Tag Archives: Super Channel

Season 4 of Super Channel’s Tiny Plastic Men starts production

From a media release:

After a big year of Canadian Screen and Canadian Comedy Award nominations, Tiny Plastic Men begins production in Edmonton on a fourth season of the unique comedy series to be broadcast on Super Channel in Canada and Hulu and Hulu Plus in the United States.

Edmonton talents Chris Craddock, Mark Meer, and Matt Alden return as the writers and stars of the series playing three man-boys who test bizarre toy prototypes in their playroom of an office at the eccentric Gottfriend Brothers Toy and Train Company.  Chris Craddock will also be trying his hand at Co-Directing the series this season along with newcomer Mike Peterson.

Guest Stars on the show this season include Colin Mochrie (Whose Line is it Anyway) as fictional Canadian Astronaut Whizz Banger and Joe Flaherty (SCTV, Freaks and Geeks) as Mysterious Package Delivery Man.  Mochrie and Flaherty join a growing list of guest stars over the seasons of Tiny Plastic Men including Alan Thicke (Growing Pains, Unusually Thicke), Kevin McDonald (Kids in the Hall), Georges Laraque (NHL superstar), and the legendary Toxic Avenger creator and President of Troma Entertainment Lloyd Kaufman.  

Season four will premiere three episodes online in February 2016 before airing nationally in Canada on Super Channel and on Hulu in the USA May 2016.

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Super Channel’s quiet, effective Forgive Me returns

Amid Super Channel’s pirates of Black Sails, aliens of Falling Skies and spies of Homeland there is Forgive Me. Written and directed by Thom Fitzgerald (The Hanging Garden), Forgive Me is quiet and spare. There’s no swashbuckling and no armed troops, but plenty to like.

Back for Season 2 on Sunday, Forgive Me stars Mike McLeod as The Priest, a young man who listens to the daily confessions of his Halifax congregation. The brain tumour that had been operated on hasn’t gone away (and may be causing angelic visions), but The Priest insists he go back to work, telling his doctor (Fitzgerald) perhaps it’s God’s way. After convincing fellow priests in the Prelate (John Dunsworth) and Father Gene (Jeremy Ackerman) he’s fine, The Priest heads back to confessional; and that’s where Forgive Me truly shines.

Rolling out like a two-person play, the camera is in the tight confines of the confessional as—lit by the muted light coming through plain stained glass—The Priest hears the confession of pedophile Johnny Smith-O’Leary (Hugh Thompson), who is considering suing the church because he was molested by a choir master there when he was young. There are funny moments amid the conversation. Johnny asks The Priest what circle of hell his group of sinners is confined to and learns Dante’s Inferno is a play, and not scripture.

“How the hell is that not in the Bible?” he wonders. “Do you have any idea how many hours of my life that I wasted finding out exactly what circle of hell I’m going to?!”

“Johnny,” The Priest counters. “I watched all seven seasons of Dawson’s Creek.”

“You win,” Johnny allows.

McLeod turns in a fine performance; he’s instantly likeable in the role, more coach and therapist than priest, as is Dunsworth, far removed from drunken Jim Lahey on Trailer Park Boys. Fitzgerald has attracted high-profile talent to appear, with Olympia Dukakis reprising her role as Novalea, The Priest’s grandmother and Season 2 guest stars in Wendy Crewson and Ed Asner.

If you’re looking for something a little different from your Canadian TV, give Forgive Me a look and let me know what you think of it.

Forgive Me airs Sundays at 8 p.m. ET on Super Channel.

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Dean McDermott gets back to basics with Slasher

Dean McDermott wears his family on his sleeve. Literally.

The Toronto native’s entire right arm is a story in tattoo ink, from the top of his shoulder and the McDermott family crest to the tiger representing himself and brightly-coloured fish standing in for wife Tori and each of their four children. The ink is a constant reminder of where he came from and who he is: father, protector and husband.

But McDermott is an actor too, and he’s returning to those roots in Super Channel’s horror series Slasher. Set to debut in 2016 on Canada’s pay cable station and Chiller in the U.S., Aaron Martin’s twist on Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None stars McDermott as Iain Vaughn, police chief of Waterbury, a small town where bad things are happening. How bad? How about grisly murders every few days and a mounting list of suspects?


“I’m starting over again and I’m going to show you stuff that I think will blow you away.”


“I read a lot of scripts and some of them are hard to get through,” McDermott says during a break in filming on location in Parry Sound, Ont. “This was just a page-turner. I just couldn’t put it down. It’s so funny having someone like Aaron, who worked on Degrassi, create this. I thought, ‘Wow, this guy can really write.” Though McDermott and Slasher‘s production company, Shaftesbury, want to keep much of the show’s secrets hidden until the debut, we can reveal the series’ killer cast. As previously announced, Merlin‘s Katie McGrath stars as Sarah Bennett, who returns to her childhood home years after her parents were murdered. Upon her arrival, copycat killings begin and everyone is a suspect … or a casualty. Among them are Katie’s husband Dylan (Brandon Jay McLaren), her grandmother Brenda Merritt (Wendy Crewson), and family friend Cam Henry (Steve Byers). Co-stars include Mary Walsh, Enuka Okuma, Erin Karpluk, Christopher Jacot, Jefferson Brown, Mark Ghanimé and Rainbow Sun Francks.

Slasher represents an important step in McDermott’s career, a return to acting that has rejuvenated him creatively. After regular roles in Due South, Power Play, Tracker and 1-800-Missing, and guest gigs on Kojak, NCIS, CSI, Without a Trace and The Closer, McDermott became more known for opening up his private life via Tori & Dean: Storibook Weddings, Tori & Dean: Inn Love and True Tori. He’s in the midst of Slasher‘s eight episodes, but McDermott sent out tapes in hopes of landing roles in CTV’s Saving Hope and Discovery’s first scripted series, Frontier; being on set has gotten him pumped for more varied roles.

“I’ve gotten my life in order and I realized that I am an actor,” he says, sitting forward. “That’s what I want to do and it’s what I’ll always do. I’m starting over again and I’m going to show you stuff that I think will blow you away.”

Slasher will air in 2016 on Super Channel.

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Interview: Andrew De Angelis readies rookie comedy What Would Sal Do?

Is Canada ushering in a new age of television comedy? Andrew De Angelis sure hopes so. After writing for Mr. D, 18 to Life, Little Mosque on the Prairie and Orphan Black, De Angelis takes the reins on his own show, What Would Sal Do?

The eight-episode half-hour Super Channel comedy—about an entitled underachiever who is challenged to be a good person when he discovers he’s the Second Coming of Christ—begins production in Sudbury, Ont., this summer. De Angelis reveals how Sal came to be, his hope for sitcoms in Canada and how working with Mark Forward and Alex Levine has made him a better writer.

Let’s go back to the beginning: how did the idea for What Would Sal Do? come about?
Andrew De Angelis: The show actually came from two ideas in my head. One was just this thought of if there was a Second Coming, how would it go in today’s world? What would the difficulties be? I’ve also been fascinated with the entitled generation who are raised—mine included—spoiled rotten and they just think they’re great and that everything they do is wonderful. Once they’re adults they’ll realize how ill-prepared for the world they are.

So, I wanted to have this Second Coming where his mother knew what he would become and spoiled him rotten and let him believe that he was perfect and infallible. Now he’s in his 30s and he’s just an asshole. He’s spoiled and entitled and does not have the tools he needs to do this job that is to be the best person in the world—to be the kindest, most forgiving person in the world—because he doesn’t know what that means. But he’s going to try and do it because his mom asked him to do it but also because he’s in a place where he realizes he’s done nothing with his life and he’s looking for a purpose.

Everything goes badly.

Do you touch on religion at all?
There are elements of it because it’s hard not to do it without addressing religion but the show is not about any of that. You could strip away all of the Second Coming business and it’s about a guy who has been spoiled rotten by his mom and she is at a point where she tells him, ‘That’s enough. You have to step up now.’


If shows like this and Letterkenny do well, maybe things will open up. I think this is the direction we need to go in. Take chances, what have we got to lose?


How did you become involved with Mark Montefiore and Patrick O’Sullivan over at New Metric Media and have them come on board as producers?
Mark and I have been friends for awhile, since we got out of the Canadian Film Centre. He contacted me just because he wanted to meet up. He was just starting out as an independent producers and wanted to build up this stable of comedy writers to work with. We met up and hit it off; he’s hard working and driven. And one of the first things I ever showed him was this idea and he responded to it right away. Mark’s been the driving force behind this being made. We’ve had a lot of no’s because of the content and he never gave up. We’ve been pushing ever since and believing in it and, luckily, Super Channel believed too.

What’s your take on the TV industry in Canada? Do you think it’s an old guy’s club as some have stated?
I for sure got that vibe for awhile, but I can’t say that now because I’m getting a chance. Until this show was put into development, I felt the same way. The same people getting the same development deals … there was nothing new or exciting. From here we’ll see what happens. Maybe things are changing. If shows like this and Letterkenny do well, maybe things will open up. I think this is the direction we need to go in. Take chances, what have we got to lose?

Super Channel seems like the perfect proving ground for a new show like this or Too Much Information or more established comedy like Tiny Plastic Men.
They were our white knight. Everyone told us no, and here comes Super Channel saying, ‘Let’s do it.’ They are fully aware of the content and are pushing us to make it better. They’ve given me so much hope for this entire industry.

You guys are heading up to Sudbury, Ont., to start production soon. Where are you at in the process?
We’re pretty heavy into casting. The eight scripts are written and we’re going through them with our director, Samir Rehem, right up until the cameras roll. Casting is going very well; there is a lot of great talent in Canada.


I learned there is a huge difference between what’s funny on the page and what is actually going to make people laugh.


Let’s talk about the writer’s room. I know Mark Forward was in there with you … who else?
Mark was in there with Kurt Smeaton. They were my full-time writers. And then I had consultants who would come in. I had my brother, Mark, and Alex Levine, who was on Orphan Black. That’s the thing, funny comes from good story and good conflict and that’s drama. Alex has been a huge help. We also had Steve Dylan and Josh Gal. Brandy Hewitt was our story editor.

Mark is a comic and Kurt has done a lot of improv and I learned there is a huge difference between what’s funny on the page and what is actually going to make people laugh. These guys know what it’s like to be on stage and have people genuinely laugh. It’s not enough to be clever or cute on the page. You really have to push it and find the funny.

Mark is so good when it comes to the writing. He’s always the guy to say, ‘Why?’ He’s got a nose for bullshit and it’s good to have someone in the room like that who can call you out on your shit. It’s frustrating because he’s so good at it, but in the end you come out with something that’s bulletproof.

Talk about shooting in Sudbury. Are you looking forward to it?
I am. I’m excited about going up there and showing off Sudbury too. Sal is set in Sudbury; he lives in Sudbury. I think that it’s important for all shows in Canada. All of the great shows, you know where they are geographically, Canadian or otherwise. You knew Cheers was in Boston, Frasier was in Seattle, Golden Girls was Florida, Roseanne was just outside of Chicago. It’s important to give your show a place on a map. I think it grounds it. You don’t have to hit people over the head about it.

You mentioned the Canadian Film Centre before. You were there as a story editor on Orphan Black when it was being workshopped. Did the CFC help you, specifically, with your career?
It was huge. More than anything, working with Graeme Manson, we knew we were lucky then before it was even a TV show. What the CFC does so well … everyone in this industry that you should know and meet, they bring them to you. When you’re done, everyone knows who you are.

What Would Sal Do? will air on Super Channel.

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When Calls the Heart returns to Super Channel for second season

From a media release:

When Calls the Heart, the sweeping frontier drama that captured the hearts of loyal viewers in both Canada and the US (aka “Hearties”), returns toSuper Channel, Canada’s only national English pay television network, on Sunday, May 3 at 7 p.m. ET (SC1). The Hallmark Channel Original series is a Canadian co-production filmed on location in British Columbia and based on the bestselling book series by acclaimed Canadian author Janette Oke.

Series stars Lori Loughlin (Full House, 90210), Erin Krakow (Army Wives) and Daniel Lissing (Last Resort) all return for season two and are joined by Jack Wagner (The Bold and the Beautiful) who returns as a series regular. Kristina Wagner (General Hospital) also joins the cast in the third episode of the season.

Season two will follow the residents of Coal Valley, as they navigate matters of the heart during uncertain times in the wake of the mine disaster investigation. As the season begins, young schoolteacher Elizabeth Thatcher (Krakow) and Mountie Jack Thornton (Lissing) are just starting to build on their relationship. But when Elizabeth gets bad news from home, she must return to the wealthy, high-society life she left behind, where her feelings for Jack will be put to the test. The hard-working and kind-hearted citizens of Coal Valley are facing turmoil as they await justice for the coal mining tragedy, just as new romance heats up on the frontier. In Coal Valley, café owner and widow Abigail Stanton (Loughlin) nervously awaits the trial that she hopes will clear her late husband’s name in the fault of the mine explosion that took his life. Emotions run high and long-kept secrets will be revealed as she works with a surprising new prosecutor, and with forensic investigator, Mountie Bill Avery (Wagner), who is hiding something from his past that could jeopardize their own romantic future.

The series is produced by Canadians Vicki Sotheran and Greg Malcolm, and executive produced by Brad Krevoy, Brian Bird, Michael Landon Jr., Michael Shepard, and Eric Jarboe. Second Season writers include Tony Blake (co-showrunner), Robin Bernheim (co-showrunner), Neal Dobrofsky, Tippi Dobrofsky, Andrea Stevens, and Derek Thompson. Directors are Emmy-nominee Neill Fearnley (also co-executive producer), Michael Rohl, and Martin Wood.

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