CBC is making digital a big part of its strategy, with nine new online series complementing a broadcast lineup that includes a new daytime show and a Mennonite mob drama.
The public broadcaster announced details of its summer, fall and winter slate on Thursday, with new titles including the Mennonite series Pure and a daytime show featuring Canada’s Smartest Person host Jessi Cruickshank, design guru Steven Sabados and two other hosts.
Also newly added is the animated children’s series Dot. produced by author Randi Zuckerberg, who is the sister of Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Pure follows a newly-elected Mennonite pastor as he infiltrates the “Menno mob” in an effort to take down a powerful drug trafficking operation in the community. It will premiere in winter 2017.
The daytime series will launch in the fall. It marks Sabados’s return to CBC daytime programming after last year’s death of his husband and Steven and Chris co-star, Chris Hyndman.
Previously announced new series set to launch later this year include Kim’s Convenience, based on Toronto playwright-actor Ins Choi’s stage comedy-drama about a Korean-Canadian family and its convenience store. It’s scheduled for a fall debut.
Baroness von Sketch Show, coming this summer, is an all-female sketch comedy series focused on “the world’s narcissistic contemporary culture.” The cast includes Carolyn Taylor, Meredith MacNeill, Aurora Browne and Jennifer Whalen.
Also coming this summer is Four in the Morning, a comedy about four 20-something friends who “navigate life at the unpredictable, emotional and bewitching hour of 4 a.m.” Stars include Lola Tash and Daniel Maslany.
In Shoot the Messenger, slated for fall, Elyse Levesque stars as a young reporter who witnesses a murder and gets caught up in a web of crime that has corporate and political ties. Lyriq Bent co-stars as the lead homicide detective, Alex Kingston plays the editor and Lucas Bryant plays a co-worker.
Allan Hawco of Republic of Doyle fame stars as an escaped Nova Scotia prisoner in Caught, which is based on Lisa Moore’s Scotiabank Giller Prize-nominated novel. It’s set for winter 2017.
The Arctic is the setting for two shows: True North Calling, premiering in the winter, and The Council, set for fall.
And in This is High School, debuting this fall, cameras follow students and their teachers at South Kamloops Secondary School in Kamloops, B.C.
Returning series include Mr. D, Dragons’ Den, Murdoch Mysteries, Canada’s Smartest Person, X Company, Rick Mercer Report, Still Standing, Exhibitionists, Heartland, Hello Goodbye and This Life.
Bell Media, Corus and Rogers Media are set to announce their upcoming TV schedules early next month.
