From Victoria Ahearn of the Canadian Press:
Link: Goodwood, Ont., becomes tourist hot spot as the backdrop of Schitt’s Creek
Goodwood, Ont., is the Schitt and couldn’t be prouder. The picturesque bedroom community north of Toronto, population 663, is also known as Schitt’s Creek for being the site of many key locations in the hit comedy series of the same name. It has attracted busloads of international tourists hoping to see the sets and stars. Continue reading.
I was instantly enthralled with the first season of Save Me. Created, written and directed by Fab Filippo, the dark comedy follows Toronto EMT Goldie (Filippo) and his assorted partners (Amy Matysio and Suresh John are two), as they arrive on the scene of 911 calls.
The twist in the storytelling is Goldie et al. are the through line connecting those making an emergency call rather than being the mains. That’s not to say we don’t get some back story into Goldie and his fellow EMTs lives, but they’re not the focus.
The second chunk of new episodes have landed on CBC Gem—produced by Lisa Baylin—and they’re as strong as the first. The Canadian Screen Award-nominated program is in fine fettle, boasting not only great scenarios for EMTs Goldie, Dogf***er (John), Kevlar (Matysio) and Bizemmingway (John Bourgeois), but a plethora of guest performances by Schitt’s Creek‘s Emily Hampshire, Frankie Drake Mysteries‘ Rebecca Liddiard, Bad Blood‘s Lisa Berry, Kim’s Convenience‘s Andrew Phung, Hudson & Rex‘s Kevin Hanchard, Scott Thompson and Nicholas Campbell.
In the first instalment, it’s all hands on deck as the EMTs—including rookie Hubcap (Heartland‘s Kataem O’Connor)—are called to the scene of multiple ecstasy overdoses suffered by aging couples looking for some fun. Watching Thompson, Hanchard and Fiona Highet tripping out is something to behold. But where there is comedy, tragedy follows, and how each of the paramedics deals with it is also what makes Save Me so engaging. In just a few short minutes in each episode, the web series is able to jump from laughter to tears, while exploring the PTSD first responders experience.
In Episode 2, two men choose to trim some hedges using a lawnmower. It has the predictable, bloody, result, but also reveals a shift in the tale I didn’t see coming. You never know what’s going on in the lives of the folks calling 911; Save Me goes there with spectacular results.
Season 2 of Save Me is on CBC Gem.
Image courtesy of CBC.
It has been seven years since the release of Casino Confidential on TVtropolis, and memories of the reality series set in Binion’s Gambling Hall and Hotel in Las Vegas live long in the hearts of Canadian casino fans. The documentary series only ran for ten episodes, but its success in the North American country led TLC to pick it up and broadcast it to USA citizens. In the years since 2012, the gambling industry has boomed further. Indeed, revenues have surpassed $45 billion and are continuing to grow exponentially. Now could be the perfect time to revisit Binion’s, or perhaps create a similar series. Canadians, who love gambling and reality TV, would be sure to be grateful for a sequel.
What Was Casino Confidential About?
Casino Confidential was a fly-on-the-wall documentary centred on the players and staff at Binion’s Gambling Hall and Hotel, a bustling Las Vegas hotspot. The aim of the series was to provide viewers with a number of different perspectives within the casino. In the early episodes, there was heavy focus on one of the blackjack dealers. These are key staff members, and they need to have specific knowledge and training in order to do their jobs. When playing online, players can refer to information pages such as the Betway online blackjack guide. It tells them what to do in certain situations, such as when to double and split and how. When you’re playing in a land-based casino though, it is down to the dealer to give advice to players on what to do. For this reason, blackjack dealers are fountains of knowledge about the game in addition to great people skills.
By putting an emphasis on the dealers and croupiers, Casino Confidential was able to show a wide range of different customers sitting and playing the games at Binion’s. The Nevada city is renowned for attracting an eclectic mix of clientele, who come from all over the world. Over 42 million people visit Las Vegas each year, and all these different visitors from far-flung corners of the Earth make for interesting viewing. Some of the other segments of the documentary followed the dining staff, security, and the famous cowgirls who operate some of the table games.
Casino Confidential went down well in Canada, but it wasn’t to everyone’s taste. It pulled no punches and showed both the good and bad sides of the day-to-day running of a casino. When it aired in the USA, it wasn’t quite as popular. This is perhaps part of why the show wasn’t renewed for another season.
Canada Has a Lot of Similar Programming
Casino Confidential was always going to go down well in Canada, as Canadians love reality television. In fact, there have been 145 different reality TV shows on various networks throughout the 2010s. Big Brother Canada and Property Brothers are both vastly popular among the population.
Property Brothers from Cineflix has been running for 136 episodes since 2011 on W Network initially and then HGTV Canada from 2017. The series, which features Drew and Jonathan Scott as real estate and renovation experts, averages 2 million viewers per week and is one of the highest-rated shows on the network. It has sprouted a franchise which includes a web series, short films, an app and a radio show. Meanwhile, Big Brother Canada has been through seven editions since first airing in 2013. The series which is now hosted by Global has been consistently viewed by an average of over 1 million people per season since 2015.
These successful programs show how popular reality TV is in Canada and suggest that there is a market for more of the same. If another casino show was to come about, it could decide to take elements from these highly viewed shows. Big Brother has an element of competition to it, which could easily be replicated in the gaming scene. Property Brothers is all about turning ramshackle residences into extravagant abodes. This could be done with rundown casinos as well. Perhaps there’s a gap in the market for an Apprentice-style competition to see who can create and run the best casino?
What Other Casino-Based TV Series Have Been Successful?
Despite being one of the most popular pastimes in the world, casinos haven’t been represented well in television. There have been other documentaries such as The Player: Secrets of a Vegas Whale, and Bet Raise Fold, but none have been worldwide hits.
Las Vegas is one of the most notable series to have taken place in a casino. The series starred James Caan as head of operations at a fictional casino on The Strip. It was hugely popular, and lasted for five seasons before being cancelled by NBC. The series focused on the glitz and glamour of the casino world but also featured plenty of intrigue and action.
Casino Confidential may not be getting resurrected, but it does seem as though the time is ripe for a similar series. There have been a lot of developments in the industry since the documentary aired, and it would be interesting to see advancements in technology, such as virtual reality games, depicted on television. There is always a market for reality television in Canada, and something that involves gambling is sure to be well received.
When I last spoke to Paula Brancati, it was at the end of a bug-infested day near Orangeville, Ont., on the set of Slasher: Guilty Party, where she played a character named Dawn.
Now Brancati is back—along with several of her Guilty Party co-stars—in Slasher: Solstice, the third season in the franchise created by Aaron Martin. Slasher: Solstice keeps the franchise’s cast intact by reuniting several actors from past seasons in Dean McDermott, Joanna Vannicola, Brancati, Erin Karpluk, Jim Watson, Jefferson Brown and Paulino Nunes with new faces in Baraka Rahmani, Lisa Berry, Mercedes Morris and Salvatore Antonio.
And, like the franchise, Solstice meets up with these characters as awful things happen in present-day to match a truly terrible occurrence in the past. We spoke to Brancati about playing Violet.
It’s exciting times for everybody, thanks to Netflix. The reach for a Canadian series like Slasher is worldwide instantly.
Paula Brancati: It’s really exciting, I think, especially with something like Slasher where it’s an anthology, and so each season really has its own identity, and they feel like they can have their very unique stamp on them, each shot by a different director. I feel like we’re doing something new every year with the show. I’m overwhelmed in the best way with how big the reach is, and I always forget how many people can actually access the show and watch it in perpetuity, all over the world. It’s mind-blowing, and the response has been super-positive.
What I like about the Slasher franchise and what Aaron started is that, yes, it’s a horror anthology. Yes, there are gory deaths, but the deaths mean something, and there’s emotion attached to these characters.
PB: I completely agree with you. I think the reason I was so delighted when Aaron came to me with this in Season 2 with that character was that I’d never worked in horror before. I think I had certain ideas about what the genre was like. I was pretty thrilled to see that in Season 2, and then in Season 3 as well, that the characters don’t fulfil these horror movie tropes in the same way.
I would be delighted to watch a show with any one of these characters leading it. To get to have so many complex characters, to see such an incredible, diverse cast that looks like the city we’re actually in, that has female characters that are so complicated and so exciting, I think that that’s what the show does really well, and then horror is just another element to it. It makes me very proud to be a part of this particular horror franchise.
Violet thinks she’s helping. She’s a lonely character, and there’s definitely some sadness to her because the only real connection that she feels is with this anonymous group of people that watch her videos.
PB: I ingested a lot of YouTuber footage before bed, and I would leave the Kardashians on in the background because I think they aesthetically for her are a huge influence, as they are for a lot of millennials. I think she wishes she was Nancy Grace, too. She’s listened to Serial over and over again. She watches and listens to, I think, current things, and probably would also be very dated in some of her references. It was a lot of fun to build her from the outside in as well, and play with her voice.
She’s so much fun. There are so many directions you can take it in. [Director] Adam [MacDonald] was very clear about wanting to make sure it felt very much like a real person. I think that’s the danger with someone like that, with a character like that is I was worried that maybe people wouldn’t believe that she exists on this planet. I think from the response we’ve been getting, people seem to know her well. I don’t know if that’s frightening or not, but it’s what they’re saying.
The other thing that struck me was this relationship between Joe and Angel, obviously, but also Angel, Joe, and Violet. It was a complicated relationship between the three of them. I thought it was really well written, really well done, and didn’t feel forced in the middle of a show where people are being killed off every episode either.
PB: Thanks for saying that. I agree with you. I think it was so well written, and it’s a real testament to the writers. Somehow amidst this 24-hour crazy killing spree, it felt so honest. I think that’s also a testament to Ilan Muallem and to Salvatore Antonio, who played Joe and Angel, respectively, because you really feel right away when you meet them, you feel like you’re right in something.
I think Ilan does such a nice job. I really feel like he absolutely had a real love for Violet and that they probably did have so much fun for a very long time. She’s in a whole other planet really, really far away from him. Those scenes behind, you know that door? There’s a scene where he’s locked her into the bathroom. That stuff was really exciting and very challenging to shoot. I found that stuff really very like it pushed us in directions with each other. I really think Adam, again, treads a really great line of keeping everything energetic but also feeling really real.
I think those things can go off the rails if you don’t have a director who’s really tasteful. I felt really in very, very good hands.
What are you working on now? Do you and Michael Seater still have your production company?
PB: Yeah. We do. We’re developing a couple of TV things. I went off to Italy and shot a feature that I produced and was in, called From the Vine. Wendy Crewson played my mom in it. Joe Pantoliano is the lead and it was directed by Sean Cisterna. We’re just finishing post-production on that right now. There’s a sci-fi feature that’s doing a festival run that I was a lead in with Erin Berry, who was one of our producers on Slasher, called Majic. Paulino Nunes is in it. That’s doing a festival run right now.
Slasher: Solstice is on Netflix now.
Images courtesy of Shaftesbury.
From a media release:
There are 500 kids at Letterkenny Central School, and audiences will soon learn about all of their pint-sized problems. The new Crave Original Series LITTLEKENNY, an irreverent, short-form animated extension of Crave’s smash-hit comedy LETTERKENNY, premieres on Friday, June 28 with all six episodes, just in time for the Canada Day long weekend.
Created, written, and directed by Jared Keeso, LITTLEKENNY tells the origin story of The Hicks, and how standing up for each other in the schoolyard resulted in their friendship. Featuring the voices of LETTERKENNY stars Nathan Dales as young Daryl; K. Trevor Wilson as young Dan; Keeso as young Wayne; and Canadian actress Kandyse McClure as the voice of Ms. Tricia, these wee-hicks may seem adorable, but as with their original incarnations, their quick wit packs a Texas-sized punch.
LITTLEKENNY will also be available on other Bell Media platforms including:
Additionally, Episodes 1 and 2 will be available as a sneak peek on the Letterkenny Problems YouTube channel on June 27.
As LITTLEKENNY gets introduced to the world, its big brother LETTERKENNY is also in the spotlight over the Canada long weekend with:
Another six-pack of LETTERKENNY is set to debut on Crave on October 11, as production gets set to begin on Season 8 this summer.
LITTLEKENNY is produced by New Metric Media in association with Playfun Games and Bell Media, with the participation of Canadian Media Fund, OMDC Tax Credits and the Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit and the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund and distributed by DHX Media with New Metric Media as sales agent. Animation services for LITTLEKENNY were provided by Little Blackstone Inc.
For LETTERKENNY, Jared Keeso is executive producer, co-writer, star, and creator, Jacob Tierney is executive producer, director, and co-writer and Mark Montefiore is executive producer for New Metric Media.
