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LEO AWARDS: ARCTIC AIR Contingent Owns Red Carpet – Updated

Arctic Air star Adam Beach missed the red carpet coming from the airport and went straight into the Westin Bayhore Hotel but he may have been the only one. The Vancouver-and-Yellowknife-filmed CBC aerial adventure series owned the long media gauntlet for a good half-hour or more with nominated leads Pascale Hutton and Kevin McNulty, nominated supporting actor John Reardon and his American-network-star wife Meghan Ory (Once Upon a Time and Intelligence), nominated supporting actress Emilie Ullerup, nominated supporting actress Carmen Moore, nominated guest actress Chelah Horsdal and nominated guest actor Aleks “the Griz” Paunovic. Lexa Doig, nominated for performances on both Arctic Air and Continuum chose to enter with the futuristic Continuum gang. With so much crossover the two dramas are one seamless show for Vancouver actors, with Continuum starting filming as Arctic Air wraps or vice-versa. Lexa Doig, John Reardon, Stephen Lobo and Brian Markinson are four cast who have roles on both and Pascale Hutton even guest-starred on Continuum in season one as a Carlos hookup and Liber8 murder victim. I convinced Arctic Air showrunner Gary Harvey (below) to come over to the media wall to be photographed by mentioning that Continuum showrunner Simon Barry would be walking the red carpet later.

Pascale Hutton (Krista Ivarson)

Pascale Hutton & Kevin McNulty (TV father-and-daughter Krista and Mel Ivarson).

Read More »LEO AWARDS: ARCTIC AIR Contingent Owns Red Carpet – Updated

Canadian Screen Awards Noms for CONTINUUM & ARCTIC AIR as Best Dramatic Series

Lots and lots of tweets in my timeline from B.C. film & TV people yesterday. The good: filmed-in-Vancouver sci-fi Showcase hit Continuum and northern adventure CBC hit Arctic Air both nabbed first-time Canadian Screen Awards nominations as Best Dramatic Series, along with the filmed-in-Toronto Bomb Girls, Flashpoint and King. The bad and the ugly: Premier Christy Clark’s BC Jobs Plan boosted several industries last week but not our declining film & TV biz, provoking a  SAVE BC FILM petition and a hashtag #SaveBCFilm to wake up the government about the cost to the province of losing film & TV productions to places with better tax credits like Ontario. Among other things, American productions build the infrastructure that make local successes like Continuum and Arctic Air possible.

Back to the good: the made-in and set-in-Vancouver sci-fi procedural Continuum racked up the individual CSA noms too, with a writing nomination for its creator Simon Barry (in the photo below with cast ); a directing nomination for Jon Cassar; a VFX nomination for Adam Stern of Artifex Studios; and an original musical score nomination for Jeff Danna — all for the show’s stunning pilot A Stitch in Time which travels in time from Vancouver in 2077 to Vancouver in 2012.

Joining Continuum as a first-timer in the Best Dramatic Series competition is the filmed-in-Vancouver-and-Yellownife series Arctic Air from Omni Films. The visually-spectacular aerial adventure drama Read More »Canadian Screen Awards Noms for CONTINUUM & ARCTIC AIR as Best Dramatic Series

PREMIERE: Debut of Toronto Crime Drama CRACKED Tonight on CBC

Published January 8th, 2013 on Vancouver is Awesome

New crime drama Cracked premieres tonight at 9 p.m. on CBC, starring David Sutcliffe (Rory Gilmore’s Dad) as a troubled Toronto police officer and Vancouver actress Stefanie von Pfetten as a Toronto psychiatrist, who work together in a new Psych Crimes Investigative Unit. Unfortunately, I turned down an opportunity to interview them when they were in Vancouver last May for a media preview of CBC’s 2012-13 season but did photograph the new crime-fighting duo on stage with host Geroge Stroumboulopoulos.

PREMIERE: MURDOCH MYSTERIES Detective Enters 20th Century Tonight on CBC

Published January 7, 2013 on Vancouver is Awesome

Historical Toronto detective series Murdoch Mysteries begins its sixth season at 9 p.m. tonight on CBC with Yannick Bisson’s Detective William Murdoch investigating  the death of a man killed by the crash of a flying machine at the turn-of-the-20th-century. I had the chance to interview Bisson, who directed the premiere, at CBC Vancouver’s Open House and Food Bank Day late last year.
When the CBC re-ran season five of Murdoch Mysteries in the fall to better ratings than its first run on Citytv in the summer, it proved that the public broadcaster really is a “better fit”, as Bisson put it, for this period drama about a Toronto police detective using ahead-of-his-time forensic methods to solve crimes. Read More »PREMIERE: MURDOCH MYSTERIES Detective Enters 20th Century Tonight on CBC

BIG READ: ARCTIC AIR is our Local Star in CBC’s Fall & Winter Lineup

Published September 13, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome

How much does the CBC love Arctic Air? Heaps. At the CBC Upfronts in May, host George Stroumboulopoulos introduced the cast of Arctic Air first in the Prime Time segment, ahead of the Dragon’s Den Dragons. And for good reason. The Vancouver-and-Yellowknife-shot adventure series, starring Adam Beach and Pascale Hutton, averaged just under a million viewers in its first season, making it the most-watched debut season for a CBC drama series in fifteen years.

Arctic Air, which returns for a second season in early 2013, is just one of CBC’s Canadian dramas to look forward to this fall and winter. Long-running 1890s Toronto detective series Murdoch Mysteries, starring Yannick Bisson, relocates to the CBC next Monday, September 17th, airing a repeat of its fifth season before unveiling a new sixth season on the public broadcaster (Bisson joked at the upfront that leaving City-TV for CBC was like the girlfriend who got dumped but married a surgeon). And the rollicking father-and-son private detective series Republic of Doyle, set in picturesque St. John’s, Newfoundland, returns for a fourth season in the new year. It not only stars Newfoundland native Allan Hawco, it is produced and often written by this impressive multi-tasker. Also coming this winter on CBC is a new, present-day Toronto detective series Cracked, starring David Sutcliffe (Rory Gilmore’s Dad) as the police detective and Stefanie von Pfetten as the psychiatrist, who work together in a Psych Crimes Unit.

Read More »BIG READ: ARCTIC AIR is our Local Star in CBC’s Fall & Winter Lineup

ARCTIC AIR Trio Talk about First Hit Season on CBC

How much does the CBC love its new hit drama series Arctic Air? Heaps. At the CBC upfronts earlier this month in Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary to unveil next season’s schedule to advertisers and media, host George Stroumboulopoulos introduced the Arctic Air actors first in the opening Prime Time segment, ahead of the Dragon’s Den Dragons.

And for good reason — Arctic Air was the most-watched debut season for a CBC drama series in fifteen years, averaging just under a million viewers (965,000) for its first ten episodes. I watched all ten and even live-tweeted the finale in mid-March, along with so many other Canadians. Arctic Air is a classic adventure series — filmed mainly on permanent sets in Aldergrove with most exterior scenes filmed in Yellowknife  — where the main trio are often in peril. It started with Bobby Martin (Adam Beach)’s return to Yellowknife to help keep alive the maverick airline co-founded by his dead father and the notorious curmudgeon Mel Ivarson (Kevin McNulty). There he reunites with Mel’s daughter Krista (Pascale Hutton), a former flame and hot-shot pilot. In the season finale cliffhanger, much of it filmed near Clinton  in B.C.’s Cariboo country, Mel has internal bleeding after helping the other survivors of a plane crash.  What? “Mr. Crankypants better be with us next season,” I tweeted.

Read More »ARCTIC AIR Trio Talk about First Hit Season on CBC