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Four in the Morning

Link: The CBC explores places it previously didn’t seem to know existed with offbeat comedy Four in the Morning

From David Berry of the National Post:

Link: The CBC explores places it previously didn’t seem to know existed with offbeat comedy Four in the Morning
Ira Parker is as surprised as anyone that Four in the Morning ended up at the CBC.

The show, the pilot script he completed fairly fresh out of school is, as he admits something of an odd duck: a semi-surrealist look at the lives of four young friends, taking place in the wee hours of the morning, that time when hormones and intoxicants come together to create the kinds of experiences that are well outside your day-to-day life and all the more definitive for that. Continue reading. 

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Bellevue

Anna Paquin stars in new CBC series Bellevue

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From a media release:

CBC, Muse Entertainment and Back Alley Film Productions today announced that Academy Award® and Golden Globe® award-winning actress Anna Paquin (True Blood, Roots, Margaret, Alias Grace) will star in BELLEVUE, a new 8 x one-hour drama series premiering on CBC in winter 2017. Actors Allen Leech (Downton Abbey, The Imitation Game, Rome) and Shawn Doyle (House of Cards, Big Love, Fargo) will star alongside Paquin in the series. Created by exciting new voice Jane Maggs and veteran producer/director Adrienne Mitchell, BELLEVUE is commissioned by CBC and produced by Muse Entertainment (The Kennedys, Tut) and Back Alley Film Productions (Durham County, Bomb Girls). Filming begins September 19 in and around Montreal.

Thrilling and eerie, BELLEVUE is a mystery set in a small blue-collar town with a lot of ‘good people’ who ‘live right’ and take it upon themselves to make sure the neighbours do too. Driving the series is Detective Annie Ryder (Paquin), a cop whose intense and brazen personality has always been at odds with her hometown. When a transgender teen goes missing, Annie dives in to unravel the disappearance that suggests foul play, despite finding herself in a difficult position as she must cast suspicion on people she has known all her life. As the case pulls her further away from her family, she is also confronted by a mysterious person from her past with disturbing answers and a terrifying need to get inside her head. Leech will star as Annie’s on again, off again ex, Eddie, while Doyle will take on the role of Annie’s superior, Police Chief Peter Welland.

Award-winning actress Anna Paquin is best known for her seven-season starring role as Sookie Stackhouse in the hit series True Blood. Born in Canada and raised in New Zealand, Paquin began acting at the age of 11 with her breakout role in The Piano, which earned her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, making her the second youngest winner in Oscar history. She has since had a successful career, boasting high profile roles in the X-Men film franchise, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler, The Squid and The Whale; 25th Hour; Finding Forester; Almost Famous; Amistad; Buffalo Soldiers; A Walk on the Moon; Fly Away Home; Jane Eyre; The Romantics; Margaret; Straight A’s; and HISTORY’s remake of Roots. Paquin also stars in the upcoming CBC and Netflix mini-series Alias Grace. Paquin is repped by Brillstein Entertainment Partners, WME and Sloane Offer Weber and Dern.

Allen Leech is an Irish stage, television and film actor best known for his role as chauffeur-turned-son-in-law Tom Branson on the Golden Globe and Emmy®-winning historical drama Downton Abbey. Leech is a three-time SAG award winner and has appeared in television series The Tudors and Rome. He also starred in The Imitation Game opposite Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley, which was nominated for 5 Golden Globes and 8 Academy Awards. Leech can next be seen in Jonathan Mostow’s The Hunter’s Prayer with Sam Worthington.

Canadian actor Shawn Doyle was born and raised in Wabush, Newfoundland. He has won two ACTRA awards for his performance in The Eleventh Hour and The Disappeared; a Gemini award for Eight Days to Live; and a Canadian Screen Award for John A: Birth of a Country. Other TV credits include the series Lost, CSI, Hannibal, Lie to Me, End Game, Republic of Doyle, Rookie Blue, 24, Desperate Housewives, Reign and Big Love. Doyle can currently be seen in the CBC drama series This Life; the Syfy series The Expanse; and the upcoming Netflix series Frontier.

Commissioned by CBC, Bellevue is produced by Muse Entertainment Enterprises and Back Alley Film Productions Ltd. The series was created by Jane Maggs and Adrienne Mitchell, with Maggs serving as senior writer, executive producer and co-showrunner with Mitchell, who is pilot director and executive producer. Executive producers are Janis Lundman, Michael Prupas, Morwyn Brebner (Saving Hope, Rookie Blue) and Jesse Prupas. Muse Distribution International is handling the series’ international distribution.

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Featured, Four in the Morning

Four in the Morning boasts humour and bittersweet-ness in debut

In this premiere episode of Four in the Morning, created by Ira Parker, we are treated to a bit of magic realism: a talking pig named Albert a.k.a. Buzz. More on that later.

Four in the Morning is being touted as a comedy. I would, however, describe this as a surreal dream that definitely takes itself seriously.  The dialogue flies by and the puns are delivered so deadpan that if you are not listening, you might not catch them all. But this is not a laugh-a-minute show. It delves a little deeper despite the many f-bombs and a few other liberal-isms that we  typically do not see on the CBC.  It features four (get it? FOUR!) twentysomethings experiencing life at 4 a.m..

Parker himself describes the series: “Four in the Morning is about that feeling you get after a long night of drinking with your friends, fluctuating somewhere between euphoria and misery. It’s about the things we say to each other that we couldn’t during our more sober hours. This is the world our show lives in.”

We open with a quick walking tour through the Patrician Grill—the 219 over the door should be a dead giveaway to Torontonians—and land downstairs in the the ladies’ room with Mitzi (Lola Tash, formerly of Republic of Doyle) sharing the news with her best friend Jamie (Michelle Mylett, “Katy” of Letterkenny) that her talking pet pig has died. See, I really wasn’t kidding about the pig.

Meanwhile, back in the booth, Bondurant (Daniel Maslany, whose credits include Corner Gas), confesses his love for Jamie to Jamie’s boyfriend William (Mazin Elsadig). Eventually, the foursome reunite in a scene reminiscent of When Harry Met Sally—we all remember that  “famous” scene in Katz’s Delicatessen—and the whole thing comes together like you would imagine a Seinfeld episode if it were written by David Lynch. Quirky is a bit of an understatement.

Anyhow, William turns to his girlfriend Jamie in frustration, “I am starting to get why your parents abandoned you,” and with that, the foursome becomes two twosomes, setting up a series of back and forth, his and hers scenes. We learn through Bondurant’s confession to William that he has lied to everyone about his acceptance to Julliard. We also learn via Mitzi’s  own confession to Jamie that she is merely “transitorily pregnant” and plans to abort Bondurant’s child because it is her belief that he has been accepted to Julliard.

This sequence of bantering scenes feels more like a one-act play than television sitcom, giving 4 a.m. a very fresh charm. It crams in a good deal of background information with its fast-paced dialogue.  Parker even gets a bit meta with his dialogue; William calls Bondurant out for dropping a famous Carnegie/Massey Hall joke.

We close with  the knowledge that Mitzi’s pig squealed on Jamie and Bondurant, while Bondurant contemplates his future, sans trumpet,  from the stage of an empty and darkened Massey Hall.

This is truly a refreshing blend of humour and bittersweet-ness. Definitely a standing “O” to the CBC for allowing Parker free reign with his creation. This, I hope, will be a really fun ride!

Will Mitzi decide to keep Bondurant’s baby? What do you think will happen next? Do you have a favourite line from the show? Leave your ideas in the comments below!

Four in the Morning airs Fridays at 9 p.m. on CBC.

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Four in the Morning

Link: Lola Tash previews Four in the Morning

From Heather M. of The Televixen:

Link: Lola Tash previews Four in the Morning
“I auditioned and at first I didn’t get it, and a year later I got a phone call that they wanted me for it. [Mitzi] is, at first, an emotionally withdrawn banker who is really easygoing and approaches everything with detachment and then you see that she is detached for a reason and gets hurt easily and cares more than she lets on.” Continue reading.

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