Tag Archives: Republic of Doyle

Caught: Allan Hawco’s adaptation of Lisa Moore’s novel was worth the wait

Way back in the spring of 2016, the CBC announced Caught—an adaptation of Lisa Moore’s acclaimed noverl—as part of its 2016-17 broadcast lineup. But by June of 2016, Caught‘s fate had changed. So, what was the reasoning behind the project’s delay of over a year? Timing.

“This got announced back when we were wrapping Republic of Doyle,” Allan Hawco, Caught‘s writer, showrunner, executive producer and star, says. “I took the time to go deeper into the material. The ambition of the material, the ambition of the period and because it’s an adaptation of Lisa’s book, we just needed the time to gather more resources.”

The wait has been worth it.

Debuting Monday at 9 p.m. on CBC, Caught is a five-part roller coaster caper lovingly wrapped up in the pot-fragranced, lead gas guzzling, rock anthem setting that is 1978.

Tori Anderson as Ada, Greg Bryk as Cyril Carter

Locked up after a drug deal goes wrong, David Slaney (Allan Hawco) breaks out of a New Brunswick prison to try one more caper with his former partner Brian Hearn (Eric Johnson). It’s Slaney’s last chance at freedom, but nothing is what it seems. Slings & Arrow‘s Paul Gross plays RCMP detective Roy Patterson; Open Heart‘s Tori Anderson is Ada, Brian’s gal pal; Mary Kills People‘s Charlotte Sullivan is Jennifer Baker;  Rookie Blue‘s Enuka Okuma is KC Williams, a DEA agent who teams with Roy; and Greg Bryk as Cyril Carter, a friend of Brian’s.

Eric Johnson as Brian Hearn

Monday’s debut opens to the strains of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Up Around the Bend,” as Slaney sprints through a darkened forest, prison dogs and guards at his heels. But as Slaney quickly discovers, his friend Brian may be the reason he ended up in prison in the first place. Filmed in St. John’s, Hamilton, Ont., and the Dominican Republic, Caught certainly captures the late 70s in all its glory, from pale brown leather jackets and wood panelling to the permed hair and tobacco smoke hanging over everything. And, as Slaney crosses the country attempting to evade capture at the hands of Patterson and KC, we meet colourful characters along the way.

Hawco purchased the television rights to Caught after Tecca Crosby, eOne’s senior vice-president of creative affairs, handed the book to him in 2014. Hawco was in Toronto performing Belleville at The Company Theatre and headed back to where he was staying. He and Perry Chafe—one of his partners at Take the Shot Productions and executive producer on Doyle, Frontier and Caught—bought a couple of copies of the book at a local Chapters bookstore. Hawco read Caught in three hours.

Paul Gross as Roy Patterson

“I could hear the soundtrack, I could see the show right away,” Hawco says. “The rights for the book were being sought after by a bunch of people, so I called Lisa and said, ‘I want to work with you on this.’ I think the pedigree of Doyle and that we were just starting Frontier at the time helped. The character of Slaney spoke to me.” Hawco credits Moore’s writing—the ability to craft an inner monologue on the page—with his connection to Slaney and offered the veteran performer the opportunity to play a role he’s never done. Hawco did futz with the source material a bit when crafting his adapation—creating KC Williams as a partner for Patterson, who is a lone wolf in the novel—and some plot deviations, but the novel’s DNA is still there.

Enuka Okuma as KC Williams

“For a cops and smugglers story on television, there were some plot points we had to adjust and characters’ drives that needed to be changed,” Hawco says. “But I worked really hard to anchor all that in pivotal moments in the book so that you’re not watching a completely different thing. I tried to honour the pillars that Lisa put in there.”

Caught airs Mondays at 9 p.m. on CBC.

Images courtesy of CBC.

 

 

 

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Production begins on new CBC original drama series Caught starring Allan Hawco and Paul Gross

From a media release:

Take The Shot Productions announced the start of production of the new CBC original drama series CAUGHT, which will premiere in winter 2018 on CBC, as announced at the public broadcaster’s 2017-18 season preview launch last week. Starring Allan Hawco (who will play David Slaney) and Paul Gross (playing Patterson) and produced by Take The Shot Productions, filming kicked off this week in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Executive producers include Allan Hawco, Perry Chafe, John Vatcher, Alex Patrick, Peter Blackie, Rob Blackie and Michael Levine. The series is written by Allan Hawco along with John Krizanc, Adriana Maggs, and Julia Cohen. It will be directed by TJ Scott and John Vatcher. CAUGHT is adapted from Canadian author Lisa Moore’s acclaimed novel of the same name (published by House of Anansi Press), which was shortlisted for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize and selected as an Amazon.ca Best Book and for The Globe 100 Books in 2013.

CAUGHT is a new series set in 1978. Locked up after a drug deal goes wrong, David Slaney (Hawco) makes a daring break from a New Brunswick prison to attempt one more deal with his former partner (Eric Johnson) – all this with a dogmatic police officer, Patterson (Paul Gross), at his heels. It’s Slaney’s last chance at freedom – but in this tale of bravado and betrayal, nothing is what it seems and no one can be trusted.

CAUGHT stars Allan Hawco (Republic of Doyle, Frontier, The Book of Negroes), Paul Gross (Alias Grace, Hyena Road, Passchendaele), Tori Anderson (Open Heart, No Tomorrow), Eric Johnson (Fifty Shades Darker, The Knick), Charlotte Sullivan (Chicago Fire, Disappearance), Greg Bryk (Bitten, Frontier) and Enuka Okuma (Rookie Blue, Battle of Sexes).

ABOUT TAKE THE SHOT PRODUCTIONS
Take The Shot Productions Inc. has developed and produced award winning content which has garnered critical and commercial success, both domestically and globally. Based in St John’s Newfoundland, TTS produces a variety of both scripted and unscripted projects for television. Past productions include award nominated series Republic of Doyle on CBC and Discovery Canada/Netflix Worldwide Original Series Frontier, starring Game of Thrones and Aquaman’s Jason Momoa. Frontier will be returning for Season 2 in 2017. Other projects have included the hot factual series Majumder Manor, Boy on Bridge featuring Great Big Sea frontman Alan Doyle, HBO Canada’s Shaun Majumder, and Every Word is Absolutely True.

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Discovery heads into a new Frontier

Allan Hawco is up front that Frontier is not “an Allan Hawco vanity project.”

He says that a couple of times during the course of our chat about Discovery Canada’s first foray into scripted television. Yes, he’s set to co-star in the six-parter about the fight for wealth and power in the North American fur trade of the late 18th century, but he’s not the lead. That honour goes to Jason Momoa. Instead, Hawco will remain largely behind the scenes, serving as an executive producer alongside his fellow Take the Shot Production partners, two of whom—Rob (on the right in the above picture) and Peter Blackie—actually conceived of the project.

“There are so many stories to mine from history around the world, especially here in Canada, that has never fully been exploited,” Hawco says. “That’s just bizarre to me. I think there is a real appetite from Canadians to hear their stories told in an interesting and thought-provoking way.” Hawco, who starred, directed, wrote and produced Republic of Doyle for six seasons describes Frontier as being the story of the birth of capitalism in North America, and the greed, blood and power that went along with it. Frontier begins with The Hudson Bay Company, which has a monopoly on what’s happening during the fur trade in the region that will one day be Canada. Smaller factions seek out their own piece of the pie; Hawco portrays Douglas Brown, who plots alongside his brothers to steal some of the HBC’s thunder.

Rob Blackie explains the idea for Frontier came about thanks to a chance meeting at MIPCOM between business parter Alex Patrick and Discovery’s Edwina Follows. The network’s interest in having more dramatic, scripted programming lead to the brothers kicking around ideas for a time period history-based series; they presented Follows with two projects and Frontier was greenlit.

‘It’s an interesting, super-violent part of Canadian history that not a lot of people know about,” Blackie says. “As soon as we started researching it, we were shocked at how little we knew and how conflictual the time period was. The deeper we got, the more interesting it got.” Momoa plays the series’ anti-hero, a part-Irish, part-Cree man named Declan who works with a gang and becomes an unlikely host to a boy named Michael who has been living on the streets of London. Other cast includes Alun Armstrong, Landon Liboiron, Zoe Boyle and Jessica Matten.

Production just wrapped filming in England and has set up shop in St. John’s until a Christmas hiatus. Then it’s on to Louisbourg, N.S., to film at the famous fort and Morrisburg, Ont., to capture action at Fort Wellington in February.

“Winter has an inherent beauty and, if you can capture it, an amazing production value,” Blackie says. “And it’s true to the story. Winter was an important part of the fur trade.”

Frontier debuts on Discovery Canada and Netflix outside of Canada in 2016.

(Photo credit: Duncan de Young on set of Frontier.)

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Georgina Reilly: Why I left Murdoch Mysteries

It’s the end of the road for Murdoch Mysteries’ Dr. Emily Grace—a.k.a. Georgina Reilly. After 64 episodes, Dr. Grace opted to leave Toronto for London and the opportunity to further the Suffragette Movement.

Far from a run-of-the-mill episode, Monday’s “Double Life” featured the death of Emily’s girlfriend, Lillian Moss, and the discovery that she’d led an adventurous life under another name. Turns out Lillian was really a woman named Helen who had been in a same-sex relationship with a married woman. Lillian thought she’d killed the woman’s jealous husband in the midst of a shipboard fight, but he’d survived and returned to exact his revenge.

The episode marked the last for Georgina Reilly, who made the decision to leave Murdoch Mysteries to be, well, we’ll let her explain it all, including the chance she might return.

I’m sad to be chatting with you because it means Dr. Emily Grace has left Murdoch Mysteries.
Georgina Reilly: I know, I know.

I was told that it was your decision to leave. Can you tell me why?
It wasn’t an easy decision at all. It was a combination of things, personally and professionally. My husband, Mark O’Brien, was on Republic of Doyle and we moved to Los Angeles together. We’ve never actually spent a whole year together and I don’t know if we ever will because that’s just the nature of the business. As soon as we got here he booked Halt and Catch Fire and moved to Atlanta.

I love Murdoch and I love everyone and I love playing the character. As an artist, I’m excited about new things too, and opportunities in that regard as well. It becomes a question of when do you make a change creatively for yourself? I’m good with change, but it’s hard because, as an actor you’re like, ‘But you’re on a show, what are you doing?!’ You never know if you’re making the right decision at the time. You just have to go for it.

How did you tell everyone you were leaving?
I wrote handwritten letters to Christina Jennings and Peter Mitchell because I really wanted to express my gratitude and my reasons and everyone has been so supportive and understanding. Then, obviously, I told the main cast and team as well.

Jonny Harris was crushed.
I know. Well, Jonny and I are the closest because Jonny is very good friends with Mark and they’ve known each other for years, before I even came along. He was at our wedding. We had a social life outside of work as well as at work. He’s a very dear friend of mine and it was very fitting that my last scene was with Jonny. A lot of people were there on-set because they’d started blocking for the next episode.


I’m very proud of this character and if one person got a happy moment out of this relationship that’s all I’d ask for.


Did you get emotional?
Oh yeah. There were a lot of ‘lasts.’ This is my last read-through, this is my last costume fitting. I was more emotional at the beginning of the block, knowing it was coming. But then, I had a really big block and had to do a lot of work. I had an amazing episode written for me by Jordan Christianson; it was so much about Grace personally that it was a very emotional episode for me as an actor. Playing a doctor on this show, I know what I’m doing professionally and I’m not emotionally invested. Thank goodness for Gary Harvey, who is amazing and I’m so glad he directed the episode. There were a lot of tears here and there.

Murdoch Mysteries‘ fans were very divided when it came to Lillian and Emily’s relationship. Do you want to comment on the feedback you received?
My favourite note I got was that I’d ruined Murdoch Mysteries. I was like, ‘Wow, thanks for thinking I have that much of an impact!’ The optimism was wonderful and I think that representing different types of love is important. I respect people’s opinions and they are entitled to them, but at the same time social media enables you to say whatever you want without any thought as to what impact you may have. I’m very proud of this character and if one person got a happy moment out of this relationship that’s all I’d ask for.

Let’s look forward. What’s next?
I’m auditioning and seeing what’s out there. After being on such an awesome show and playing a fantastic character, I’m being a bit picky about what I go for, what I like and what I want to do next. To be able to do that and be confident about it is a testament to being on Murdoch Mysteries for so long. I know this can happen. Mark and I are creating our new life here away from our families and friends.

We’re also discussing whether we’ll expand our tribe or not.

Emily could return to Murdoch Mysteries. She wasn’t killed off.
I’m very grateful to them for that. I think it would be fun for Emily to pop back in here and there in some crazy episode for some reason. I think that would be great. It was really great when Pete said, ‘We didn’t kill you off.’ I had been bracing myself and was OK with a very dramatic death!

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

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Comments and queries for the week of Dec. 12

This week was a big one for Canadian TV. On Monday, it was announced that Continuum had been renewed for one more six-episode season. And Wednesday saw the series finale of Republic of Doyle. Both were hot topics among readers who follow us on Twitter.

Sorry to hear #Continuum will be ending, but perhaps they’ll give us 6 tremendously strong episodes as their finale.–Jeanette607

Mixed feelings … we wanted more … Hope they bring Sonya back, at least :(–Lisuni

Bummed and happy. More on the bummed side though :( at least they’ll be a proper send off #Continuum–E_84

I wish there was more Episodes but 6 is better then none and I am Sooo happy–lorenbhollander


I happen to think Republic of Doyle has been the funniest thing on television for as long as it’s been on, and I’ve been hoping CBC would make a spinoff about Des. I also think Sean McGinley was much more interesting as Malachy than a certain other much-in-demand Canadian actor–reportedly the first choice–would have been. I enjoyed this show enormously.–Nick


The show Heartland has inspired me tremendously, as I have grown up around horses. I watch regularly and it would be a great honour if I could get a role in the show or meet Amber Marshall. Thank you for your time as it is greatly appreciated.–Hannah

I’m sure Amber would love to hear from you. You can pass on your well wishes to her Twitter account @Amber_Marshall.

Got a question or comment about Canadian TV? greg@tv-eh.com or head to @tv_eh.

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