If only Canadian history classes were as entertaining as an episode of Murdoch Mysteries. My favourite instalments are the ones that delve into real-life history or introduce actual historical characters into them, so I was positively giddy with “All That Glitters,” which managed to combine Ontario’s silver rush with Aboriginal rights and the Group of Seven.

Inspector Brackenreid’s paintings—done while he was convalescing following the harbourside beating—were given the spotlight when Julia entered one in a Toronto art contest.

“I see a creative vision taking hold. You seem to be capturing the essence of the north woods,” Julia told Brackenreid of his work, which featured abstract trees painted in oranges and yellows. The reason? He’d run out of green. Lori Spring’s energetic script called for the painting to be stolen not because of the canvas but the high-priced frame it was in. That didn’t deter a fresh-faced young man from paying $15 for the work, telling Brackenreid the work inspired him to walk a similar journey with his own art. The budding painter? A lad named Tom Thomson.

When Monday’s story wasn’t teasing with the fictional inspiration that led to the Group of Seven, it was grounded in many references to Ontario’s rail history, from the Don Station (which was located on Queen St. at the Don River), to the Northern Ontario Railway (which became Ontario Northland). The railway adventure for Crabtree and Murdoch began with “Eagle Flight … murder,” muttered from the mouth of a dying man on the steps of the Constabulary. Graham, the victim, had been a surveyor for the Northern Ontario Railway; a hidden compartment in his suitcase revealed a map and sent the coppers to Haileybury, Ont., where a burgeoning silver strike was about to consume the area.

There were plenty of suspects in Graham’s murder, from a railroad magnate upset Graham was planning to have the train trail moved to Mack, a strong-willed prospector who had the hots for Crabtree. The real killer led the story in a dark direction: Migize Pimise (Eagle Flight in English), an Ojibwe man who wanted the silver vein kept secret. His worry was that once the government discovered there was silver on their land, they would be forced to move off the reservation. Unfortunately, it proved to be true both in Spring’s script and the panel that was the final frame of the episode: “In 1903, silver was found near Cobalt, Ontario. The provincial government extinguished the Indian land title.” A sobering fact indeed.

Notes and quotes

• Continuity error! The flask Graham was carrying was much smaller than the one Murdoch and Dr. Grace examined in the morgue
• I wasn’t even a little surprised that Crabtree takes his own pillow when he travels
• “Nature. I’m not sure I care for it.”—George
• Question: Murdoch revealed he’d once been a lumberjack. Has that been talked about before?

Murdoch Mysteries airs Mondays at 8 p.m. on CBC.

William Murdoch, swashbuckling treasure hunter? Well, not exactly, but Toronto’s most successful detective did find himself in several tight spots during Monday’s newest episode while he hunted for the elusive Holy Grail. Paul Aitken’s script certainly tore a page from the Indiana Jones trilogy, right down to mysterious iconography, secret passages and deadly traps.

“Temple of Death” was also the latest instalment to employ the skills of Robert Crowther and his team over at Rocket Science Visual Effects, who have been working on Murdoch Mysteries for years. Some of the scenes Rocket Science has done for Murdoch include the outside of the temple in Monday’s storyline and the expansive Toronto waterfront from this season’s debut. We spoke to Crowther about the work he’s done on Murdoch Mysteries.

You’ve worked on several different projects over the years. Hannibal, Murdoch, The Listener, Todd & the Book of Pure Evil. It must be fun to jump back and forth among different genres.
Robert Crowther: It’s definitely interesting. Every day is a new problem to solve, really. Any dramatic project comes down to the same thing: how do we tell the story? And in visual effects there is a lot of problem solving. Something has been written and the first thing that runs through my mind is, “How the hell are we going to do this?” [Laughs.] So you have to go through a process of problem solving, really, to determine the best way to show it. And in all cases, even on a larger project, cost is always a factor.

How did you get into the visual effects game in the first place?
I kind of fell into it. I had an opportunity out of York University to do a summer internship at a visual effects company and it wasn’t really even something I was looking into at that time. Once I had some exposure to it I realized that it really fit the kind of talents and interests that I had. I had more than a better than average technical ability but also an interest in storytelling and picture. I thought I was going to be a director, but the reality of the world hits you and at that time there were definitely more opportunities in the visual effects industry. It’s something I found my way into at that time.

I really wanted to be in films and even back then I realized that being a member of a filmmaking team you are very, very involved in the way the story is told. Often, you can have your own level of influence. So though I never did become a director, I do find visual effects to be a very satisfying creative outlet.

What falls under your responsibilities at Murdoch Mysteries?
What’s evolved over the last few years is that rather than be involved in every episode there are a few episodes throughout the season that need a little more assistance from our side than the others. I’ll focus a little more on a certain number of episodes. In Season 8 there were probably four episodes that needed a little additional guidance. It starts with the script and I break down what I see to be an opportunity to use a visual effect or it’s not possible to get the shot through practical means. We’ll start with a read-through and then a meeting and discussion about the different options or approaches we can take to a problem. There is also a budget process as well, determining what the show can afford. Then we plan scene by scene what we’re going to do.

I go on the tech surveys as well in preproduction and I’ll go out to the locations and figure out what we’re going to shoot. I’ll consult on how a visual effect should be executed within the location or the set we’re in. I’ll go there on the shoot day as well to work with the director and director of photography to put the camera in the right place to get the footage we need. There are often camera details we need to get our hands on.

In Monday’s episode, there is that shot of the temple that Murdoch and Crabtree enter. How much of that had to be worked on by your team? What did you add that wasn’t there?
Most of the frame was modified by us. We had a real location for it. There is a beautiful cemetery mausoleum—The Thomas Foster Memorial in Uxbridge, Ont.—where we shot both interior and exterior. The exterior we shot as-is and we had the art department dress some vines and things on the building—it doesn’t have those now and it’s kind of in an open field—but we had to make it look like it was surrounded by 30 years of tree growth. So we had the actors do their dialogue do their lines with the set dressing around them and then we extended all of that. We added vines that go all the way up to the top, we didn’t replace the roof per se, we just integrated it better and replaced the sky. All the foliage around it is added by us as well.

Your team recreated the wonderful Toronto lakeshore for the season premiere. Can you talk about how you came to create that for the show?
That episode started with the script and Peter Mitchell had already mapped out what happened at the docks and wanted to create this sketchy part of Toronto. Most of the time Toronto plays as Toronto the Good. He needed this other place and had already set it up in the previous season. That was the central challenge at the beginning of Season 8, to make a new part of Toronto for the mystery to play out. I don’t even know where the initial thought to not shoot at dockside came from. It might have been Armando Sgrignuoli or Stephen Montgomery who sort of said to us, “Can you make this look like the waterfront of Toronto?”

After scratching our heads for awhile, we worked with some existing location photographs. We had some great footage from Season 7 where we had done the Keewatin crossing Lake Ontario. We had a lot of footage of Lake Ontario and we knew that any view from the Toronto harbourfront would look out on the islands. We took a lot of pictures and once we looked at them we realized we could create the harbour of the time. The other part of it, of course, is that today you have the island ferries and a few sailboats in the harbour. But in that time you had lake freighters coming in both directions and pleasure craft and the ferries, so we started working on CG vessels to populate the harbour and make it look busy.

What’s the most rewarding part of your job?
I think it’s got to be having a final product that you can be proud of. In any creative process there is quite a lot of doubt and quite often we’re doing things we haven’t done before. If you’re not doubting what you’re doing, you’re probably doing something that’s too easy. I like to think that we challenge each other every time and the payoff is seeing that put to picture with all the sound added and telling a great story.

Murdoch Mysteries airs Mondays at 8 p.m. on CBC.

Well, Murdoch Mysteries fans, what did you think of that kiss? Were  you upset that George and Edna have officially become and item? I have mixed feelings about the situation myself–I’d love nothing more than to have George and Emily reunite–but as writer Jordan Christianson pointed out, it could still happen. Eventually. Maybe.

We chatted with the Canadian Film Centre graduate about the importance of the institutions’ TV-writing course, and Monday’s vaudeville-inspired murder mystery that featured a gut-busting scene with Higgins and Crabtree impersonating Murdoch and Brackenreid.

Was W.C. Fields really in Toronto at this time, or was that just some fun on the part of you and the other writers?
Jordan Christianson: That’s a liberty we decided to take. There wasn’t anything to suggest that he had been in Toronto. We know he was working primarily in the New York area. We portrayed him as a struggling juggler in the episode which sort of helps set him up as a murder suspect although, of course, it wasn’t going to be W.C. Fields. In reality, W.C. Fields is considered to be the best juggler in the vaudeville circuit throughout the United States when he was only 21 or 22. He was fairly famous as a juggler before he made that shift and adopted the personality that we now know.

Let’s talk about Bert Grady and his stand-up act. Where did his jokes come from?
I wrote Bert Grady’s monologue. Some of them are mother-in-law jokes that go back decades and I re-wrote them so we could tailor his monologue to serve the plot of the story. The other monologues that we hear throughout the course of the episode I found doing some research at the Toronto Reference Library. Those are actual monologues of the period. They weren’t attributed to any particular performer but those are real monologues.

You mentioned the Toronto Reference Library. Had you been there before for work on Murdoch?
This is my second season on the show and I did spend some time there last season when I wrote the episode about the bicycle races that ended up dealing with human blood types. The Reference Library is great when you’re trying to get a sense of what people knew at the time. For this particular episode, I was able to find a book with the monologues that we hear and it also gave me a sense of vaudeville. To be honest, going into this episode I didn’t know much about vaudeville and had a certain amount of indifference towards it. [Laughs.] It was kind of like my grandparents’ thing. So I really needed to sort of dig in and the library was helpful in showing just how popular it was at the time. It was the entertainment for everyone.

Crabtree’s line about ‘too early’ rather than ‘too soon,’ was great.
All credit has to go to Jonny Harris on that one. It’s always amazing what Jonny in particular is able to come up with on the spot and it certainly makes us writers look good. I hope it was a fun episode not just for Jonny but for the whole cast. Yannick had a lot of fun with it, especially in that scene where he first talks to Ed Ward. They do a bit of a ‘Who’s on first?’ schtick. If there is one thing I don’t think Yannick gets enough credit for is that he plays humour really well. Really subtly. I was tickled with what he did.

Who came up with ‘flatulence sack’?
I would like to take credit for it, but when I decided the Whoopie Cushion would be part of the episode I did my due diligence and looked into the advent of the Whoopie Cushion to see if it could be used and if it existed. It did, and at one time was known as a flatulence sack.

Let’s get to the controversial part of last night’s episode, the kiss between George and Edna. Are you prepared for the backlash?
It’s so interesting. I think Edna is a very likeable character and she draws something out of George that is an inherent goodness. I think it’s a really sweet and appealing relationship and although we appreciate that George and Emily made a great couple and a lot of people want to see them together, we see them as being at a point in their lives where maybe they’re looking around at other options. I know there were some people on Twitter last week who seemed to perceive a moment between Emily and Lillian Moss. We hope that people like George and Edna as a couple because that’s the direction they’re heading in slowly and cautiously.

Higgins and Crabtree impersonating Murdoch and Brackenreid was hilarious. Lachlan Murdoch did a great job as William.
Lachlan did a great job and hair and makeup did a great job with the exaggerated eyebrows and sideburns. I was on set that day and it was surreal to see Lachlan as Murdoch beside Jonny as Brackenreid across from the real Murdoch and the real Brackenreid as they are trying to carry out a scene in all seriousness.

Your resumé includes time on Mr. D. How did you get from there to here?
About four years ago I had done the Canadian Film Centre TV writing program and myself, Simon McNabb and Michelle Ricci who are all on Murdoch were all in the program together and Peter Mitchell was our mentor in residence. Pete took the job on Murdoch shortly after the program and took Michelle with him. At that point in time Simon and I were both aspiring comedy writers. That class was sponsored by CBC and they had taken a liking to a script I had written and told me about this show they had called Mr. D. I knew who Gerry Dee was and thought he was hilarious and he was actually who I envisioned as the Bert Grady character. I wrote Bert Grady with Gerry Dee in mind.

CBC got me an interview and I was lucky enough to be hired on Mr. D as a script coordinator in the first year. It was a great, great experience and after my two years on Mr. D, Pete called Simon and I up and said he had a couple of openings at Murdoch. I can’t speak for Simon but for me it was a no-brainer. Murdoch allows for humour, so I didn’t feel like I was giving up comedy altogether and it meant I was working with Pete, who is widely regarded as one of the best showrunners in the country. It’s been a fantastic journey.

I can’t recommend the CFC enough for people who are interested in getting into TV writing, particularly in this country. I owe the very fact that I’ve had jobs over the last few years to the CFC. Not only do they take care of you while you’re there, but they really care about you afterwards and they keep tabs on you. They really helped me find an agent and get that first job on Mr. D. I highly recommend it to everybody and I do think that more people need to know about it.

Murdoch Mysteries returns Monday, January 12, at 8 p.m. on CBC.