CBC today revealed the ten amateur bakers who will compete in the upcoming fourth season of THE GREAT CANADIAN BAKING SHOW, premiering Sunday, February 14 at 8 p.m. (8:30 NT) on CBC and the free CBC Gem streaming service. Over the course of eight episodes, this group of diverse and talented bakers from across the country will don their aprons and head into the iconic tent to face a number of classic culinary-themed challenges that will test their baking prowess, creativity and skill in an effort to win The Great Canadian Baking Show title.
As previously announced, Season 4 of the fan favourite series will be hosted by comedians, actors, writers and Second City alumni Alan Shane Lewis and Ann Pornel. Esteemed pastry chefs Bruno Feldeisen and Kyla Kennaley return to the judge’s table to sample the bakers’ best offerings. The new season was filmed safely last fall on the grounds of the Canadian Film Centre in Toronto adhering to strict COVID-19 protocols.
Based on the beloved British format, each episode features three rounds including the Signature Bake, the Technical Bake and the Show Stopper – during which the bakers will rely on their personal interests, baking styles and cultural backgrounds to make their delicious dishes stand out to the judges. After the bakes are tested and critiqued, the judges decide who will be the week’s Star Baker and who will be sent home. In the final episode, the remaining three bakers face-off in a bid to be named Canada’s best amateur baker.
Following the pandemic-fuelled home baking craze, Season 4 applications reached record-breaking numbers for the series. The Canada-wide virtual casting sessions were rigorous, but these ten bakers met the challenge and came out on top:
Anjali Helferty, 36, a recent PhD grad from Toronto, ON
Bertie Diaz, 54, a corporate travel agent from Toronto, ON
Larry Harris, 53, a business operations manager from Edmonton, AB
Maggie Frith, 42, a stay-at-home mom and former lawyer from Toronto, ON
Mahathi Mundluru, 24, a business analyst from Markham, ON
Oyaks Airende, 28, a project scheduler and engineer from Calgary, AB
Raufikat Oyawoye, 35, an IT support engineer from Milton, ON
Sheldon Lynn, 25, a software developer from Vancouver, BC
Tanner Davies, 28, a marketing consultant from Winnipeg, MB
Last season, 33-year-old administrative assistant, Natalia Shevchenko, of Edmonton, AB took home the title after competing against semi-finalists Colin Asuncion of Toronto, ON and Jodi Robson of Regina, SK. In the lead up to the Season 4 premiere, fans can satisfy their craving by catching up on seasons 1 -3 on CBC Gem.
THE GREAT CANADIAN BAKING SHOW is produced by Proper Television in association with CBC and Love Productions. The executive producers are Cathie James and Lesia Capone, and the series producer is Marike Emery.
[Spoiler alert: Do not continue reading until you have watched the Season 14 episode, “Keep Me in Your Heart.”]
Midway through last fall, TV, Eh? began getting emails. There were rumours among Heartland fans that Ty Borden (Graham Wardle) would not return to the show. We the rumours true, those emails asked? I don’t like rumours, so I didn’t address them. Instead, I let the Season 14 premiere of Heartland speak for itself.
And, sadly, as those rumours were true. On Sunday night, viewers learned that Ty succumbed to the gunshot injury he received in Season 13. “Keep Me in Your Heart” was an emotional hour with a memorial for Ty as its centrepiece, a year-later goodbye for the characters that was truly emotional. Here, Amber Marshall answers our questions about Ty’s death and what it means for Amy and the rest of the family moving forward.
Congratulations on Season 14 of Heartland. Can you believe it’s been 14 seasons already? Amber Marshall: It seems like only yesterday we were all meeting for the first time. The beautiful thing is the excitement we all shared to be a part of that first season, is still strong over a decade later. We genuinely love and respect one another. The cast and crew have remained close and all have each other’s best interests in mind.
COVID-19 threw a wrench in everyone’s lives. How difficult was it for you and the Heartland family to adapt to filming during the pandemic? AM: Being such a close and social workplace, it took a while to become consistent with a new routine. We are a group that hugs when we meet in the morning and when we leave at the end of the day. We spend many hours on set in close quarters and typically in between scenes and setups we usually all huddle together and run lines, or chat socially. This all had to change in season 14 to allow for COVID protocol to be followed. Lunches were now spent alone in our trailers or vehicles and any time we had in between setups or scenes was usually spent the same way. In some ways it allowed me to get more ‘homework’ done during the day, but the social side of Heartland looked very different.
Sunday’s episode revealed that, unfortunately, Ty developed complications and passed away. As a cast member and friend of Graham’s, how hard has it been to not have him around on-set? AM: The story of Amy and Ty has been very prominent since Heartland’s beginning. Graham and I have had many beautiful stories on Heartland over the years and have remained very close friends off-set as well. This year was a strange new reality on all fronts. In a way, the longevity of the Amy and Ty story gave me inspiration as an actor to be able to feel the grief and sorrow of losing that character. Graham and I still spoke often throughout the season and I was able to visit him recently as well.
What would you say to fans who are upset Ty is no longer on the show? He and Amy have been the centrepiece of this show since Day 1. There are things in our lives we can never prepare for. And when something devastating happens it feels as though our world is ripped apart and could never be put back together. I know fans of the show will be deeply saddened by the loss of Ty and I hope that they can join Amy and the Heartland family during this season of healing. There will always be events in our life that are out of our control and upset us. Instead of attacking them, or shutting down, we experience the most growth when we remain open and understanding.
When we pick up with the new season, a year has gone by. How do you feel about the time jump? AM: Heartland was supposed to begin filming Season 14 in April of 2020. At that time the scripts were written to be six months after Ty’s passing. When the pandemic caused us to push our start until September is was a beautiful thing for our story. Now, instead of ‘six months later’ we have a more powerful story of a whole year passing. I believe this added immensely to the journey of our characters. The memorial on the one-year anniversary of his death was so much stronger than if it was only six months later. Also, the seasons and backdrop to the stage we were setting was far more tailored to the events. To me, the colder climate and fall/winter landscapes make the audience feel the grief so much deeper than a spring/summer backdrop.
Ty leaves a huge hole in the family. How will Amy adapt to this new life, especially being a single mother? AM: Amy is no stranger to loss. The series begins with the death of her mother and her journey forward down a new road which she must travel without Marion. It is the horses that have always grounded Amy and as she works to heal their traumas, they, in turn, heal her. When Amy loses Ty, she goes through a wide range of emotions. She is numb to it for many months, then has strong guilt for not doing more to prevent it. With Jack’s help and understanding, she accepts that it was out of her control and the best way to honour Ty is to move forward and be present for their daughter. Amy leans on what has always comforted her in times of sorrow: horses. She includes her daughter in this form of healing and together they share some beautiful moments.
What can fans expect from the new season of the show? AM: As always, be prepared to laugh, cry and maybe throw something at your TV – perhaps all at the same time! This season is undoubtedly an emotional one, but the strength of the Heartland family coming together and the beauty of the cinematography brings so much to the hearts of the viewers who join us on this journey.
Heartland airs Sundays at 7 p.m. on CBC.
Images courtesy of Michelle Faye Fraser for Rescued Horse Season Fourteen Inc.
Shocking but true: Cleopatra was nothing like the person Liz Taylor played in the big-budget 1963 film. That’s one of the first facts I gleaned from The Nature of Things‘ newest episode.
“Searching for Cleopatra,” broadcast as part of The Nature of Things, debuts Friday at 9 p.m. on CBC, pulls back the curtain on the most famous of the Pharaohs. Did she really fall in love with two men—Julius Caesar and Marc Antony—and die with a little help from a poisonous snake?
Viewers follow archaeologist Kathleen Martinez (pictured above)—who has been sifting through the ruins of the huge temple complex of Taposiris Magna, or City of the Dead, outside of Alexandria—in search of Cleopatra’s final resting place. Martinez has found tantalizing clues that she is in the right area, but nothing concrete. As cameras capture the digging, we are given the history of Cleopatra. What is true is that, over 2,000 years ago, Cleopatra ruled over 7 million people, wasn’t Egyptian and led an army against her brother. Also true: the Romans are credited with the depiction of Cleopatra that led to Hollywood’s version of the ancient ruler.
In addition to Martinez, Canadian Classical Studies professors Kelly Olson, from the University of Western Ontario, and Sheila Ager of the University of Waterloo, share their knowledge of the Egyptian queen and her times and emphasize she was a ruler whose exceptional skill was her ability to grab and hold onto power.
“Searching for Cleopatra” airs as part of The Nature of Things on Friday at 9 p.m. on CBC.
[Spoiler alert! Do not continue reading until you have watched “Murdoch and The Tramp.”]
Like a Christmas present arriving late out of the blue, this season of Murdoch Mysteries launched several months later than usual. It has definitely been worth the wait. Monday’s storyline melded several of my favourite pieces of the Murdoch Mysteries puzzle—Murdoch’s technology, historical figures and classic Crabtree humour—to provide a rollicking hour of entertainment. In my inaugural Season 14 chat, I spoke to Simon McNabb, the episode’s writer and Murdoch co-executive producer, about it.
How did COVID-19 affect your life and being able to work on a TV show? Simon McNabb: It affected the writers in a couple of ways. The most immediate one was just, of course, on March 13th or whatever it was, we disbanded the writer’s room and didn’t see each other face to face for many months after that. It was kind of right in the middle of us breaking the arc for the season and coming up with the first batch of episodes, so we were able to sort of go off and write at that point, but then normally we would come back together and continue to talk about what the next episodes would be and give notes on those first episodes.
Like everybody else in the world, we just started doing everything over Zoom, which was nice in terms of being able to roll out of bed, straight into the writer’s room. But it was also challenging in that it’s a very different dynamic to be talking over video conference as opposed to being in person, in part because we’re not there in person, but also because it’s hard to sit on a video conference for, like, eight hours a day. We would generally do a short meeting where we got everything out—which takes away that opportunity to sit around and put your feet up over lunch and just say something that’s totally out of left field that might add a little creativity to the proceedings—but I think, ultimately, we found a good way of working bringing some of that creativity into the process anyway. It was pretty unusual, but it turned out pretty well.
Maybe the positive is that you are such a veteran writers’ room that, that may be unlike maybe a newer show, you can kind of roll with the punches a little bit better than others can. SM: Absolutely. I think we were pretty uniquely suited to roll with whatever was thrown at us. And I also think there is an upside to only having a short meeting a day and then having some time as a writer to just sort of think on your own and reflect. It slows the pace down a little bit. But it means that when you do meet again, say the next day for a couple of hours, everybody has more ideas and is a little more refreshed and had something they really are burning to say.
Do you remember if it was you that came up with the idea of having Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Stan Laurel involved in this episode, or was it a collaborative effort? SM: Well, it’s always collaborative. I think in terms of somebody saying the words Charlie Chaplin, I believe it was me back in March when we were still sitting around a communal table. But at the same time, I also know that some years ago—probably multiple times over the years when we’ve been sitting around brainstorming ideas and what historical figures we might want to see—Charlie Chaplin has come up before. And then we check the historical record and find out that he was only 11 years old at that time or something and we decided to move on. So it had been a couple of years, I think, since anyone had mentioned it.
I just Googled him and found out that in 1908 I believe was the year that he first got on a boat and left the UK to tour with Fred Karno’s vaudeville troupe. As soon as we sort of got that historical green light—that it was vaguely possible within our fictional world, that he could’ve come to North America—then we ran with it and discovered the truth that Stan Laurel had been his understudy and discovered that Buster Keaton was already touring with his family around North America. And we decided, if we were going to do one of them, we might as well do all of them there to do vaudeville in a new way with some of the biggest historical figures we’ve ever had on the show in terms of fame and profile.
I had no idea about Stan Laurel being Charlie’s understudy. SM: Yeah, I had never come across that either, but it was true that he was Chaplain’s understudy while they were with Fred Karnos’ company. And I think he was quoted many times in his career as saying that Charlie was just this unbelievable talent who taught him an enormous amount.
You must love it when you’re able to hint that Crabtree invented The Tramp character and provide a wink to the audience. SM: For sure, and the winking to the audience, and the winking to the historical record and what we now know to be true today, is a huge amount of fun of the premise of this show. It was something that was set up long before I started working on that and it’s such a stroke of genius. I don’t know who exactly came up with sort of that attitude to look back at history in that way through these characters on Murdoch Mysteries, but it’s something that the audience delights in. We see great comments on Facebook and Twitter every time we get a chance to really properly profile a great historical figure. Hopefully people will be pleased with the fun we’d had in this episode.
What is Yannick Bisson like as a director? SM: Yannick is a fantastic director. I’ve worked with him before. He directed an episode last year about George Crabtree’s father that I wrote, and we collaborated on that episode last year and I got to watch him up close and personal. He comes at it from his enormous experience as an actor and, as a result, is really perceptive in terms of character and in terms of working with not only the main cast but guest actors. He has a real instinct for visual gags, for telling the stories through the set, the location and the great sets that our art department has been making the last couple of years. I remember one of the Christmas movies, him just making a great deal of incredible humour out of something that on the page, there’s only a couple of direction lines. And I think, as a director and an actor, he managed to sort of embrace the spirit of this episode in a big way.
Let’s use the chase scene in this episode as an example: how much of that would have been in the script? SM: The chase scene was definitely the biggest set-piece in that episode. One of the biggest ones we’ve ever done maybe in terms of just the number of moving parts, the number of characters and the number of what do you want to call them stunts or gags that we wanted to incorporate, and it really paid off. There is Crabtree’s influence on The Tramp, but there’s also a Buster Keaton gag in there. I would say it was very specifically scripted, however, the realities on the day are always different than what’s in the minds of the writers who we’re sitting in the writer’s room.
That was the sequence went through a lot of labour and prep from all the departments that were changed repeatedly due to both constraints in terms of the time and budget. I remember, specifically, new ideas coming up in prep about how to make it funnier and more specific to the characters. I know that Yannick had a couple of ideas during prep of how to pay off gags better and make things a little more lively in that sequence. I know on the day there were things on set that were just like, well, it’s not going to quite work the way we wanted it to in this very specific way. So let’s change it and do it this way instead and, luckily, the result was pretty great.
With this shorter season, how many episodes are you credited with writing? SM: This year I wrote two episodes. I wrote the Charlie Chaplin episode and another forthcoming episode that features some members of the Newsome family and the writer’s room as a whole collaborated on the last two episodes of the season. So I had a small hand in working on those scripts as well.
How many seasons have you been with Murdoch Mysteries? SM: Eight seasons.
Wow. Do you ever look back and think about that, or no? SM: It’s shocking every time I stop to think about it. I feel like it’s a very unusual career trajectory to happen onto a show that’s already well-established and then rise from being script assistant and story coordinator to a relatively senior writer and co-executive producer over the course of eight seasons. It’s crazy and it’s not something I ever, ever expected when I started working on Murdoch Mysteries. I thought, ‘Well, yeah, this show will probably go another season maybe,’ and here we are eight years later. And hopefully, there’ll be more.
