metropolis while wrestling with personal demons, including the betrayal of his wife and best friend. And when Tammany Hall’s outspoken General Brendan Donovan (Donal Logue, Sons of Anarchy, Terriers), returns from the Civil War to restore law and order in the Sixth Ward, loyalties will be bought and sold both uptown and in the slums of the Five Points as Corcoran, and those around him, fight to find their places in an unforgiving city.
Previously announced cast and season two guest stars include: Donal Logue, Eamonn Walker (Chicago Fire, OZ) as legendary abolitionist leader, Frederick Douglass; Lee Tergesen (Army Wives, OZ) as Philomen Keating, a wickedly intelligent criminal mastermind whose tendency for dramatic flair is offset by a penchant for brutality; and Andrew Howard (Hatfields and McCoys, Burn Notice) as James O’Rourke, the physically intimidating yet shrewdly observant manager of a budding criminal organization.
Returning cast includes Tom Weston-Jones, Kyle Schmid (Arrow, Being Human), Anastasia Griffith (Once Upon a Time, Damages) Franka Potente (American Horror Story, The Bourne Supremacy), Ato Essandoh (Django Unchained, Elementary), Kevin Ryan (Tripping Tommy, RAW), Dylan Taylor (Covert Affairs, Charlie Bartlett), Kiara Glasco (Haven, I’ll Follow You Down) and Tessa Thompson (For Colored Girls, Heroes).
COPPER is a Cineflix (Copper 2) Inc. production in association with Shaw Media and BBC America. Executive producers for Cineflix include: Sherri Rufh, Sam Berliner, and Katherine Buck. Larysa Kondracki is Co-Executive Producer/Director. COPPER is filming in Toronto, Ontario through July 2013.
