TORONTO – The CBC in recent years has gone from comfort food like Heartland and Battle of the Blades to high-concept shows like Strange Empire and X Company, now in its second season.
But the pubcaster's biggest audiences are coming from comedies like Schitt's Creek and Mr. D. So the CBC, with a dominant Netflix Canada in mind, is making good on its promise to push into more edgy, character-driven programming that can compete on the same turf as premium cable and SVODs.
Cartt.ca spoke to newly-hired CBC scripted programming boss Tara Ellis and creators and producers of dramas and comedies in development at the pubcaster to raise the curtain on a new creative direction for an increasingly crowded TV landscape.
The way Ellis tells it, while the CBC is aiming at more buzzy premium cable fare, that doesn't mean just dark and edgy. "It's quite a wide spectrum… we're looking at serialized story telling, unique settings and deep character work in our development," she explained.
The CBC's development slate is also, after the success of the Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara-starrer Schitt's Creek and Chris Haddock following up his Boardwalk Empire writing stint with The Romeo Section, bringing more Canadian talent back from Los Angeles and New York City.
Take NBA star Steve Nash, who's behind Hardwood, an hour drama from creator and pilot writer Skander Halim about a youth basketball academy in a sleepy farming community outside Toronto. "Steve (Nash) obviously lives the sport, he lends an incredible amount of authenticity," said Shannon Farr, the Los Angeles-based vice president and supervising producer for Insight Productions, which is developing Hardwood at the CBC along with Nash.
Comic Gerry Dee, who is looking beyond Mr. D as he develops the single camera comedy My Scottish Family at the CBC, says network programmers have been smart in bringing Canadian and now international stars like Levy and O'Hara back home.
"Comedy is subjective. And they have a good filter for what's funny," Dee said of top execs like Heather Conway, executive VP of CBC English Services, Sally Catto, general manager of CBC TV programming and Michelle Daly, senior director of CBC comedy.
Elsewhere, Jeff Lemire lives in Toronto, but is much in demand stateside, writing Marvel Entertainment's The Extraordinary X-Men and Green Arrow and Justice League for DC Comics, and having his graphic novel series Descender turned into a movie by Sony Pictures.
Now, Lemire and indie producer First Generation Films have partnered to bring his Essex County trilogy to the CBC. The generational story is told from the perspective of a ten year-old boy in small-town Ontario where the comic artist grew up. "Growing up on a farm like I did, we spent a lot of time in wide open corn fields, besides rows of telephone poles and rusty fences, little things that look boring at the time, but come to life when I drew on them for themes," Lemire explained about Canadian motifs and places in Essex County.
Julie di Cresce, vice president of TV development at First Generation, said probing the dark side of Canadiana with evocative characters and landscape in Essex County appeals to a CBC looking for more cinematic drama. "We've been given the scope to take the stories and their characters to where we're true to the graphic novel," she said.
CBC's Ellis (pictured) insists that, even if audiences don't recognize Essex County as a location in southwestern Ontario, it will feel familiar. "Even if people don't know where Essex County is, it will feel familiar as they recognize the themes and the rich story of the family in the material, and it feels distinctly Canadian at the same time," Ellis said.
The CBC is also getting into business with Los Angeles actress Catherine Reitman, the daughter of director Ivan Reitman, as she brings a half hour comedy, Workin' Moms, about a mommies' group where four women juggle relationships, insatiable babies and postpartum depression.
Here, Reitman is hoping to wring chuckles from her own personal experience as a young mother, and that of so many other women rarely discussed. "I had the full shebang, including post-partum depression. There's a slew of things that we're hoping will help people laugh at things that are real to women," Reitman said.
The trick CBC seems to be getting better at is airing more buzz-worthy shows that grab bigger TV audiences, stream more online and travel well internationally for indie producers looking for an upside. "It feels to me like the CBC is lining up with the very appealing television that you're seeing on over-the-top, Netflix series, and premium cable series," said John Murray, vice president and supervising producer at Insight Productions, which has a half-hour drama adaptation of Lisa Gabriele's novel Tempting Faith DiNapoli parked at the CBC.
The coming-of-age story of a broke and scrappy mother and her daughter, Faith, in the recession-buffeted early 1980s in Windsor, Ontario.
"It's kind of Angela's Ashes set in Windsor. It's about an Italian Catholic family trying to make it through difficult economic times, and very character driven," Murray explained.
Filmmakers are embracing a CBC that, despite deep budget cuts (although the new federal government has promised a $150 million boost), is doing more serialized series with deeply flawed characters and the intricate plots that have set cable networks like AMC and FX and streamers like Netflix and Amazon apart from competitors.
We bet this will all be top of mind for many at CMPA Prime Time in Ottawa beginning Thursday at the Westin Hotel.
