Tag Archives: Featured

Featured, Frankie Drake Mysteries

Comments and queries for the week of February 9

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Like so many others, Frankie Drake and her pals grew on us and we certainly hope to see a Season 2. Good cast, lots of fun. —Andy

Strong characters and great stories. CBC should definitely renew for a long run. Lauren Lee Smith is smart, sexy and shows a great diverse cast with interesting stories. See ya in September. —James

The fact that Wendy Crewson had a role in this show originally made it of interest to me. Now I’m hooked on the storylines, the character development and the fine performances. I’m sad it’s over until next fall. —Debbie

I’ve enjoyed the series and hope it will be renewed. —John

This show grew on me. In my opinion, at the top, it was trying hard to be the anti-Murdoch instead of the pro-Frankie. Peter Stebbings’ directed episode is the one that hooked me and I look forward to seeing his next one. —Mel

 

Got a question or comment about Canadian TV? Email greg.david@tv-eh.com or via Twitter @tv_eh.

 

 

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Cardinal, Featured

Cardinal: Showrunner Sarah Dodd reflects on Blackfly Season

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Spoiler alert! Do not continue reading until you have watched the season finale of Cardinal: Blackfly Season “El Brujo”!!

Well, Cardinal fans, were you shocked by the season finale of Blackfly Season? Although I’ve read the books, Thursday’s climax still left me breathless. My heart went out to John Cardinal (Billy Campbell) when he realized the person who’d jumped to their death was his beloved wife, Catherine (Deborah Hay).

That wasn’t the only stressful moment during “El Brujo.” In true, nail-biting fashion, the fates of Terri (Alex Paxton-Beesley) and Kevin Tait (Jonathan Keltz) were up in the air when it appeared Leon Rutkowsky (Dan Petronijevic) and Ray Northwood (Bruce Ramsay) would get their final sacrifice. As it was, the bad guys were arrested in time—I was secretly hoping they’d be killed—and order was restored.

We spoke to Blackfly Season showrunner Sarah Dodd—who most recently served as a co-executive producer on Motive—to talk about her experience adapting Giles Blunt’s novel for television, the challenges of filming night scenes and what’s next for John Cardinal.

Before we get into specifics about this season and the season finale, can you tell me how you became involved in Cardinal in the first place?
Sarah Dodd: I was working in London, England, on a series called Ransom. And that show has among other production partners, Sienna Films. So, when I was in their story room on Ransom, they were looking for showrunners on Season 2 and 3 of Cardinal. They called me and asked if I would be interested and I jumped at the chance. I’ve always wanted to do a limited-run murder mystery series like this. I’m a big fan of all the Scandi-noir stuff and shows like Happy Valley, Broadchurch and The Killing. So, I said, yes that I would love to. I came back to Canada at the end of the summer in 2016 and read all six books that Giles Blunt wrote and that was how it started.

Was there any nervousness on your part? Giles Blunt established this world in his book and Aubrey Nealon set the stage in Season 1.
It was both terrifying and inspiring. The books are very cinematic. Giles is very good at writing a scene and I was inspired by how much was there in the material. I was definitely daunted by the big shoes I had to fill from Aubrey’s season. I was a huge fan of Season 1, so it was a brass ring. I just had to go for it. But, always in the back of my mind was, ‘I have to be true to it and really honour Season 1 and not disappoint the fans.’ My biggest fear was that everyone who fell in love with Season 1 would be disappointed in Season 2. [Laughs.]

But, at the same time, I was working with a great advantage because I was writing for Billy Campbell, Karine Vanasse, Glen Gould and all of these actors in my head.

What did you learn about the differences between writing a six-episode season and an 18-episode one?
It is less daunting because it’s only six episodes but in other ways, it’s a completely different art form for me. It’s a miniseries, so it’s long-form and I have done so much episodic that this was very new for me to carry one case over the course of six episodes. I had never done that before so writing a new genre, basically, was exciting and scary. We also only had five weeks in the writer’s room to break all six stories and walk out of that room knowing how to write up our outline. We couldn’t have done that if we didn’t have the book. We added a lot of characters and storylines that weren’t in the book and we changed a lot of things and made some adjustments, so it was challenging in that way.

What did working on Cardinal force you to do as a television writer?
I think that Jennica Harper and Alison Lea Bingeman would agree that it was a really fantastic opportunity to dig deep into character. The other noticeable difference for me was less dialogue. The standard one-hour episodic that I’m used to writing is dialogue heavy and with Cardinal we had to find ways of cutting way back. Less was more, especially John Cardinal. He doesn’t say much. Neither does Lise Delorme, really. In their scenes together, so much of what they say passes between their faces. The other big thing is that when we were breaking the episodes we were working on index cards with a colour-coded system. We made sure that we had a specific colour that was the visual card. There was no plot, we just knew we wanted an image there. It wasn’t part of the story. The landscape of Cardinal is character in the show, so we were breaking story, plotting characters and thinking a lot about visuals.

Can you talk a little bit about working with Jeff Renfroe? He directed all six episodes and established a wonderful colour palette and look for Season 2.
I thought that Daniel Grou and Aubrey did a wonderful job in Season 1. Everybody talked about that dark, cold landscape and how much landscape was a part of the show. And my story takes place in the summer, right? The first conversation I had with Jeff was, ‘What will be our birch tree? What will be Cardinal’s mind palace, for lack of a better word? What are we going to see when we are trying to get into the emotion of the characters?’ From a writing perspective, we always thought about cottage country in the summer. Boats, beaches, campfires and going to the bar in the summer when the sun hasn’t even gone down yet. Bugs swarming you. And then I looked to Jeff and Dylan Macleod, our cinematographer to undercut that so that we always have that eerie feeling that things aren’t quite right. Our touchstone was that there was a rot behind the beauty. A decaying quality.

How did you go about choosing your writing team? 
Both Sienna and Bell were very supportive of me finding the right people for my little room. I had just worked with Jennica on Motive and we get along really well. Not only is she a very good one-hour procedural writer but I also know her as a poet so I knew she would be able to bring that lyrical, metaphorical quality to the writing and in the imagery. And she’s also got comedy chops. I had met Alison socially but I had never worked with her before, but we share an agent and Alison has had a project in development with Sienna, so they knew her and she’d done 19-2 with Bell so they knew her. And I knew from my group of writer friends that Alison was good with one-hour procedurals not only with breaking but with serialized storytelling in This Life. We had a telephone conversation and I got to know a great new writer in the process. We also had a fourth person in the room named Gemma Holdway who was our intern at first and then was upgraded to story editor.

Bruce Ramsay played a wonderful bad guy in Ray Northwind.
Casting that character was huge. When we were developing the series and writing the scripts always in the back of our minds was, ‘Who are we going to get to play Ray?’ It can’t be the moustache-twirling stock villain. It has to be someone with some pain and some layers and a bizarre, otherworldly confidence. It was a tall order and we were thrilled to get Bruce.

Terri ends up being a real bad-ass and flat-out saves Kevin in a lot of ways in the finale.
That was another conscious change that we made from the book. She gets a little forgotten about by the end of the book and we thought that because we’ve invested so much time with her and she’s really put her life on hold to come and extricate her brother from a bad situation, we didn’t see her as someone who would just give up. We think she’s a fighter and wanted to have her be active in the finale.

How long did the fight scene between Cardinal and Ray last when it came to filming it?
It was faster than you might think because we had a lot of camera coverage and we covered it from every angle. Every filming day was packed and Jeff had so much to accomplish and that day was no different because we had stunts and underwater work and working in the dark. I had a lot of discussion with Jeff and Dylan in pre-production about motivating light at the camp. In the book, the place is completely off the grid and it would have been all lanterns and candles and flashlights but because we needed some practical lighting to motivate Dylan’s lighting along the walkways and down by the shore so we could see the actors’ faces and know what was going on we said, ‘OK, they have a generator somewhere.’

If anyone has read the books they know Catherine dies at the beginning of the third novel, By the Time You Read This. Why was it decided she would die at the end of Season 2?
There were lots of conversations around that to make sure it was the best choice. For the writers, we thought that if we didn’t end Catherine’s story there that if you looked back over the six episodes of Season 2 you would say, ‘What is Catherine and Cardinal’s story?’ There is a strong beginning because she’s out of the hospital and is well and back at work. Their daughter is doing well in Toronto. But there is always this undercurrent of when is the next time and it’s inevitable there will be a next time. Cardinal is ready to hang it up so that he can be there with Catherine so that maybe there isn’t a next time. That, of course, is a dream.

What did you think of Season 2 of Cardinal? Are you excited to see Season 3? Let me know in the comments and check out the Season 3 teaser trailer!

 

 

 

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Caught, Featured

Photo gallery: First-look at CBC’s Caught

Sure, I’m excited about the Winter Olympics. I’ll be watching with Canadian flags in hand as our athletes compete in Pyeongchang over the next two weeks. But, honestly, a part of me views the Winter Games as just the lead-up to the debut of Caught.

Adapted from Lisa Moore’s acclaimed novel, the five-part limited-run series, debuting Monday, Feb. 26, at 9 p.m. on CBC, is set in 1978. Locked up after a drug deal goes wrong, David Slaney (Allan Hawco) breaks out of a New Brunswick prison to try one more deal with his former partner Brian Hearn (Eric Johnson). It’s Slaney’s last chance at freedom, but in this tale of bravado and betrayal—and killer soundtrack—nothing is what it seems. Caught stars Hawco, Slings & Arrow‘s Paul Gross, Open Heart‘s Tori Anderson, Johnson, Mary Kills People‘s Charlotte Sullivan and Rookie Blue‘s Enuka Okuma.

Get a glimpse of the characters in the below photo gallery and a tease with the official trailer.

[slideshow_deploy id=’46998’]

 

 

Caught debuts Monday, Feb. 26, at 9 p.m. on CBC.

Images courtesy of Duncan De Young for CBC.

 

 

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Featured, Murdoch Mysteries

Murdoch Mysteries: Graham Clegg and Paul Aitken break down “The Great White Moose”

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The Day of the Jackal, For Your Eyes Only and Predator are the three movies Graham Clegg drew on while co-writing Monday’s newest episode of Murdoch Mysteries. I’m always fascinated to hear what inspired a particular story, so it was fun to hear Clegg recount how he and co-executive producer Paul Aitken broke the story for “The Great White Moose” and then fleshed it out.

Monday’s newest instalment was a rollicking adventure involving fan favourites Allen Clegg (Matthew Bennett) and Terrence Meyers (Peter Keleghan) trade barbs—and bullets and crossbow bolts—in a tale involving President Teddy Roosevelt (Marty Moreau).

The duo discuss the inspiration for the episode, which cartoon characters Clegg and Meyers resemble and what makes Aitken jump off his couch.

Graham, you were a writer on Murdoch Mysteries a few seasons ago. What have you been up to?
Graham Clegg: I worked on a show called The Pinkertons and that was a great load of fun. We had enough money for one-and-a-half horses and one gun. I think we did quite a good job and it, unfortunately, lasted one season. Then I went off and started working on some of my own projects and they continue. One of them is a feature film and one of them is, hopefully, an upcoming series that will be shot in England.

Marty Moreau as Teddy Roosevelt

How did you end up co-writing this episode?
GC: Peter Mitchell and Paul very kindly came back and asked me if I’d be interested in working with them again and doing another Murdoch script. Of course, I jumped at it and said, ‘Yeah, let’s go!’ [Laughs.] They came up with the premise of the episode and then Paul and I were set loose to crack the story. As we have done five or six times on Murdoch scripts, it’s a process and we hit some of those moments. [Laughs.] Paul will play the guitar and think about things. He has this great whiteboard in his upper office and past that is his balcony. We would do the writer’s thing, pacing back and forth, going ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, but what if?’ Paul also has a huge screen downstairs and we were able to project where we were going with the story, whether it be ideas or story beats.

I remember when we were breaking ‘The Great White Moose,’ we were trying to figure out what the personal connection would be between Clegg and Roosevelt. I’m a research junkie and I’d found that he was at Harvard and in the navy. Paul and I came up with the idea of, ‘Of course! This is fantastic. Clegg and Roosevelt knew each other at Harvard and they almost came to blows—some of the dialogue was cut—what it meant for the United States to extend their power. I remember Paul jumping off the couch and then jumping up and down saying, ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes!’ We found the emotional link between the history of Clegg and Roosevelt and that was a fun moment.

I remember talking to Paul, saying ‘You have to watch The Day of the Jackal!’ because we have a foregone conclusion. We know Roosevelt is not going to be assassinated. That’s not the emotional thread to the story. What we don’t know is, throughout the thriller, who could die? What we have, really, on the plate is [Meyers] and we also know that Clegg could die.

Sam and Ralph a.k.a. Meyers and Clegg

Paul, how often do you jump off the couch when a story is broken? Does it happen a lot?
Paul Aitken: Yes. I think I do but I’m not fully aware of it. I do get excited. When you’re breaking story you’re looking to solve problems.

GC: If he gets up off the couch, you know you’ve got something.

PA: If someone suggests something that opens a path to solving a problem I do get excited. That’s part of the fun in the whole business of writing.

Paul, how did it end up that Graham and yourself were teamed for this episode?
PA: This was an episode that we thought Graham would be good for. I think it was because it was the action-adventure part of it that we thought he was well-suited for. He also knows the characters. Clegg was named after him, for God’s sake!

GC: This has to be said! Seasons ago, when I was on staff, we were coming up with an American spy character. We came up with different character traits. He’s wily, he’s covert. What do we call him? Paul said, ‘Clegg!’ [Laughs.] What was a joke in the story room then made it to script and I said, ‘Please guys, don’t.’ And they said, ‘Nope, it’s Clegg.’

The Bolograph. Image courtesy of Craig Grant

There were a couple of things that I fought for and Paul said, ‘Whatever.’ I’m so thankful and massive kudos to director Leslie Hope. She just nailed it. One thing I fought for and it was kept in was the final shot of the legendary great white moose alive on its own. I said, ‘We’ve got to have that’ and Paul said, ‘OK.’ In terms of Clegg using a crossbow, I didn’t want any muzzle flare coming from anything, so it’s creepy. And that partially came from my love of the film For Your Eyes Only, the James Bond film, where Melina uses it in the first act. The other thing is, and Paul helped me out greatly with this, is the bolometer [Editor’s note: The script refers to it as a bolograph.]. Paul and I were talking and trying to figure out how to get some Murdochian technology in. I sent Paul a link to Predator, the 1987 film with Arnold Schwarzenegger. I said, ‘I want Predator technology when you see heat registry.’ Paul came back and said, ‘Well there is something,’ and it could see up to 400 yards through the darkness. It couldn’t see heat registry but it could sense something. That’s the way the bolometer came in and it was so fun to work with. Craig and the visual effects people in post-production nailed it.

Paul, the relationship between Clegg and Meyers is an interesting one.
PA: I always thought the relationship was a working relationship, kind of like the sheepdog and the coyote, Frank and Ralph. One of them is charged with saving the sheep and the other is interested in killing the sheep. They respect each other and, deep down, some fondness for each other. But they exist to take each other down and we’ve done several incarnations where they try to do that quite directly. It’s a fun relationship and it’s fun to write for because of these inherent complexities. At the same time, we don’t take either character too seriously. As a writer, I am very fond of both of them.

Murdoch Mysteries returns with new episodes on Monday, Feb. 26, at 8 p.m. on CBC.

 

 

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Featured, Industry News

Prime Time in Ottawa – A Little Real Life

Last week the Canadian Media Producers Association put on its annual Prime Time in Ottawa conference.  There was a theme that I felt throughout Prime Time in Ottawa 2018 that I think was intended but was also a little unexpected and I will sum up that theme as ‘Real Life’.  While producers were meeting with potential funders, buyers and broadcasters and attending sessions on how to use data and what’s going on with ‘new’ formats these days, running through the conference was a preoccupation with a few big picture issues which rarely get much attention.  You can check out the hashtag #PTiO and the CMPA’s YouTube channel  for recorded livestreams of four sessions to see if you agree.

The most obvious was gender parity.  Marguerite Pigott, CMPA’s VP of Outreach and Strategic Initiatives and responsible for Prime Time, announced at the beginning of the conference that half the speakers were women and ‘it wasn’t that hard’.  Well, it appears to be for some conferences so that was a welcome start. Women in View presented a glossy ‘Diversity Toolkit’ aimed at getting more women hired in front of and behind the camera.  It is inclusive of women of colour but the priority is gender parity.  While that work clearly needs to be done, the Toolkit reflects a use of the word ‘diversity’ that I find problematic.  When people conflate gender parity with diversity then other forms of diversity (visible minorities, ability, neuro-diversity, income, education, gender orientation etc.) are swept under the rug.  I would have liked that report to spark a conversation about how the Canadian media industry does not do a good job of reflecting the full diversity of its audience in front of or behind the camera and then a discussion of ways to improve that.  That’s my Real Life.  [Full disclosure – I authored a Diversity and Inclusion Toolkit for Interactive Ontario and earned a Certificate in Leadership in Inclusion from Centennial College so I love the big discussions about how to improve diversity and inclusion.]

The panel on Underserved Audiences: Finding a Market could have touched on diversity but didn’t really. What it did highlight was how OTT can help broadcasters and producers aggregate underserved audiences and find larger audiences for what mainstream broadcasters might consider ‘niche’ content.  I was fascinated to hear Brad Danks of OutTV talk about the channel becoming viable now that they can go over the top and aggregate LGBTQ audiences from around the world.  It was depressing to hear Lisa Meeches of Eagle Vision talk about major broadcasters turning them down for “We Were Children”, a documentary about the residential school system, which at the time limited their audience to APTN.  Now, however, it is finding a much bigger audience and a lot of success on Netflix.   However, there was little discussion about how storytellers from these less mainstream audiences could get their content funded when the main gatekeepers are still the mainstream broadcasters.  As Netflix made clear in their fireside chat, they do not develop but rely on mainstream broadcasters to do that work and then they’ll partner on production.  Underserved storytellers were encouraged to create content themselves and prove their audience exists using YouTube and similar platforms but that is still requiring them to jump an additional hurdle that mainstream storytellers don’t have to do – ‘prove there’s an audience and then maybe we’ll license it’.  For example, if the industry continues to ignore the 22% of Canadians who self-identify as visible minorities (much higher in Canada’s urban centres) and the stories that they want to see, they will increasingly turn away from the broadcast system and find their entertainment on YouTube.  Real Life.

Another big topic was Harassment, which I’m sure that we can all agree was very timely.  It was my favourite session as PrimeTime invited accomplished women from other sectors who have a great deal of experience with the topic to come talk to and engage with us.  It was a great opportunity to learn how institutions as patriarchal as the military and the Senate were trying to change their cultures.  Both Senator Marilou McPhedran and Rear Admiral Jennifer Bennett broadened the conversation beyond sexual harassment to what they see is an abuse of power and authority against vulnerable people – which in many cases but not all are women.  They encouraged the industry to keep shining a light on the issues and keep the conversation going while trying to fix the culture which allows such abuses to happen within the industry.  [As the mother of a young woman who was screamed at by an A.D. for fumbling a pizza order while on an unpaid internship, I concur with everything they said.]  McPhedran and Bennett also provided very specific advice for next steps: provide not only someone to complain to but someone who can provide advice, don’t just look at complaints but try to fix the culture that gives rise to them, build your own plan for long term change and don’t get distracted by quick fixes.   Real Life.

The other Real Life theme I’ll call generational change.  Media leaders in Canada are getting older and there were three tributes that marked the passage of time.  Jay Switzer, co-founder of Hollywood Suite and former CHUM CEO, died from brain cancer at the age of 61.  Bob Crowe, Saskatchewan producer and CMPA board member died of a heart attack at 62.   Carolle Brabant retired after eight years as Executive Director of Telefilm Canada.  While both Switzer and Crowe’s passings were unexpected and early, along with Brabant they mark the passage of time and the evolution of the industry and for me raised the question – where are the next generation of media leaders?  Some organizations are planning for it, bringing up young producers, programmers, administrators but others seem to be waiting to deal with it when forced to.  This would be a worthwhile conversation to have as we discuss OTT services, using data and ‘new’ formats because I suspect the next generation of leaders will also have some new ideas about how to do business and reach audiences.

There were other good moments at PrimeTime 2018 (another great opening speech from Reynolds Mastin, Jesse Wente’s first speech as Director of the Indigenous Screen Office, a very detailed explanation of the FairPlay proposal by lawyer Barry Sookman) but this theme of the impact of Real Life on the Canadian media industry and how well we’re dealing with it, is what I’m taking away with me this year.

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