Content from Quebec has never had such a major presence, and been so highly anticipated, as it will be at this year’s edition of the prestigious Series Mania festival, which kicks off this week in France. Participants explain why the rest of the world is discovering our local savoir-faire.

There’s a strong wind blowing from Quebec that’s carrying our TV series around the world. 

French-speaking people in countries far and wide have never been so enthusiastic about Quebecois television series. Take Lille, France, for example, where Series Mania takes place annually, the most prestigious gathering dedicated to television series in the world. 

The 2026 edition — which takes place from March 20 to 27 — is welcoming the largest Quebecois delegation since the event’s creation in 2010, with some 120 members from our industry expected at the festival and its professional component.  

It’s a banner year for Quebecois productions, with four series being selected out of a total 51 shows in all languages from 16 countries at the festival: Les Saturnides (Saturniids) and Ayer’s Cliff are being presented in the Short Forms Competition, Bienvenue à Kingston-Falls (Welcome to Kingston-Falls) is making its global debut in the International Panorama program, and Vitrerie Joyal (The Glass House) will close the festival.  

By comparison, “a country like Spain is only presenting one series,” says François-Pier Pélinard Lambert, editor in chief of France’s entertainment magazine Le film français (French Film). Pélinard Lambert is responsible for choosing the festival’s selections from Quebec and says French producers’ enthusiasm for productions from the province is undeniable. 

Behind the Enthusiasm

Empathie’s success obviously played a part in this heightened enthusiasm. Florence Longpré’s acclaimed series about a sensitive psychiatrist surprised audiences when it was presented at Series Mania last year, receiving a 13-minute standing ovation, as well as the Prix du public (Audience Award). Pélinard Lambert remembers the screening well; he introduced the series that day and recalls that “the stage was electric.” 

“There was already a lot of interest in Quebecois series; it’s unfair to say nothing was happening before Empathie,” he says. “But something very specific happened here. The critics got excited, then the French film distributors got excited, and all wanted to buy the series, and then came popular success. We’re looking at something like 11 million views on Canal+, which got their hands on the series and co-produced Season 2, which is huge.” 

Also worth reading: The World Yearns for More Empathie

Pélinard Lambert says there are several factors behind Quebec’s increased presence across the ocean.  

For one, there are just more series being produced in Quebec, especially since Crave started running original francophone content. Long series are less common than short series, he notes, but the abundance of short series keeps more fresh content available. He also notes that Quebecois creators are more open than ever to the international market. “The great strength of the Quebecois people is in their North American logic; they’re here to do business,” he says. 

Originality is an Asset

So, what sets Quebecois TV apart and piques the curiosity of international producers?  

“Quebec series, quote unquote, have nothing to lose,” says Pélinard Lambert. “If their content doesn’t distinguish itself from everything coming from the United States, it doesn’t exist. So we see originality of subject matter, in addition to talented directors and consistently excellent performances from its actors.” 

“Originality” is a term you often hear in reference to Quebec series. It’s also the word co-producer Isabelle Thiffault uses to describe Bienvenue à Kingston-Falls, which has its global premiere at Series Mania before coming to Tou.tv’s Extra starting May 7. 

Also worth reading: Choosing the Right Festival

The police drama written, directed and co-produced by Robin Aubert follows Detective Gabriel Serpent (Maxime Le Flaguais) as he investigates a murder in a fictional Quebec village during an unspecified era. “Robin was inspired by all the archetypes and codes of police series, and he deconstructed them. The result is truly unique and extremely refreshing. Our series is different, there’s nothing else like it,” says Thiffault. 

The tone is also very quirky, a mix of suspense, mystery and dark humour. “Lots of humour, and a profound humanity,” says the producer who works with Encore Television, the production studio that is also behind Vitrerie Joyal, the new Martin Matte series coming to Prime Video. 

This mix of genres is, according to Thiffault, a strength of series from Quebec. “It’s a difficult balance to achieve, but when we do it, we do it well, even if we have far fewer resources than many other countries.” 

Doing Business

For professionals from Quebec’s TV industry, participating in either Series Mania or the Festival de la Fiction, which takes place in La Rochelle, France, in September, offers an essential opportunity to develop partnerships and tap into alternative financing models.  

“The fact of being here, of being chosen, is a unique opportunity to meet buyers and sell [our series] elsewhere, either as an adaptation or dubbed,” says Thiffault, citing Bête noire (Dark Soul) as an example. That series, also produced by Encore Television, received an offer less than 24 hours after being presented at Series Mania in 2021. A fourth season is currently in production.  

Neegan Trudel, producer and director of the web series Les Saturnides, sees his first festival appearance as a valuable calling card. “The global web series market is still weak when it comes to resales,” he says. “My hopes are more for what comes next. I would like to make important series, meet future financial partners or international co-producers. Or just start making myself known.” 

Les Saturnides, written by Jocelyn Martel-Thibault, is a drama that takes place in a single apartment and was inspired by the pandemic. It addresses our collective fatigue. “We ask the question, what would happen if an entire society was sleep-deprived? It’s an idea we’ve had for a while, but it evolved after COVID. We were inspired by the way the pandemic was managed, how the world interpreted a new virus, and the sort of media panic,” says Trudel. 

Produced by his company Oraquan Médias, located in the Wendake community in the province of Quebec, the psychological thriller follows Indigenous influencers. “We see them, from the start, saying they can’t sleep and asking what’s happening. We hear them, but we don’t take them seriously. It’s a nod to the fact that when the Indigenous communities speak out about something, we see them, but we often don’t act,” says Trudel, himself a member of the Wendat Nation. 

Even so, Les Saturnides isn’t an Indigenous series, he says. “It’s a direction we want to take, to get out of the silo of ‘only for the Indigenous.’ Telling our stories, but for a general audience.” 

His biggest wish for Series Mania? To introduce people to Oraquan Médias and for his web series to have another life outside of Canada after the festival. In Quebec, the series will be available this fall on TV5Unis. 

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The four women overseeing the Canada Media Fund, Telefilm Canada, the Indigenous Screen Office, and the National Film Board gathered to discuss the state of the nation’s media industry at Prime Time in Ottawa. Now & Next was there to capture their insights.

Call it the great Canadian media panel.

The four women who lead Canada’s national audiovisual organizations shared the stage at Prime Time 2026, a conference for the screen industry held in Ottawa every year.

The women — Canada Media Fund (CMF) president and CEO Valerie Creighton, Telefilm Canada executive director and CEO Julie Roy, Indigenous Screen Office (ISO) CEO Kerry Swanson, and National Film Board commissioner and chairperson Suzanne Guèvremont — gathered for a session titled “Canada’s Future: Building a Creative Nation.”

While the conference’s spotlight was dominated by men — including Prime Minister Mark Carney, and Heated Rivalry’s executive producers Jacob Tierney and Brendan Brady and star Hudson Williams — it is these four women who oversee Canada’s media industry.

It’s hard to overstate the impact they made in front of both Canadian and international creators as they discussed the state of Canada’s media industry, cultural sovereignty, and the future of the sector in this country.

“The most important thing the country has done is it’s opened the way for creators,” Creighton told the audience. “Regardless of the structure, regardless of the organizations, this country has allowed creativity to flourish. We have an abundance of creative and innovative talent. We're really blessed as a country.”

Defending Our Cultural Sovereignty

Supporting creators remains each organization’s focus, but suddenly a more urgent concern has emerged: cultural sovereignty. Creating meaningful films, TV and digital stories that represent the Canadian experience is crucial.

“The NFB is about telling authentic Canadian stories,” emphasized Guèvremont. “This is the strength of having creative documentarians and giving them the ability to tell their stories, which is important for our cultural sovereignty.

“And there’s education,” she continued. “That's another aspect of developing our cultural sovereignty and developing our ability to consume Canadian content from a very young age. For the NFB to be in schools across the country and have access to more than 400,000 teachers is important. We’re there with the kids in the classroom, and we participate in making sure that we develop that appetite for our amazing Canadian content.”

Roy spoke about how, over the years, Telefilm has built Canada’s brand internationally.

“That's very powerful and very strong,” she said. “We have treaties of co-production with 60 countries. That tells you Canada is appealing and people want to work with us.”

For the ISO, cultural sovereignty is seen through a very specific lens.

“The ISO was founded eight years ago with a mandate to foster narrative sovereignty for First Nations, Métis and Inuit storytellers in Canada,” explained Swanson. “And so that mandate is central to our mission. But what does it mean?

“Ultimately, it means the freedom to tell stories in the way that you want to tell them, to control those stories and not have anyone take them away from you, which we have a history of here in this country. But on a practical level, for us it means majority ownership of IP by Indigenous storytellers, with two of the three key creative roles on a project being occupied by an Indigenous person.

“And with Canada now going through this sort of crisis of contemplating what it means to be sovereign and feeling threatened, I think for the first time Canadians understand what we've been talking about this whole time,” continued Swanson. “And now you understand that you would also fight for 200 years to maintain your stories and to maintain your freedom and your sovereignty.”

Connecting With Audiences

Developing and bringing Canadian stories to screens won’t matter if those stories don’t resonate with audiences.

“I feel that if we don't invite audiences into the conversation, we will miss an opportunity here,” said Roy. “The environment has changed a lot and we can see that global platforms are shaping visibility, algorithms are shaping the discoverability, and even now AI is influencing the way we access content. So, what do we do with the audience? We need to build a national audience strategy.”

“The work we did together for MADE | NOUS across the country was about the audience,” Creighton offered in reference to the CMF’s years-long campaign to promote Canadian productions. “It was about our industry and our successes, but it really was about connecting with the public, and it's working pretty good, so far.

“If the creativity works, if the stories are strong, if the creators and producers are allowed to tell these stories, that's what will bring the audience in.”

Preparing for the Future Together

All four organizations are dealing with new technologies and services that don’t mesh with out-of-date structures and policies. Joining forces to ensure Canada’s media sector supports creators now and into the future is imperative.

“We cannot work alone anymore,” noted Roy. “We need to work in partnership, and I think that's the way we're going to build the future.”

“If we can help each other think together about what we can contribute to the future, it would be a very different approach,” said Creighton. "The first thing we have to do is learn how do we get more flexibility, how do we get rid of the barriers and the constraints? They were created a long time ago. Not the world we're living in today. And we see this in the interactive digital media, we see it in spaces like VR, we see it in spaces like gaming, we see it in spaces like location-based entertainment.

“It's just so exciting what's happening in this country,” Creighton added. “And I, for one, will do everything in my mental power to not hold on to the past and to look at how can we leverage that and make that leap? And it's not going to be easy, but it'll be fun.”

The post The Fantastic Four appeared first on Canada Media Fund.

Heated Rivalry’s creators Jacob Tierney and Brendan Brady, along with stars Hudson Williams and Sophie Nélisse, share behind-the-scenes moments about the making of the hit show

Heated Rivalry’s success is simply staggering – it’s safe to say this is a tad surprising.

A sexually suggestive series about two queer hockey stars hooking up and falling in love had never been seen before, but that’s exactly why writer/director/producer Jacob Tierney and his producing partner Brendan Brady decided it had to be made.

Also worth reading: They Shoot, They Score

It felt authentic to Tierney, a veteran of Canada’s television and film industry who also happens to be a gay man who loves hockey.

“It’s my algorithm,” says Tierney during a panel in Ottawa at last month’s Prime Time conference hosted by the Canadian Media Producers Association. Tierney was onstage with long-time friend and co-producer Brady, who both created Accent Aigu Entertainment a few years ago.

The duo are speaking to a receptive audience of Canadian and international creators eager to hear how they managed the seemingly impossible – create a worldwide megahit.

Not only has it become Crave’s most-watched original series, but it’s also a global streaming juggernaut. Audiences around the world have spent millions of minutes (the number is creeping towards a billion!) viewing the show. It’s a massive hit on HBO Max and it’s topped the charts in Australia, the Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan. Its stars, Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie, are social media superstars and by the summer you’ll be hearing “I’m coming to the cottage” on repeat.

But what we hear is not about replicating that level of success; instead, we get a glimpse into their work ethos that can serve as a roadmap to other creators looking to make high-quality, salable productions.

IP IS EVERYTHING

It begins with the story, or in Heated Rivalry’s case, intellectual property (IP).

“Brendan and I had just started our company and we were very aware that the game is IP,” says Tierney. “Everybody wants IP, but how does a nascent production company with no money acquire IP?

“The kind of IP that producers like Brendan and I could get in that moment is IP that nobody else is going for. And there's fucking loads of it, because you have to look at marginalized communities that are not being represented in mainstream entertainment.

“So, I called Brendan and said I think we should option this book, and by this book, I mean these books, because there's a lot of them. And then I followed Rachel Reid, the author on Instagram, and she followed me back. I slid into her DMs, and I was like, ‘What’s up, girl,’ and the rest is history,” he says with a laugh.

“We then came in with a vision of how we can get it done,” adds Brady. “And it speaks to what we think is a way in which our business could help with the costs of making TV. We're going to do this crazy thing where we shoot all six episodes in just one block with one director, one writer, treat it like a movie and keep the cost down that way.”

Bell Media, Sphere Abacus and the CMF stepped up with major funding. “That [funding] system is what keeps Canadian television alive,” says Tierney. “And a show like Heated Rivalry, which was not an obvious bet for anybody, we would absolutely not be here without them.”

CLOCKING OUT

The checklist so far reads: find a solid IP, do intensive pre-production planning, enlist the help of funders who get what you are doing and finally treat the cast and crew with respect by adhering to reasonable work hours.

“We shot this show in 36 days, primarily on 10-hour shoot days. I'm not going to say every day was a 10-hour shoot day,” Brady says. “For us, that's one of the core principles of what I think our business needs to kind of change fundamentally, is to get away from these ridiculously long hours.

“My wife is an assistant costume designer, and she's five months pregnant. And she can't come to set and work 15 hours when she's pregnant. Or she can't do it when we have a kid. So, we need to stop these insane hours that we have.

“Also, from a financial perspective it makes so much more sense,” continues Brady. “Because when you shoot 10 hours, assuming you go into 12, 13 hours a day, you're paying for an additional day. People don't remember that. And I get that gear is expensive, and I get that putting people up in hotels is expensive. But in this country, we're never going to be able to compete with the budgets of the U.S. But what we can compete with is an environment that people actually want to show up and work in.”

CHOOSING LOVE

Later that night, Tierney, Brady and Heated Rivalry actors Hudson Williams and Sophie Nélisse reunited for a surprise behind-the-scenes event that also welcomed special guest Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. Like almost everything associated with Heated Rivalry, their red-carpet arrivals went viral.

Hosted by Lainey Lui, the evening allowed the cast and producers to reminisce about making the show, and it was especially moving when Williams and Nélisse watched a clip from his “first coming out” – the restaurant scene in which Rose gently prods Shane about his sexuality.

Nélisse gives a tender, nuanced performance.

“I really thought about how support can be so quiet,” she explains. “And I really wanted the scene to have this sort of stillness. I mean there was a lot in the eye contact and these pauses. I think Rose shows that one of the most generous things you can do for someone is to let them process their feelings without any sort of judgement or commentary. I just wanted her to be that safe space for Shane, for him to be able to open up, but at the same time showing him unconditional love.”

“I remember thinking she was the best person I would want there, across from me, doing this scene,” remembers Williams. “It was very easy to open up. Emoting and having to get vulnerable is hard especially because I think that was our second day, we hadn’t known each other for very long, but instantly I was able to open up.

“I even remember the rehearsal we did right before we got into it, we went off script. We were spitballing and I think the crew had zero faith that we’d have emotion or vulnerability and then we came and instantly the floodgates opened. It was great.”

“They were both amazing in this scene,” says Tierney. “It’s an extraordinary scene and I am so grateful to both of you and I am also super grateful to my editor Véronique Barbe who chose moments I would not have chosen. It was so interesting to watch the scene through her eyes. I basically left her cut in because it surprised me so much and because it revealed things to me that I didn’t expect.”

“Really, Jacob’s writing in this scene is a testament to love,” concludes Brady. “At every moment, the choice is love, and that’s what people are resonating with. That’s what we resonated with throughout this whole experience.”

The post Heated Rivalry’s secret sauce  appeared first on Canada Media Fund.

The Quebecois series Casse-Gueule, funded by the Canada Media Fund, premieres on Crave February 12th. An ode to local gastronomy, every stage of production required a colossal amount of work. Here, star Émile Schneider, head consultant Antonin Mousseau-Rivard and producer Hugo d’Astous revisit the challenges of a shoot in which food became a main character.

Casse-Gueule’s opening scene sets the tone for the series. In the kitchen of a Michelin-starred restaurant, head chef Clovis (Émile Schneider) is working with his team. Amidst a symphony of pots and pans, he tastes a sauce, finishes a plate with tweezers, and checks on the leeks fondant. The images parade across the screen at a lively clip, mixing close-ups of food with wide shots of the excitement happening behind the ovens. But sooner or later, catastrophe strikes…

Written by Frédéric Ouellet and Daniel Chiasson, the eight-episode dramedy follows the adventures of Clovis, a party boy in his 30s who opens his own restaurant with two friends (Zouheir Zerhouni and Mylène Mackay) after being fired from the establishment where he trained. Between financial difficulties, tensions in the kitchen, and the return of his daughter (Estelle Fournier) to his life, Clovis has to learn to be a leader.

“Few series on the restaurant industry exist because producing them is extremely demanding and expensive,” says producer Hugo d’Astous, president of Duo Productions. “We had to be resourceful, work hard and prepare meticulously.”

Getting His Hands Dirty

To learn to cook like a real chef, Schneider was coached by Antonin Mousseau-Rivard at Montreal’s famous restaurant Le Mousso.

Similar to the method taught at The Actors Studio, where performers mine their experiences to prepare for a role, Schneider was trained in all aspects of working in a kitchen, from washing dishes to preparing sauces to developing knife skills. (And yes, it took less than a minute for him to injure himself cutting onions.)

“Knowing how to cook for your family, that’s one thing. Knowing how to cook like a real chef, that’s another. On screen, credibility is essential, there are plenty of details you can’t mess up,” says Mousseau-Rivard.

Once he’d mastered the culinary techniques, Schneider could concentrate on delivering his lines for director Mathieu Cyr’s cameras. “My goal, above all else, was to not waste the team’s time because I wasn’t able to get the movements right,” says the 36-year-old actor who’s tacking his first big TV role. “It seems trivial, but just placing a pat of butter in a hot pan and cooking a fish while I say a line can be complicated.”

Designing the Dishes

As usual with a TV series, each scene required several takes. To ensure consistency, the dishes had to look exactly the same from one shot to the next — the same arrangement of ingredients on the plate, the same texture, the same colour.

With the help of culinary stylists and prop masters — who all had restaurant industry experience — Mousseau-Rivard created multiple copies of the same dish, sometimes on extremely short deadlines.

“The whole team had to cooperate to create each moment,” recalls D’Astous. “When the actors were gobbling up the food, the dishes had to be steaming, when they cut a leg of lamb, the jus had to run out. I can’t even begin to count how many legs of lamb we needed.”

For complex shots, the team would cheat a bit by choreographing movements in advance. “We rehearsed with dry pans,” Schneider says. “The camera moved around us, filming our hands and our faces. Then, everything was adjusted in editing as needed.”

Searching for Ingredients

To make things more challenging, the team wanted to showcase local, fresh and authentic ingredients. “We needed impeccable food because we wanted to celebrate Quebec’s local cuisine and artisans,” says d’Astous. “That all translated into dollars, but most importantly into on-screen value, by generating emotion.”

Every day, Mousseau-Rivard had to find the ingredients, including some that were out of season, for the recipes in the script. “The team was lucky to have me,” he exclaims. “In Montreal, if anyone can find fresh sea urchin, it’s me and the gang at Au Pied de Cochon [restaurant]. We’re the only ones who get them delivered directly by fishermen from the Côte-Nord.”

And when ingredients were impossible to source, he had to get creative. “In one scene, Clovis has to cook bear for a private party,” says the chef. “But it’s illegal to buy wild game meat from a hunter, you can be fined. So, we had to use a legally available alternative — seal, whose extremely dark colour and metallic flavour is similar to bear.”

A Winning Recipe

But is there a danger that food so spectacular could overshadow the actors?

For d’Astous, everything had to be balanced. “We certainly didn’t want the scenes to feel like advertisements or cooking shows,” he says. “We had to find the middle ground between gorgeous visuals, action, settings and emotion. Those are elements the audience won’t consciously notice, but they will most definitely feel.”

Schneider thinks viewers will also recognize themselves in the characters and the issues they face.

“Casse-Gueule is also about friendship, rekindling a father-daughter relationship, and ambition,” he says. “By opening his own restaurant, for the first time in his life, Clovis dares to give himself something grand and magical. But to do it, he needs to clean up his past and face his own demons.”

And, in contrast to the American TV series The Bear, Casse-Gueule explores positive human relationships through a chef who is more respectful of his team, Mousseau-Rivard says. “I think a wide audience will find what they’re looking for in this show.”

The post The tricky business of making a series about the restaurant industry appeared first on Canada Media Fund.

Showrunner Jeff Norton tells us about bringing his YA figure skating drama Finding Her Edge to Canada, and the world, at the most opportune time.

Steamy relationships. Elite athletes battling it out on the ice. An unapologetically Canadian production.

Nope. We’re not talking about Heated Rivalry. This is Finding Her Edge, a YA drama about figure skaters that, if you squint real hard, could be that other show’s younger, more family-friendly sibling.

“Coming after Heated Rivalry and just ahead of the Olympics, we're sort of sandwiched between two cultural moments, and I think we're excited to take advantage of that and show off our show to the audience,” says Jeff Norton, Finding Her Edge’s showrunner and executive producer. The WildBrain-produced series is now streaming on Netflix in Canada and around the world, and on Radio-Canada’s ICI TOU.TV EXTRA for French-Canadian audiences.

Also worth reading: They Shoot, They Score

The fact that Finding Her Edge is based on a novel by American author Jennifer Iacopelli is about the only thing about the production that isn’t Canadian, and Iacopelli has said the story was inspired by Canadian figure skaters Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir. That, and Jane Austen’s Persuasion.

Finding Her Edge’s Canadian cast includes Madelyn Keys, Alice Malakhov and Alexandra Beaton as the Russo sisters, who were born into a figure skating dynasty. Middle sister Adriana (Keys) is the protagonist, caught in a love triangle as she trains for Worlds with her new partner Brayden (Cale Ambrozic) while still having the feels for ex-boyfriend and former skating partner Freddie (Olly Atkins).

Canadian figure skating legends Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier (better known as Piper and Paul) and Elvis Stojko all have cameos in this production that saw its share of challenges, including the demise of Family Channel, on which it was set to air, and a devastating ice storm that almost saw production in Orillia, Ontario, frozen.

Norton, whose previous credits include Geek Girl and The Small Hand, was at home in Burlington, Ontario, when we spoke by Zoom.

Finding Her Edge comes hot on the heels of the Heated Rivalry phenomenon. There are certainly differences in tone and audience but also overlap in that it’s a Canadian show about elite skaters. Does that hurt or help the show’s launch?

First of all, I'm incredibly thrilled for the entire team at Heated Rivalry, and I think what that show has done for Canadian storytelling is amazing. So, we all benefit. The second thing is, I actually think the similarities are less about skating and ice, and more about romance. Fundamentally, Finding Her Edge is a story about love, and it is a romance. And I think, even though the tone of the shows and the appropriateness in terms of its audience [differs], fundamentally, playing with romance is something that's literally tugging at the heartstrings of the audience right now.

Launching just before the Milano Cortina Olympics was intentional. Tell me about bringing everything together in time.

I'd long wanted to do a figure skating show so I'd had this book under option, but I was able to pitch it in a way which was, if we greenlight this now, and when I say now, this was back in the early autumn of ’24, we will be ready, and we'll be able to have a show for the audience simultaneously with the Winter Olympics. When people are excited about the non-fiction of the real Olympics, we'll have a fiction that peels back the curtain and takes the audience behind the scenes into this fascinating world.

Speaking of production, this project has a complicated history. Explain the relationship between Netflix, Radio-Canada’s ICI TOU.TV and WildBrain.

So the project was commissioned by Family Channel, as the Canadian commissioning broadcaster, and Netflix came in as the global partner outside of Canada initially and then, of course, the Family Channel service was shut down.… WildBrain held the distribution rights, and so what they were able to do was then find a new home in Canada for the show. That's when they got it set up with Radio-Canada for French-speaking Canada, and then Netflix for English-speaking Canada.

Aside from losing Family Channel, what are the challenges in reaching young audiences today?

Well, I see the challenges as the same as the opportunities. I think there are more and more screens vying for the attention of younger audiences, and we see it everywhere. My deeper background is as an author, I've written over a dozen Young Adult novels, and as an author I've been competing with screentime for 15 years. And so, now, creating drama for the screen, I see it as just a similar challenge. But I also think that's the opportunity, and what I mean by that is, if you have something utterly compelling people will want to watch it.

In addition to the cast and crew being Canadian, the series was shot in Ontario, much of it between Barrie and Orillia. Why that area?

I had pitched a vision for what I called a Winter Wonderland aesthetic…but I was very aware that there would be a practical risk of not being able to deliver that for the production. We started in February [2025] and there have been years around [the Greater Toronto Area] where the grass is still exposed, and that wasn't the look I was going for. And so, with Angela [Boudreault], who's the producer from WildBrain, we literally looked at a map of southern Ontario and tried to triangulate where we could go, where it would still be feasible for cast and crew, where we could also feel comfortable that we would get the type of weather we would want.

Did you get it?

Well, be careful what you wish for because we did get it, but boy, did we get it. And as you know, we had an incredibly cold winter. We had a lot of snow in Orillia. You'll see in a couple sequences the snowbanks are higher than our actors.

Then in March the area was hit with a catastrophic ice storm. How did that affect the shoot?

The place where we were all staying, we called it Winter Camp, it was the Carriage Ridge Resort, and we lost power there [for three weeks]. In a way it really brought the cast and crew together because we were literally all in the dark. Some of the crew members had propane barbecues in their pickup trucks…. Eventually, we had to move folks. A lot of us tried our best to stay close to a week and then we did have to scatter.

But you continued filming with generators?

We did continue. We didn't lose a day. I mean, we were very careful. The production team really came together and found a way to make sure that everybody was safe, but also conserving our resources. But yeah, we didn't drop a day. To be honest with you, we didn't have the room in the schedule to lose a day. We were on a critical path which would have us film a couple of days in Paris, France. We took the key cast and did walk-and-talks in France at the end of the shoot. So we were always up against that as a deadline…. Our production constraints were real, so we just had to keep going.

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Empathie, a Crave original series supported by the Canada Media Fund, is an international sensation with a second season in the works. Lead actors Florence Longpré (also the screenwriter) and Thomas Ngijol expound on the show’s surprising success and the unique appeal of Quebec’s screen industry.

French actor and comedian Thomas Ngijol had no idea what was in store for him in the summer of 2024 when he agreed to star in Empathie. A Parisian of Cameroonian descent, he knew little about Quebec’s screen industry.

“If the series had been broadcast at 10:30 p.m., on an obscure channel, it wouldn’t have shocked or bothered me,” he said during the Nuit de la série panel organized by the Canada Media Fund (CMF) during the 31st Cinemania Francophone Film Festival. The event took place in Montreal this past November.

Nearly a year after the first episodes began streaming on Crave, Ngijol still can’t believe what’s happened. Empathie is the Canadian platform’s most-watched original French-language drama and its top performer in the country with all subscribers, across all genres and languages.

But Empathie’s success extends beyond our borders.

In March, Empathie earned an astounding 13-minute standing ovation and took home the Prix du Public, or Audience Award, at the Séries Mania Television Festival in Lille, France. More recently, the series was nominated at Europe’s Rose d’Or Awards and picked up prizes at the Serielizados Fest in Barcelona, Spain, and at the Venice TV Awards in Italy.

This past September, Canal+, France’s national television channel, started broadcasting Empathie in primetime. “The series is the fastest on record to reach 10 million views on the channel,” said François-Pier Pelinard Lambert, editorial director of Le film français magazine, during the Nuit de la Série panel.

Season 2 Already in the Works

In Season 1, produced by Trio Orange in collaboration with Bell Media, Suzanne (Longpré), a former criminologist, works as a psychiatrist at an institution for individuals convicted of crimes, who are not criminally responsible due to mental disorders. Suzanne and her intervention agent, the compassionate Mortimer (Ngijol), experience victories, small and large, each day, while Suzanne herself teeters on the brink after returning to work following a two-year absence.

Crave and Canal+ are currently collaborating on Season 2, scheduled for release in 2027, but Longpré wasn’t about to reveal any plot details. When asked about Season 2 during the Nuit de la Série panel, she joked, “Suzanne and Mortimer die.”

At the time, she’d only written the first five episodes.

“What I can tell you is that there will be some very exciting new storylines, and we will continue unfinished business from Season 1,” she said. “The idea is to remain true to our original approach while taking it a bit further.”

We’ll just have to wait.

So, how does Longpré cope with the pressure of success and the expectations it brings?

“At first, I pretended the pressure wasn’t there. Finally, I decided to accept it and embrace the rush that comes with it. But that doesn’t stop me from being stressed out or having a good cry, especially on a Monday morning when I’m menstruating,” she said with a wink.

Mental Health Is a Universal Theme

Based on his experiences with projects in North America, Europe and Africa, Ngijol thinks both seasons of Empathie will attract huge audiences in France and elsewhere in the French-speaking world.

“The concept of borders today is increasingly abstract, with global movement becoming more complex and frequent,” he shared in an exclusive interview, just after the Nuit de la Série panel. “We’re more and more connected, and when one culture encounters another we all come out the richer for it. We must continue working to make sure that fiction thrives here and everywhere. I think Empathie will even make it big in Africa.”

Ngijol believes the series has international appeal because it tackles mental health, a subject that is both universal and timely. “For years, anyone affected directly or indirectly [by mental health issues] felt ashamed and didn’t dare talk about it openly. People today are more open about mental health,” he said. “Empathie allows us to find the humour in it, to feel less alone, and to let it all out through laughter or tears, whatever works.”

Longpré, who, as a teen, went through a period of depression after her mother died, was eager to approach psychiatry with humour and compassion. Wanting to steer clear of stereotypes, she consulted with two psychiatrists. “Since it was a subject close to my heart I wanted to imbue the series with a generosity of spirit, or at least that’s what we were trying to evoke,” she said during the panel.

“As a writer, I delved into topics that I might not have explored initially and then did my best to explain them to viewers,” Longpré explained.

Ngijol thinks he knows why the message resonates so strongly with Quebec’s French cousins. “Our society is somewhat more cynical than yours. It’s more challenging for us to face difficult subjects and express how we feel.”

Originality Travels Well

Empathie stands out not only for the stories it tells, but also for director Guillaume Lonergan’s (Audrey est revenue, M’entends-tu?) use of bold visuals, surreal scenes and a striking soundtrack to heighten emotions. There are the ballerinas, dressed all in black, who metaphorically illustrate the balance and imbalance, strength and fragility, of coping with mental illness. And there are the rain clouds that often envelop Suzanne and reflect her deep inner sadness.

“[In Quebec] you allow yourselves the freedom to do things we don’t allow ourselves in France because we are too rational,” Ngijol said. “You might have fewer resources, but you compensate with greater creativity and freedom.”

For journalist Pelinard Lambert, this creativity is in demand from all over the world now that streaming has made it easy to access ideas and content from anywhere.

“We’ve known for many years that Quebec was rich in originality, but our interest was mainly in buying formats to adapt, as it happened with Un gars, une fille,” he said, referring to the Quebec series that was adapted by more than two-dozen countries. “Today it’s no longer the formats but the series themselves that are travelling abroad.”

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What started as an OUTtvgo web series five years ago has been promoted to the big leagues. We talk with Slo Pitch creators Karen Knox and Gwenlyn Cumyn about reuniting the team to take their LGBTQ softball series to Crave.

You don’t need a lot of money to make people laugh.

A story about a team of underdogs, great writing, and a brilliant cast of comedic actors will do the trick.

Karen Knox, Gwenlyn Cumyn and J Stevens believed that idea when they co-created the micro-budget series Slo Pitch, an LGBTQ comedy focused on a beer-league softball team (the cleverly named Brovaries) consisting of queer and non-binary players who aren’t the most athletically gifted but know how to have a good time.

Slo Pitch began as a short-form web series on OUTtvgo in 2020, drawing dedicated fans with its Parks and Recreation meets The L Word vibe. The trio knew they had a winning formula, and so did an assortment of funders — including the Canada Media Fund (CMF), Bell Media and Elliot Page’s PageBoy Productions — that stepped up to co-produce and reboot the show that will air as a 10-episode series on Crave in the spring of 2026.

In addition to writing and creating Slo Pitch, Knox and Cumyn also star, with Stevens directing.

Knox plays Boris, a German immigrant obsessed with beer and finding a woman to marry so she’s not deported, while Cumyn is Ann, a bisexual flirt juggling romantic partners while rooming with the Brovaries’ captain, Joanne (Kirsten Rasmussen), who is determined to see her team defeat their archrivals, the Toronto Blue Gays.

Knox and Cumyn were in Toronto, having recently wrapped production, when we caught up by phone.

How did the idea for Slo Pitch come together?

Cumyn: Knox and I went to George Brown Theatre School together a decade ago. We had made a web series, Barbelle, together that J had seen. J had the idea for Slo Pitch because they had been on an Aussie rules team, which had been full of drama. So together we developed this idea of a slo-pitch team of mostly queer, mostly female, players because we had so many friends who play on rec league teams who also have really dramatic, comedic stories. There’s a lot to mine from that world.

Tell us about your characters.

Cumyn: Ann is a slutty bisexual. We're reclaiming the trope [laughs]. She thinks that she’s hot sh-t. She's a sick bartender who can pick anybody up, or at least that's how she acts. And in this first season she really contends with the mess that she's made on and off the field.

Knox: I love Boris, this funny, really raucous, horny, crazy woman. And not too much of a spoiler, but she has a real relationship in this 10-part series and it's beautiful and so real and so funny.

The last of Slo Pitch’s two online seasons hit the web back in 2022. How did it feel to revisit the characters and get the production team back together for the reboot?

Knox: It felt like all the stars aligned in this beautiful way to bring back the vast majority of people who previously had no money but worked hard and made something pretty good on our web series. To get to do it on a bigger stage, to spend even more time together and to have a set that was even more comfortable, because we had a little bit more money to make sure that everybody was appropriately taken care of, it just felt awesome.

Does a bigger budget mean bigger dreams or bigger headaches, figuring out how to allocate the funds?

Cumyn: Definitely bigger dreams for us. You know, it's still Canadian television so it's not like we're working with a Game of Thrones budget here [laughs]. And honestly, it felt like the perfect stepping stone for us. Maybe in the web series we were living beyond our means, and now we are living within our means. Not that we wouldn't take more. But we got to work with two cameras on set, which was great. Our art department has always gone above and beyond, but I hope they felt a little more financially free to do what they wanted to do.

Knox: Honestly, it's so nice to be able to pay people a wage that is appropriate for them. With the digital series you're really scraping the bottom of the barrel. People are getting paid, but it's not enough with the state of the economy right now. It's just so nice to be able to come to work and know that people are taken care of and, honestly, it helped my shoulders drop a little bit.

What I love about the series is that it is based in queer culture, but it resonates beyond that, hitting on sports, relationships, and work culture.

Knox: Right. We all agreed when we were in the writers’ room that we're not setting out to make a queer show. We're just doing what reflects our own lives. That's what this is. These people are who I see in the streets. These are the people that I hang out with. I wish for a world where we move past representation and it's just normalization. Yes, there’s a specificity to the humour, but we really wanted to make it so that it didn't feel like an inside joke. Here’s a story that everyone could relate to that wasn't preachy. It’s just a stupid, fun, horny, chaotic sports show. And to me that was like the most radical thing that we could do.

Cumyn: We want audiences to have a good time. The world is a very scary place right now and politics are really heated. And we just want the show to feel like a breath of fresh air. And I think it was magical to be shooting the show while the Blue Jays were in the World Series. It really felt like a very good omen, despite the loss. It illustrated for us that sports can be such a unifier, and we saw the Jays bring an entire country together. That's what we want Slo Pitch to feel like. Not to be cheesy, but despite our differences we can get on the field and hit some balls with bats and all that disappears.

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Canadian screens heat up this November with the release of Crave’s gay hockey romance series Heated Rivalry, funded the by Canada Media Fund. We talk with the show’s writer-director-producer Jacob Tierney and two stars, Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie, about making one of the year’s most anticipated shows. 

Sitting on the set of reality-TV show The Traitors Canada, which he executive produces, Jacob Tierney found his dream project. 

“I was reading the newspaper on my phone and on the front page of The Washington Post was an article about the romance industry,” says Tierney over the phone from Toronto. 

“The headline was something like, ‘Romance is a billion-dollar-a-year industry, why doesn't anyone take it seriously? And then the sub-headline was, ‘Why are hockey romances so popular in America?’ And in the second paragraph they mentioned Heated Rivalry, and I called my producing partner Brendan Brady and said, ‘I know this is going to sound a bit crazy, but we're going to option this hockey book because if somebody else options this book, I think I will go bananas.’” 

Also worth reading: Heated Rivalry’s secret sauce

Heated Rivalry, book two in Canadian author Rachel Reid’s Game Changers gay-romance sports series, focuses on the steamy and very clandestine love affair between Canadian hockey star Shane Hollander and his Russian rival Ilya Rozanov. 

Published in 2019, the book is considered the gold standard when it comes to hot gay sports stories. Looking at Tierney’s career, you understand why the veteran writer-director-producer was the perfect fit to adapt Heated Rivalry into a six-hour series for Crave that hits screens in November. 

He’s queer. 

And he understands hockey’s macho culture, having co-written, directed, produced and co-starred as Pastor Glen in Letterkenny, a show about life in a northern Ontario town where hockey is king. He also directed and produced Letterkenny’s spinoff Shoresy, in which he plays hockey commentator Benny Brodeur. 

At age 46, Tierney is ready to tell a story that will break ground and win hearts. 

“I think what people want out of romance is intimacy and joy,” says Tierney. “And I think that’s what a queer audience is going to get out of this show, which is so rare. There is no version of ‘Bury Your Gays,’” he says, referring to the trope that sees gay characters as expendable and most likely to die or be denied a happy ending in TV and movies.  

“Nobody's going to go back to make a poor woman miserable in a heterosexual marriage. Nobody's going to kill themselves. Nobody's going to die of AIDS. These are two young, attractive men who f-ck and get to be in love and that is something that we as queer people are starved for.” 

Tierney had to find the right actors to play uptight, anxious Shane and cocky, sexy Ilya throughout their eight-year relationship. Knowing the passionate fans of the book would scrutinize the leads, Tierney cast Texas-born Connor Storrie as Ilya and Kamloops, B.C., native Hudson Williams as Shane. 

For 24-year-old Williams, who’s taking on his first leading role after a string of small parts in TV movies, the challenge was channeling Shane’s inner angst.  

“I would say he's like a beautiful, neurotic flower,” says Williams on the line from Vancouver, where he resides. “He's introverted, socially anxious, I would say stunted in other realms besides hockey because he was so hyper-fixated on this one thing for so long.” 

Storrie’s focus was on digging into Ilya’s cocky, yet guarded, personality. 

“Ilya will hide what he's thinking and feeling until the day he dies,” says the 25-year-old actor on the line from L.A. “If he's excited over you, he's not going to let you know. If he's not into you, he's not going to let you know. It’s that Eastern European, stone-cold exterior. But what's going on, on the inside, and what's happening on the outside are two different things. And when it comes down to it, he loves harder than anyone. He's a beautiful dichotomy that Shane wants to discover.” 

Storrie, whose biggest role before Heated Rivalry was as the inmate who kills Joaquin Phoenix at the end of Joker: Folie à Deux, had the added pressure of learning a Russian accent. 

“The whole casting moved so quick,” he says. “I only had two weeks of dialect coaching before we started. And, in the series, there's a lot of Russian dialogue and I don't speak Russian, so I had to do a lot of work for that.” 

Of course, two of the biggest questions are: Is there chemistry — gay, erotic chemistry — between the two leads; and will their passion be shown on screen? Audiences don’t want another Challengers where homoeroticism is more teased than explored in a meaningful way. 

“They had such great chemistry, instantly,” says Tierney. “And they still do. They adore each other. They were so happy to be doing this, and they both really understood the assignment, the task. It's a lot to ask of a young actor.  

“Acting is hard enough,” Tierney continues, “but when you add in that much nudity, that much intimacy, there's a lot and they were so supportive of each other. They're thick as thieves and I think you can see their affection for each other in every moment of the show.” 

Storrie agrees about his chemistry with Williams. 

“I feel really blessed because when you're doing intimacy and sex it’s a very human thing that you can't really fabricate,” he says. “I mean, as actors we do it all the time, but it's nice when we're both just naturally comfortable with each other so we’re able to focus on whatever we're doing rather than being like, ‘Oh, are you okay with this? Am I okay with this?’ Because Hudson is just so open and vocal and expressive and enthusiastic it was great.”  

Williams believes Heated Rivalry belongs in the conversation with the best of on-screen gay storytelling, including a classic in the genre. 

“I think of the similarity of Brokeback Mountain, set in a hyper-masculine world of cowboys, but then it’s a very tender romance,” he says. “Hockey is one of the most hyper-masculine sports out there that has a culture of good and some really bad masculinity, and then you put a fiery, passionate romance in the middle of it. 

“And there's something that is pure about our love story, something unrestrained about it that doesn't feel like it's a tragedy. There's something celebratory about how much these two people love each other, and the problem is their environment, how they think other people will feel about it. 

“But to each other it is a utopia.” 

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Also known as microdramas and ultrashorts, vertical shows, which are shot to be viewed on smartphones, are growing at a remarkable pace in Canada.

In September 2023, Italian-Canadian filmmaker Dom Cutrupi saw his first vertical show.  

“A producer I was working with shared with me a piece of content — an episode,” Cutrupi recalls. “I looked at it, and I was like, ‘There's no way I'm going to do this.’”  

Cutrupi had just finished shooting his second feature film and thought the concept of vertical shows — shooting in 9:16 for viewing on a smartphone, and fast cuts for ultrashort episodes of 60 to 90 seconds, looked, quite bluntly, “like crap.” 

But the more he learned about the format and the potential employment opportunities that it brought to the Vancouver film industry, where Cutrupi worked, the more he warmed to it. “I often say, I’d rather be on the plane that’s taking off than on the one that’s going down,” Cutrupi says.

This came at a time when the industry was still recovering from COVID and the Writers Guild of America strike. By June 2024, Cutrupi was hired to direct a vertical series, My Poor Ex-Wife Is a Heiress, working with the same producer who showed him that first episode.

He’s been working on verticals with titles like Crashing Into My Magnate Ex and The Billionaire’s Second Wife ever since, and recently booked his 19th vertical show.  

“It’s been fun since day one,” Cutrupi says. “I’ve been enjoying it. I’m loving this industry.”  

Dramatic Plotlines Drive Viewership

The content of vertical shows is comparable to soap operas — dramatic plotlines with frequent cliffhangers that revolve around tropes, like a young girl falling in love with an older billionaire, or someone becoming estranged from their family. “I’m loving the challenges,” says Cutrupi. “Like, how do I make this ridiculous moment or stunt into something that is watchable and entertaining?”  
 
Since his first exposure to verticals, Cutrupi has seen the industry evolve. “Last year, some scripts were very challenging to read. Like, it doesn't make sense why this character is showing up here,” Cutrupi explains. “But now, I understand the characters. It flows. I see the difference in cinematography and acting, too. Things are going better and we are all working to make it better.” 

Filming vertical shows, also known as microdramas or ultrashorts, started in Canada about two years ago. But the format first emerged in China in 2018, where it exploded in popularity during COVID. 

While the American short-form streaming platform Quibi, launched in April 2020, struggled to find an audience and shuttered just six months later, Chinese vertical-only streaming platforms like ShortMax, ReelShort and DramaBox flourished.  

These platforms function as smartphone apps, tapping into the environment where most people find and watch vertical shows, and can be downloaded from various app stores or directly from the platforms’ websites. You can also watch some verticals on Instagram, YouTube and websites like Daily Motion.

• Read more: Is YouTube the new TV?

The Numbers are Impressive

Vertical platforms started commissioning productions at a dizzying pace.

By 2023, they reported more than 28 million downloads, representing 268 percent year-over-year growth. In 2025, microdrama revenues are projected to reach $9.4 billion (U.S.). There are more than 830 million viewers of microdramas in China alone.

Around 2023, Chinese production companies shifted their sights to North America, targeting English-speaking audiences. Chinese companies took their most successful microdramas, translated scripts from Chinese to English, and recreated them with North American actors.

According to Vancouver-based producer Jimmy Wu, verticals are poised to experience "exponential growth,” which is why he pivoted to this emerging format full-time, launching his production company, Vertical Film Vancouver, in May 2024.  

“To date, I have produced over 21 verticals,” Wu says. He describes the productions as lower-budget — one-tenth of a “low-grade TV movie.” Verticals also film at a zippier pace. Shoots last just seven to 10 days compared to a typical two-week TV movie shoot. Wu says they cover about 12 pages of script per day, instead of the four-to-eight-page average for traditional TV movies. 

In July 2025, the Vancouver Sun estimated that 20 vertical TV productions were being shot in Vancouver every month, representing hundreds of new job opportunities for actors and crew.  

“It's creating a new industry,” says Wu. “It's creating jobs for people. It's creating different career paths for people. I used to be in the [traditional] TV industry, but there wasn't enough work in traditional TV for a sustained period of time. So I completely dropped that to focus on verticals. I can only imagine how many others are also following suit.”

Microdrama platforms work on a slightly different revenue model than big streamers. They typically allow viewers to watch a few episodes for free, then pay to “unlock” the rest of the series. Viewers can also earn credits by watching advertisements, and brand sponsorships add to revenues.

Advocating for Non-Unionized Sets

So far, most of these productions are non-unionized. The rapid growth of verticals, combined with their lower budgets and quicker pace, can result in less favourable work environments. That situation prompted casting director Monika Dalman to create the Vertical Film & Short Series Alliance (VFSSA) in June 2025 to ensure fair and ethical environments on vertical sets.

“I started more publicly educating actors on what their rights are as non-union actors and giving resources to them if they're ever in a situation that violates employment codes or human-rights code,” Dalman explains. “We knew we needed something that was going to serve as an advocacy group and resource for actors, regardless of union status.”  

The VFSSA is in the process of creating a “V Seal” that, according to their website, verifies productions are “running above-board, safely and professionally, meeting clear standards for crew, talent, compliance and transparency.”  

In July 2025, Dalman helped the union that represents B.C. actors sign its first deal with a vertical series. It’s a sign that more productions could become unionized, but Dalman says she’d be “shocked” if even 50 percent of productions became unionized, making the role of advocacy groups like the VFSSA all the more important.

Vertical TV Production is Spreading

While Vancouver is the format’s Canadian hub, productions are also happening in Toronto, and even Prince Edward Island, where Dalman says she has a client who has already made several verticals.  

Dalman predicts major networks will enter the microdrama game soon. She points to the Disney Accelerator — an incubator program where Disney partners with emerging companies to develop new shows and products. In 2025, DramaBox was one of four companies chosen. There, filmmakers are being mentored on how to create verticals. This relationship could lead to Disney producing those stories and investing in DramaBox.  

Wu says the streaming giants are “already in the [vertical] game, testing the waters.” He thinks the future of vertical shows is directly related to the decline of traditional TV. “Nobody that's on the younger side is really watching cable TV,” he says. “There are way too many restrictions when you can just go on YouTube and watch your own program on your own time.”  

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Gone are the days when teens came home from school and all watched the same thing on TV. Now it’s up to producers and broadcasters to focus their creative efforts on reaching kids where they are. 

The facts are discouraging for children’s content creators: 21 percent of Canadians from age 2 to 17 never watch conventional television, while 91 percent consume content online, according to Media Technology Monitor (MTM).  

Meanwhile, children’s TV channels are rapidly disappearing. In August, WildBrain announced it was cancelling four of its channels (Family Channel, Family Jr., WildBrainTV and the French-language Télémagino) after Rogers and Bell delisted them from their networks. Corus put an end to five channels (Nickelodeon, ABC Spark, Disney XD, Disney Junior, and La chaîne Disney) in September 2025, along with the Quebec dubbing of The Simpsons after 36 seasons. This, after Québecor/TVA gave Yoopa the boot in January 2024, and Bell Media said au revoir to Vrak in October 2023. 

• Read more: Tough times for kids TV and long-form docs

But the producers and broadcasters we spoke with aren’t giving up yet. They believe there are still ways to share our homegrown stories with the next generation. 

“Today’s smartphones are almost permanent extensions of our hands,” says Marysol Charbonneau, Télé-Québec’s director of youth and family content. “We, as adults, are as tethered to our smartphones as our kids, so we can’t blame them. If they can find a culture or subculture that interests them, I say, Bravo! What’s important is for us to find a way to be a part of it.” 

Discoverability is the Secret Weapon 

IP developer Epic Storyworlds promotes youth content in TV and video game productions. The company’s CEO and co-founder, Steve Couture, says the best way to reach young viewers is to go where they are, places like YouTube and Roblox. 

• Read more: Roblox: Where Canadian creators come to play

“No matter what screen they’re using, we try to bring consumers into the ecosystems of our projects,” Couture says. “In this way, we not only generate discoverability, but enhance user engagement as well.” 

Discoverability is the magic word; that element that lets consumers stumble upon content without even searching for it. 

In this battle for discoverability, integration with digital platforms is an increasingly critical factor, and often starts as early as the writing stage.  

“You have to start thinking about how to market the series as early as possible in the process,” says Ugo Média producer Patrick Bilodeau. Ugo specializes in digital series for teens and young adults. “It may sound a bit intimidating creatively, but while we never want to misrepresent the content or force anything that goes against the spirit of the project, the challenge is to make sure it’s seen.” 

Bilodeau believes content should be created specifically for the platforms on which it’s consumed, and it has to meet the expectations of the platforms’ users. “Obviously, this can become quite demanding because you’re not going to put the same content on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook,” he says. 

Actors as Influencers  

The choice of actors can also play a key role in a series’ discoverability. A good example is Ugo Média’s Détox, which targets 14- to 18-year-olds and was broadcast on TV5 Unis in 2022 and 2024.  

“While casting was based, first and foremost, on acting skills and chemistry, many of the actors also had impressive followings on social media, so we knew that would help us introduce the series to young viewers,” says Bilodeau. 

The strategy was largely deployed on TikTok, where teens could interact with the actors behind the characters. 

The result? “Détox racked up over half-a-million views,” says Bilodeau. “Of course, you still have the challenge of getting the young fans off social media and over to where the series can be found.” 

K-pop Tops the Charts 

The producers of Gangnam Project — a K-pop series aimed at 8- to 12-year-olds and broadcast on CBC Gem — also turned to TikTok and YouTube.  

The series highlights Korean pop music, a genre that’s huge with young people, and was produced by Aircraft Pictures in collaboration with Pillango Productions.  

Aircraft co-president Anthony Leo says the series’ music is entirely original, written by August Rigo, a successful composer for real K-pop groups. The production team also created music videos for some songs as exclusive content for social media. 

“As we were getting ready to release the second season there was a real rise in the idea of micro dramas,” explains Leo. “So our social media campaign kind of leaned into that and used clips from the show to tell a bit of a drama of their own on social media in the hopes that people would want to see the full story and tune in to CBC or CBC Gem.”  

“You have to be prepared to switch your plan,” he adds. “In the six-to-eight months it might take to actually produce the series, things can change a lot.” 

Exclusively on TikTok  

Télé-Québec is taking it to the next level with the series La mascotte du chaos, produced by +Un. Episodes, which last between one and three minutes, will be broadcast exclusively on Télé-Québec’s TikTok account.  

While the story is divided into episodes, they can be viewed in any order. The goal is to guess who’s hiding inside the mascot’s costume and responsible for some mischief. 

How do innovations like these change the way stories are told?  

“I certainly can’t open with a slow pan on a landscape like they do in movies or on TV,” says Charbonneau. “I need to stimulate emotion in a young viewer immediately, so they’ll want to know how we got here.” 

The Future of Long-Form Content 

Patrick Bilodeau wonders about the future of long-form content.  

“Short-form content can be habit-forming,” he says. “We’re seeing more and more of a dual-screen phenomenon, where longer-format series and feature films are being watched in the background. International platforms are asking us to take this into account at the writing stage.” 

Charbonneau begs to differ, reassuring that long-form content is not dead. As an example she cites La nuit devant nous. The fiction series directed by Adib Alkhalidey will launch as part of Télé-Québec’s holiday programming, Ciné-Cadeau, as 13 30-minute episodes. 

And last year’s documentary series Être ado followed 10 teenagers from across Quebec over five years. Twelve 60-minute episodes that were broadcast on Télé-Québec were a big hit with teens and their parents, proving audiences of all ages are still drawn to longer content. 

“Having just one format isn’t really serving the interests of the general public,” Charbonneau says. “When it comes to teens, we have to react quickly. When there’s something new, we try it, because we can’t wait for the trend to be fully established.” 

The post Rethinking TV for teens  appeared first on Canada Media Fund.

From long-form series to shorts and podcasts, Canadian creators are taking advantage of YouTube’s global reach to own their IP, grow loyal audiences and contribute to a format that’s rivalling traditional television.

Canadian creators are redefining television on YouTube, leveraging the platform’s global reach to build independent scripted series.  

Right now, according to the platform, more than 45,000 Canadian creators are monetizing their content through the YouTube Partner Program, which shares ad revenue with channels that meet its eligibility thresholds. 

• Read more: Verticals on the rise

B.C.-based filmmaker Robert Randall knows what it takes to turn a YouTube channel into a sustainable scripted brand. His channel, YAP TV (it stands for the Young Actors Project), has nearly 2-million subscribers and has grown without traditional marketing.  

Early projects like Thirteen, Wonderland High and Cheerleaders in the Chess Club built an evergreen library that drew consistent views. But the real inflection point came in 2017 with The Girl Without a Phone - A Cinderella Story. The short film hit 10-million views in its first week and now sits at more than 121-million views, making it one of the most popular English-language scripted shorts on YouTube. 

That success spawned a full Girl Without a Phone series, creating a feedback loop Randall calls his “flywheel” — loyal viewers return for new installments, while YouTube’s recommendation engine introduces the series to new audiences. He also gets valuable analytics from the platform. 

“Whenever I have a kiss in one of my movies, there’s a bump in the watch timeline,” he says. “People rewind to watch it again. That tells me what they love, and I can build that into future scripts.” 

Ownership and Independence 

For Canadian producers, sharing content on social media comes with two common worries: cannibalizing existing audiences — for example, a network losing audience members to YouTube by posting content in both places; and "building on rented land," meaning you don’t own the platform as you would with your own website.  

Andrew Peterson, head of Canada at YouTube, responds that creators retain full ownership of their intellectual property. This non-exclusive model allows creators to own their IP, maximize its value across multiple distribution channels, and keep both the revenue and valuable audience data it generates. 

In an interview on The Media Odyssey podcast this past April, Paul McGrath, CBC’s Senior Director, Entertainment Strategy and Audience Development, supported Peterson’s position when he said that increasing the content they offered on YouTube boosted, rather than cannibalized, viewership on CBC Gem. YouTube also became a gateway to younger audiences and provided a “triple threat” of benefits. “It allows you to reach new audiences that are often younger, it allows you to publish content on the platform that also correlates to viewership on your streaming service, and it allows you new revenue,” explained McGrath.       

Regarding cannibalisation, Peterson cites Nielsen data about YouTube’s role in discoverability. "Forty-nine percent of Canadian viewers discover new TV shows via YouTube,” he says. “Interestingly, 31 percent subscribe to streaming platforms after engaging with content on YouTube.”  

Multi-Format Content Experiences  

YouTube’s audience has a robust appetite for multi-format content, from short films to traditional video on demand (VOD), podcasts and live streaming. 

According to Peterson, the short films in YouTube’s “Shorts” section primarily function as "lightweight discovery drivers," enticing viewers who subsequently engage deeper with long-form VOD.  

YouTube is also Canada’s most popular place to consume podcasts. Viewers can watch video versions of pods they’d otherwise consume as audio-only on platforms like Apple Podcasts or Spotify, adding another layer to viewer engagement.  

And while some Canadian podcasts, like Someone Knows Something, have been optioned for TV but have yet to make it there, U.S. hits like Wondery’s Dirty John and Gimlet Media’s Homecoming — both available on YouTube and both turned into TV series — prove the model can work. For Canadian producers, YouTube could be the bridge that turns podcast IP into screen-ready projects.  

“Canadians increasingly expect multi-format experiences,” Peterson explains. “They might watch shorts commuting, stream podcasts heading home and then settle into their living room for long-form content.”  

The living room screen, notably, has become YouTube's fastest-growing segment in Canada, according to Peterson. 

Building a Sustainable Revenue Stream  

Creators entering YouTube’s Partner Program — which is earned based on subscribers (you need 1,000) and watch hours (4,000 in the last 12 months) — enjoy a 55 percent share of revenue from ads and have access to a growing suite of monetization tools. Over the three-year period from 2021 to 2023, YouTube paid more than $70 billion (US) to creators globally. Canada-specific numbers were not made available. 

That’s in contrast to TikTok or Instagram, which currently offer limited or no direct monetization programs for Canadian creators. This difference in earning potential is one reason many Canadian creators prioritize YouTube as their main platform. 

The post Is YouTube the new TV? appeared first on Canada Media Fund.

We can thank Anar Ali for bringing fresh eyes to the police procedural. 

Ali is the creator of CBC’s Allegiance, set in Surrey, BC, where rookie cop Sabrina Sohal (Supinder Wraich) grapples with the complexities of modern policing while also trying to exonerate her politician father (Stephen Lobo), who’s been charged with treason.  

It’s rare to see a South Asian female lead on TV — especially one portraying a cop. 

“I’m a novelist and short story writer and have always been drawn to strong women,” says Ali. Ali made a name for herself with the acclaimed short story collection Baby Khaki’s Wings and the novel Night of Power before transitioning to TV screenwriting, beginning as a writer on the first season of the medical drama Transplant.  

The idea of tackling a police show fascinated her, as did the chance to highlight issues of social justice on a deeper level. 

“I was inspired, as so many of us were, with the events surrounding George Floyd,” she remembers, “and also South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission with its idea of restorative justice for victims and suspects.” 

Ali also wanted to tell an immigrant tale, but not one we usually see onscreen — Allegiance’s Sohal family is a pillar of the community, and our hero Sabrina is a third-generation Canadian. 

“So many shows about immigrants focus on newly arrived immigrants, and that is wonderful and important, but I wanted to look at what it was like for people, families, who have been here for generations and who are established, and how that impacts identity and allegiance.” 

Ali can relate. 

Her family immigrated from Tanzania to Alberta when she was a child, and she followed a traditional career path, rising the corporate ladder at Proctor and Gamble. Yet, in her heart, she wanted to write. 

“One day walking home I happened to see a flier on the sidewalk, I think it was the brown face on the flier that caught my eye,” she says. 

It was promoting an appearance of Funny Boy author Shyam Selvadurai in Banff, and she decided at that moment she would go. She met Selvadurai at the event and they went out for a drink where she told him about her desire to write. 

“The next day, when I was getting him to sign a copy of the book, he wrote, 'Take the plunge. It's worth it.' And on Monday I went into the office and told them I was quitting,” she says with a laugh. The company convinced her to stay but allowed her to work four days a week so she could concentrate on writing. She ended up leaving a year later. 

That journey has taken her all the way to Allegiance, whose second season hits screens in 2025. Audiences can watch officer Sohal continue to do the right thing within a flawed justice system, and Ali says the best thing about creating a police procedural is that viewers can engage with the show on different levels. 

“What is great about this format is that each episode is a standalone story, and you can jump in and follow along, while our dedicated viewers enjoy the characters as they grow and develop.” 

The post Creators Who Inspire: Meet Anar Ali  appeared first on Canada Media Fund.