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Roger Cross

WEEK: April 15-21, 2013

BIG READ: CONTINUUM & Cosplay at Fan Expo Vancouver

Published April 21, 2013 on Vancouver is Awesome

A year ago, Fan Expo Vancouver hosted the first panel for Vancouver-cop-from-the-future series Continuum. And what a year it’s been. Continuum debuted on Showcase as an out-of-the-box hit. Almost one million Canadians watched, making it 2012’s  number one cable drama here. Since sold to more than fifty countries around the world. Canadian Screen Award,  Writers Guild Canada and Saturn Award nominations racked up. A debut in January on Syfy in the U.S. which led to rave reviews from The New York Times and Entertainment Weekly TV critics. A second Continuum panel at Fan Expo Vancouver yesterday. And the premiere of a second season tonight on Showcase at 6 p.m. PT/9 p.m. ET. No wonder the cast and creator got giddy yesterday in Ballroom A at Canada Place.

Continuum is part sci fi, part police procedural about a future police officer Kiera Cameron (Rachel Nichols) who travels back in time from Vancouver in the year 2077 to Vancouver today, swept up in an escape by a group of terrorists — Liber8 — who plan to change the future from the past by targeting the corporations that will come to rule the world. Cameron ends up being partnered with Vancouver police detective Carlos Fonnegra (Victor Webster) and tasked with bringing down Liber8, with the unexpected help of teen tech genius Alec Sandler (Erik Knudsen), a boy who will grow up to become the head of mega-corp SadTech and seemingly the man responsible for sending Kiera and Liber8 back in time in the first place.

Read More »BIG READ: CONTINUUM & Cosplay at Fan Expo Vancouver

CTV’s Vancouver Crime Drama Hit MOTIVE Wraps Filming of Its First Season


Motive Cast — Brendan Penny, Lauren Holly, Louis Ferreira, Kristin Lehman and Roger Cross — CTV promo image

The murder is just the beginning. There’s always a motive and Vancouver homicide detective Angie Flynn (Kristin Lehman) will find it. Filming wrapped last Friday on Motive’s thirteen-episode first season.

Motive debuted in a prime but delayed post-Super Bowl slot on CTV to 1.23 million Canadians, the culmination of an unprecedented publicity campaign by CTV for a Canadian show. Normally, only CTV’s American simulcast shows get this scale of rollout. And in a sweet twist, American network ABC has picked up the Vancouver crime drama for broadcast this summer.

Ratings held steady after Motive’s move to its regular 9 p.m. on Sundays slot, dipping for the second episode but rising back over one million for the third episode, to give Canada’s #1 new drama a series-to-date average of 1.06 million viewers.

Instead of a regular whodunit that focuses on who did the crime, Motive is a whydunit that focuses on why the crime was committed in the first place. The Killer and The Victim are revealed to the audience at the top of the show and we follow detectives Angie Flynn (Kristin Lehman) and Oscar Vega (Louis Ferreria) as they uncover the reasons behind the murder.

Read More »CTV’s Vancouver Crime Drama Hit MOTIVE Wraps Filming of Its First Season

BIG READ: Vancouver Crime Drama MOTIVE Debuts This Sunday After Superbowl on CTV

Published January 31, 2013 on Vancouver is Awesome.

CTV has given the debut of its new Vancouver crime drama Motive a prime spot on its schedule — the post-Superbowl slot this Sunday. In a new twist on procedurals, Motive reveals the killer and the victim at the start of each of episode or as the show’s tagline puts it — The Murder is Just the Beginning. Then we follow along with “feisty female Vancouver detective” Angie Flynn (Kristin Lehman) and her partner Oscar Vega (Louis Ferreira) as they investigate the case and discover what motive drove the killer to murder.

The Foundation Features and Lark Productions series created by Dexter writer Daniel Cerone began filming thirteen episodes in the city last September and wraps its first season late next month. If I hadn’t heard that Kristin Lehman had been cast as single mother and damn fine detective Angie Flynn, I might not have recognized her in Olympic Plaza at The Village on False Creek last October. There’s very little of her haughty blue-blooded political campaign consultant Gwen Eaton from The Killing in this new character sporting  a leather jacket, kickass boots and permed hair.

Read More »BIG READ: Vancouver Crime Drama MOTIVE Debuts This Sunday After Superbowl on CTV

ARROW Turns Downtown Heritage Bank Building Into Starling Trust Bank for Robbery Scenes in Ep. 1×06

Upcoming CW series Arrow started its day today filming scenes of robbers entering the rear of a downtown heritage building and former bank at 330 West Pender Street turned into Starling Trust Bank. Then shortly after morning rush hour, Vancouver Police closed both east-bound lanes in the 300 block at the front of the building so that Arrow could film scenes of prop police cruisers arriving at the robbery and Roger Cross (Continuum’s cold-blooded Liber8 killer Travis) as a police officer with a megaphone telling those inside the bank to come out with their hands up. The bank hostages emerge wearing white playing card masks. Are the robbers among the hostages? Police then storm the building. Arrow wrapped the arrival of police scene around 2 p.m., the lanes re-opened and production moved inside the building to film the robbery.

What do these bank robbery scenes remind you of? The Dark Knight? Or maybe Inside Man with Denzel Washington and Clive Owen? Arrow has big aspirations for a new TV series but from what I’ve seen of filming, it will meet them.

Read More »ARROW Turns Downtown Heritage Bank Building Into Starling Trust Bank for Robbery Scenes in Ep. 1×06

BIG READ: Vancouver Cop-From-The-Future Series CONTINUUM Debuts This Sunday

Published May 24, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome

How did Continuum creator Simon Barry conceive of a Vancouver in 2077 which has become North America’s financial centre in a world where corporations have taken over failed governments? By reading and watching the news, of course. He calls it more science fact than science fiction. In this dystopian future, rising seas from global climate change have wiped out the east coast but Vancouver is protected by a dam across English Bay.

So why hasn’t the Lions Gate Bridge been dealt with in 2077?, joked one of the Continuum panel at Vancouver Fan Expo in April. Is the city all bike lanes in the future?, joked a fan during the Q&A, prompting Barry to respond that there are no cars at all in his future Vancouver. And apparently no horses either.

Continuum, originally called Out of Time in his pilot script, is part sci fi, part police procedural about a future police officer Kiera Cameron, played by Rachel Nichols, who travels back in time from Vancouver in the year 2077 to Vancouver in the year 2012, chasing a group of terrorists who plan to change the future from the past by targeting the corporations that will come to rule the world. But are they really terrorists? Perhaps they are freedom fighters?

One such corporation is fictional Exotrol, where Continuum staged an Occupy Vancouver-style protest at CBC Vancouver in mid-March for an upcoming episode. Rachel Nichols and Victor Webster, as her 2012 Vancouver police detectuve partner Carlos Fonnegra, arrived on the scene in an unmarked blue police car.

Read More »BIG READ: Vancouver Cop-From-The-Future Series CONTINUUM Debuts This Sunday

FAN EXPO: CONTINUUM Presentation at Fan Expo Vancouver

How did Continuum creator Simon Barry conceive of a Vancouver in 2077 which has become North America’s financial centre in a world where corporations have taken over failed governments? By reading and watching the news, of course. He calls it more science fact than science fiction. In this dystopian future, rising seas from global climate change have wiped out the east coast but Vancouver is protected by a dam across English Bay.

So why hasn’t the Lions Gate Bridge been dealt with in 2077?,  joked one of the Continuum panel at Vancouver Fan Expo last Saturday. Is the city all bike lanes in 2077?,  joked a fan during the Q & A, prompting Barry to respond that there are no cars at all in his future Vancouver.

Read More »FAN EXPO: CONTINUUM Presentation at Fan Expo Vancouver