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Cardinal

CTV greenlights two more seasons of Cardinal, Canada’s most-watched Canadian drama

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From a media release:

After a breakthrough inaugural season, CTV announced today it has greenlit unprecedented second and third cycles of its hit new dramatic thriller, CARDINAL for broadcast in 2017/18. The order marks the first time CTV has ordered two consecutive seasons of a drama. Produced by Sienna Films and Entertainment One (eOne) in association with CTV, and commissioned for French-language Canadian broadcast by Super Écran, an additional two self-contained cycles, each consisting of six, one-hour episodes, have been ordered. Both series stars, Billy Campbell (THE KILLING) and Karine Vanasse (REVENGE), return for Seasons 2 and 3.

Cycles 2 and 3 will be filmed once again in Sudbury and North Bay and will be based on books in the John Cardinal Mysteries series written by Ontario native and award-winning author Giles Blunt. Season 2 will be shot this coming summer and is inspired by the third novel in the series, Black Fly Season. Set to shoot in Fall 2017, Season 3 is inspired by the 4th and 5thnovels in the series, By the Time You Read This and Crime Machine. As with the first cycle, each additional season will be a self-contained original adaptation inspired by the stories of each novel.

Season 1 has been licensed to BBC in the U.K., C More in Scandinavia and Calle 13 in Spain by eOne, and has several active negotiations underway.

Since its premiere in January, CARDINAL, a critical and ratings success, has averaged 1.2 million viewers, making it the most-watched new Canadian program of the 2016/17 broadcast season and the country’s most-watched original drama. Across all airings and on CTV and Super Écran, more than 3.6 million unique viewers watch episodes of CARDINAL weekly. Viewers looking to catch all of Season 1 thrills and chills can catch full episodes of CARDINALon CTV.ca, CTV GO, CraveTVTM, and on CTV-branded VOD channels.

Cycle 1 of CARDINAL is adapted from the award-winning novel Forty Words for Sorrow, the first of Giles Blunt’s John Cardinal Mysteries, a series of six, best-selling Canadian crime novels. Starring Billy Campbell as Detective John Cardinal and Karine Vanasse as Detective Lise Delorme, Season 1 of the murder mystery was shot in Sudbury, Ont., North Bay, Ont., Atikameksheng Anishnawbek in Northern Ontario, and Toronto.

Cast and crew are set to live tweet throughout tomorrow’s broadcast of CARDINAL, responding to viewer questions live across the country as Season 1 comes to its conclusion. Fans can follow along on Twitter with the handle @Cardinal and hashtag #Cardinal.

In the climactic Season 1 finale of CARDINAL entitled “Catherine”, (available tonight as a CraveTVTM FIRST LOOK, and airing tomorrow at 10 p.m. ET/PTon CTV and CTV GO), Cardinal realizes that Eric wasn’t working alone. Meanwhile, Delorme must decide what to do when she finally finds the answers she was looking for about Cardinal’s dark past.

CARDINAL is produced by Sienna Films and eOne in association with CTV, and commissioned for French-language Canadian broadcast by Super Écran with the financial participation of the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation, the Canada Media Fund and the Cogeco Production Program, and with the assistance of the Ontario Film and Television Tax Credit and the Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit.

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Industry News

Announcing the WGC Screenwriting Awards Finalists

From a media release:

The Writers Guild of Canada is pleased to announce this year’s WGC Screenwriting Awards finalists. These are the only awards in Canada to focus solely on screenwriting talent. Screenwriters’ scripts for Kim’s Convenience, Odd Squad, Letterkenny, X Company, Private Eyes, Wynonna Earp, 19-2, Degrassi: Next Class and more are up for awards.

The 2017 awards mark the return of a talented duo: Awards host, screenwriter, stand-up comedian, and actor Laurie Elliott, and awards show writer, screenwriter and stand-up comedian Terry McGurrin.

This year the WGC introduces a new category, Best Script from a Rookie Series. Other awards categories include: Children’s, Documentary, Feature Film, MOW and Miniseries, TV Comedy, TV Drama, and Tweens & Teens.

The WGC congratulates all of our awards finalists. Please see below for the full list of nominated screenwriters and scripts.

CHILDREN’S
Numb Chucks, Season 2 “The Chucks Get Stuck in a Hole”
Written by Josh Gal

Odd Squad, Season 2 “Drop Gadget Repeat”
Written by Tim McKeon

Odd Squad, Season 2 “Failure to Lunch”
Written by Mark De Angelis

DOCUMENTARY
Not Criminally Responsible: Wedding Secrets
Written by John Kastner

Quebec My Country Mon Pays
Written by John Walker

FEATURE FILM
ARQ
Written by Tony Elliott

Maudie
Written by Sherry White

Two Lovers and a Bear
Written by Kim Nguyen

MOW AND MINISERIES
Bruno & Boots: Go Jump in the Pool
Written by Adam Barken

Odd Squad: The Movie
Story by Mark De Angelis, Tim McKeon / Teleplay by Mark De Angelis, Tim McKeon, Adam Peltzman

Unclaimed
Written by Dennis Foon

BEST SCRIPT FROM A ROOKIE SERIES
Letterkenny, Season 1 “Ain’t No Reason to Get Excited”
Written by Jared Keeso & Jacob Tierney

Private Eyes, Season 1 “Family Jewels”
Written by Shelley Eriksen

Second Jen, Season 1 “Couch Surfing”
Written by Amanda Joy & Samantha Wan

Wynonna Earp, Season 1 “Bury Me With My Guns On”
Written by Alexandra Zarowny

TV COMEDY
Kim’s Convenience, Season 1 “Ddong Chim”
Written by Garry Campbell

Kim’s Convenience, Season 1 “Janet’s Photos”
Written by Ins Choi & Kevin White

Letterkenny, Season 1 “Super Soft Birthday”
Written by Jared Keeso & Jacob Tierney

TV DRAMA
19-2, Season 3 “Fall”
Written by Nikolijne Troubetzkoy

This Life, Season 2 “Destruction as Creation”
Written by Celeste Parr

X Company, Season 2 “August 19th”
Written by Stephanie Morgenstern & Mark Ellis

TWEENS & TEENS
Degrassi: Next Class, Season 2 “#CheckYourPrivilege”
Written by Cole Bastedo

Degrassi: Next Class, Season 1 “#TeamFollowBack”
Written by Ian MacIntyre

Degrassi: Next Class, Season 2 “#TurntUp”
Written by Courtney Jane Walker

Degrassi: Next Class, Season 1 “#YesMeansYes”
Written by Alejandro Alcoba

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Reality, Lifestyle & Documentary

Makeful’s Home Chef to Pro Chef gives home cooks the chance to be chef for a day

From a media release:

So you think you could be a chef? Home Chef to Pro Chef, a brand new original Canadian series on Makeful —a lifestyle brand that celebrates the maker community and the creation of one-of- a-kind, handmade goods—is giving several passionate home cooks a once-in-a-lifetime chance to live up to the challenge. Premiering Monday, March 6 at 8:30 p.m. ET/PT, during a nationwide free preview, the 14-part, half-hour series pairs home cooks with restaurants that serve their favourite cuisines, ranging from Italian to Indian to French-bistro.

After a crash course on managing a professional kitchen from restaurateurs and head chefs, the aspiring amateurs are given a shot at running a full dinner service for real, paying customers, while their mentors watch from a monitor and offer advice remotely via a tablet. At the end of each episode, the rookie chef will be critiqued by the customers, who have been unaware of what has been going on behind the scenes. If the home cook’s dishes get a passing grade, their signature dish will be added to the restaurant’s menu.

Coinciding with the launch of the series, Makeful will also roll out Cook Like a Pro Chef, a series of one-minute digital videos offering valuable cooking tips from the professional chefs themselves. The eight videos each feature a different chef and offer up cooking advice that ranges from a fool-proof method of getting pizzeria-style pizza to marinating Atlantic Cod with maple and spruce leaves. The videos will be available on Makeful’s social media feeds, including Facebook and Twitter as well it’s YouTube channel.

Home Chef to Pro Chef is premiering during Makeful’s free preview event, which gives 10 million subscribers across Canada free access to the brand’s inspiring lineup of shows that bring to life creative ideas focused on food, design and style.

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Featured, Reality, Lifestyle & Documentary

CBC’s Firsthand searches for “The Missing Tourist”

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I’ve spent time in Yellowknife. I was lucky enough to visit the city in 2010 during a press junket for Ice Pilots NWT. It was winter, and the city was a ruggedly beautiful place full of welcoming citizens happy to host folks from Ontario.

Yellowknife is the focal point of Thursday’s episode of CBC’s documentary series Firsthand, as “The Missing Tourist,” delves into the story of Japanese tourist Atsumi Yoshikubo, who disappeared in 2014. Award-winning producer, writer and director Geoff Morrison presents the facts surrounding the case, and they become more spooky, odd and downright strange as the hour unfolds.

It all begins very straightforward and factual: Yoshikubo, two days after arriving from Japan, entered a visitors’ centre and asked about aurora borealis tours. It being October, the high season for aurora watching is the winter, tours were closed. She then visited an art gallery and bought coffee mugs. It’s one thing to deliver the facts in a dry, journalistic way; it’s another to see security camera footage of Yoshikubo, decked out in a bright pink coat and white boots in the visitors’ centre and art gallery. It adds a personal connection for the viewer. That makes it all the more stark and heartbreaking when it’s revealed that, five days later, Yoshikubo walked out of town and disappeared.

People saw her on Old Airport Road that final day, walking alone and towards the city dump, but thought nothing of it. After all, the 45-year-old had a camera and was dressed for the weather. Search and rescue took on the case, using a helicopter, while citizens from the city of just over 20,000 chipped in to help.

The fascination with true crime and missing person cases has never waned—there is a proliferation of podcasts on both subjects—and “The Missing Tourist” is an addictive watch. You can’t help but wonder, as TV news presenters, crime reporters and witnesses weigh in, what happened to Yoshikubo. Was she kidnapped? Did she slip and fall somewhere in the woods? Was she killed by a bear?

The documentary doesn’t just cover the case in Yellowknife, but jets to her home—a small prefecture in Southern Japan—to do more investigating and spotlight how big the story became there. Why would a Japanese tourist not only travel on her own to Yellowknife (most do it as part of a travel group) but in the off-season. Was she fleeing someone or something by coming to Canada? Was she looking for a new start?

By the end of the hour, the answers are given. And the journey to get there is dramatic and very well done.

Firsthand airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. on CBC.

Image courtesy of Catherine Lutes.

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