Becoming Redwood‘s 14 nominations include well-deserved director and writing nods for Vancouver-born-and-raised Jesse James Miller and performance nods for Ryan Grantham as the young golf-obsessed long-haired title character Redwood; Jennifer Copping (Miller’s wife) as Redwood’s mother; Chad Willett (producer) as Redwood’s draft-dodging, pot-dealing father;  Derek Hamilton as Redwood’s red-neck stepfather Arnold and Scott Hylands as Arnold’s basement-dwelling elderly father Earl. Miller shot the Vancouver International Film Festival’s most popular Canadian feature in rural Langley for 24 days in the late spring of 2011.

Related: Jesse James Miller’s Becoming Redwood Opens at International Village

In the television category, Continuum dominates with 16 nominations, including nods for creator and UBC grad Simon Barry for his season one finale script End Times and for performances by Richard Harmon, Brian Markinson, Jennifer Spence and Liber8 “terrorist” Lexa Doig. Lead cop Rachel Nichols is not nominated but she is American and not considered a BC actor, even though she lives here for half-a-year each season and owns Vancouver Canucks season tickets (what more do you need?)

Over at Arctic Air, bona fide BC actors Kevin McNulty and Pascale Hutton are nominated for their lead performances on the filmed-in-Vancouver-and-Yellowknife aerial adventure series, two of 14 nominations for the CBC show. Other AA performance noms go to John Reardon, Emilie Ullerup, Jennifer Spence as well as guest performances noms to Aleks “the Griz” Paunovic, Chelah Horsdal, Michelle Thrush and Lexa Doig (also nominated for her supporting Liber8 performance on Continuum). Yes, Vancouver film and TV is like one big repertory company sometimes.

Joining Continuum and Arctic Air in the Best Dramatic Series competition is American show Arrow, one of its 8 nominations. A lot of BC talent works on this CW hit, demonstrated by its  two cinematography and two stunt coordination nominations. 

Vancouver’s own dinosaurs-run-amok drama Primeval: New World racked up 6 nominations too, including  a lead performance nod for famous Vancouver Film School grad Niall Matter, supporting performance nod for Miranda Frigon and two VFX nods for whiz Mark Savela and team.

As for BC talent in other American shows,  Fringe’s final season Big Bad Michael Kopsa got a nod for his supporting performance and crew picked up cinematography and directing nominations.

In the Youth TV category, Brendan Meyer, Gig Morton and Milo Shandel are all up for their performances on hit teen sitcom Mr. Young. 

Click for a complete list of nominees.

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 was created by Ian Weir and is produced by Michael Chechik, Gary Harvey and Gabriela Schonbach.

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.

Rejuvenated consumer advocacy show Marketplace gets the honour of kicking off CBC’s made-by-Canadians-for-Canadians dramas, comedies, unscripted and current affairs lineup for 2012-13 tomorrow night, September 14th. Co-hosted by Vancouver’s Erica Johnson and Toronto’s Tom Harrington, Marketplace doubles its episodes to 24 in its 40th season, a tribute to its audience skyrocketing to more than a million viewers in 2011-12. Johnson tweeted about flying to Toronto two weekends ago to start work on the show.

On Sunday night, CBC premieres its new reality series Over the Rainbow with a two-hour episode about the search for an actress to play Dorothy and a dog to play Toto in a new Mirvish staging of The Wizard of Oz. (Over the Rainbow replaces on-hiatus Battle of the Blades whose high production costs made it a logical place to save money after the Harper government axed 10% of the CBC’s billion-dollar annual funding. Repeats of popular programs like Dragon’s Den will fill  holes in the schedule from other cancellations).

And beginning Monday night, Canada’s boyfriend George Stroumboulopoulos moves his signature red chairs from late night to early evening for a half-hour of cultural chat on George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight every week night at 7 p.m. (repeating at 11:30 p.m.), followed by Brit soap Coronation Street every week night at 7:30 p.m.

Tuesday marks the start of  a 10th season of The Rick Mercer Report and a 22nd season of This Hour Has 22 Minutes, both proof that Canadians do funny extremely well.

Returning next Wednesday, September 19th, is Canada’s #1 unscripted series Dragon’s Den with a new Dragon in the Den: personal finance guru David Chilton (on the right below), author of The Wealthy Barber, the country’s all-time bestselling book.

But Saturday staple Hockey Night in Canada, may be a no-show this fall because of the NHL lockout. And that will mean the CBC not only postponing a 60th Anniversary party for its biggest and most popular show but also the loss of a huge chunk of advertising revenue needed to counter budget cuts.

Hopefully hockey will be back before the winter season and the return of Arctic Air. This classic adventure series about a maverick northern airline started filming its second season in Vancouver in mid-July on its permanent sets in Aldergrove and at other locations like local airports. Then cast and crew spent ten days in Yellowknife filming scenes, including a big forest fire. But as the days grow shorter and temperatures drop up north, Arctic Air must find more B.C. alternatives to Yellowknife like Clinton in Cariboo Country, where much of the season one finale was shot.

That season finale left the airline’s co-founder Mel Ivarson in jeapardy. Will the notorious curmdugeon live or die? I asked the cast if Kevin McNulty’s absence at the upfront meant Mr. Crankypants didn’t survive the finale. “This is the Adam Beach Show,” quipped Beach, intimating McNulty had gotten too big for his boots. But Beach was joking. Only the writers know what will happen in season two’s thirteen episodes.

When The Province’s Glen Schaefer visited the set not too long ago, there were no reveals about Mel’s fate in his report. Schaefer did get to see one of my favourite characters, Aleks Paunovic’s prospector Jim McAlister, in a boxing ring set up inside a Langley airport hangar. Paunovic, know as “The Griz”, even tweeted a photo of himself rehearsing the fight.

Arctic Air must feel like it’s levelled off after a takeoff into uncertainty. When I asked  leads Adam Beach and Pascale Hutton what they enjoyed most about the first season, their answer was quick — CBC’s support.

Why now? Some credit the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games for making our city “cool” and recognizable the world over.

While CBC’s hit adventure series Arctic Air mainly films its Yellowknife interiors on permanent sets in Aldergrove and its exteriors in Yellowknife, when the action is in our city, as it was in the wonderfully-titled episode Vancouver is Such a Screwed-Up City, then Vancouver plays itself.

And Showcase’s out-of-the-box hit Continuum features not one but two Vancouvers. In the part sci-fi, part procedural Continuum, a future police officer travels back in time from Vancouver in the year 2077 to Vancouver in the year 2012, 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. Here’s Rachel Nichols’s officer-from-the-future at the Vancouver Public Library.

Over at SPACE’s upcoming sci-fi and procedural series Primeval: New World, we can look forward to seeing apartment-building-sized dinosaurs and other primeval creatures rampaging through our neighbourhoods like Stanley Park, Coal Harbour and the Olympic Village. Here’s Sara Canning’s animal expert investigating such an attack at Harbour Park.

After Showcase cancelled Vancouver-set  procedural-with-a-twist Endgame last year, it found new life on Hulu in the U.S. Talk is that our eccentric Russian chess-master-turned-sleuth Arkady will return to solve more crimes from inside the Westin Bayshore Hotel.  Here’s Shawn Doyle as the agrophobic Arkady forced outside the hotel and  about to do the final scene of the series so far.

Upcoming Motive’s twist on procedurals is to reveal the killer at the start of each episode and then let us follow along a Vancouver detective’s efforts to solve the murder and uncover the reasons behind it. “The audience navigates the twisted and complicated maze of each murder and solves the puzzle alongside the detective and her team,.” according to the CTV release. Daniel Cerone from The Mentalist and Dexter will write the pilot and Trish Williams direct it. Motive is produced by Vancouver’s Foundation Pictures and Lark Productions.

Live-tweets turned out to be the best thing about last weekend’s Leo Awards celebrating the best of B.C.-made film and television. Tweets from @LeoAwards gave an award-by-award account plus details of all the hijinks in between at both the Celebration and Gala Awards: hijinks that ranged from Property Brothers Drew and Jonathan Scott mock-fighting over their award to Gala co-hosts Amanda Tapping and Robin Dunne calling each other evil twin and English MILF to Nancy Robertson and Ryan Robbins pitching a new comedy series to Emilie Ullerup re-enacting Angelina Jolie’s notorious one-leg Oscars pose to acting legend Gabrille Rose swearing on stage while presenting the final award to Sisters & Brothers for Best Feature Film.

It was a great way to let the public share in this celebration of artistic talent after a tough week, which had started with the official cancellation of homegrown sci-fi series Sanctuary, the most-recognized B.C. production by far with 18 Leo nominations going in. Sanctuary ended up winning four Leos for its fourth and final season, but only one on the night of the gala for a guest performance by Arctic Air’s Pascale Hutton, who sang beautifully and turned her head right around in the Glee-meets-The-Exorcist episode Fuge.

I’d hoped for a repeat of last year’s wild times on the red carpet outside the Hotel Vancouver on West Georgia Street, but organizers moved the red carpet inside the hotel this year to the conference floor and restricted access. Most of the nominees kept the party going after the red carpet to take a turn at the new Media Wall by the bar where I had a spot, but it was so dimly-lit I had to jack some light from the pro-photographers’ flashes. Here’s The Express’s Johanna Ward interviewing nominee and eventual winner Johannah Newmarch on the red carpet about her supporting performance in mockumentary Sunflower Hour. Ward later dropped by the Media Wall to wrangle nominees Ali Liebert from Bomb Girls and Emilie Ullerup from Arctic Air as a backdrop to her standup.

You can see the start of Emilie Ullerup’s one-leg Angelina homage and how the popular Cassini brothers photo-bombed the arrangement. That’s Frank on the left and John on the right. Frank Cassini later won a roar from the crowd and a Leo for his supporting performance on he Aboriginal People’s Television Network’s Blackstone,a big winner all round at the Leos, including Best Dramatic Series.

Busy Gala co-hosts Amanda Tapping and Robin Dunne from Sanctuary also graced the Media Wall (on learning that the Vancouver Sun photographer had left) giving us the opportunity to see this madcap duo in action, although Dunne kept his pants on this year, much to my disappointment. Here’s a photo of them behaving for the cameras.

And misbehaving.

Fans around the world later tweeted @LeoAwards begging for a photo on reports that Amanda Tapping changed partway through the ceremony to a red floor-length gown. And got one. [Update: the witty woman behind @LeoAwards is @AlisaLuke. Follow her.]

Sanctuary cast and creators seemed to be everywhere at the gala, with last year’s supporting performance winner Ryan Robbins (lycan Henry on the abnormal-friendly series) up for so many awards that I dubbed him the Vancouver equivalent of Meryl Streep on Twitter. Sporting his Hell-on-Wheels beard and fresh off a recurring role on Falling Skies, Robbins was nominated for his lead performance in Everything & Everyone as a failed actor (Ha!); his performance in short drama Suffer; and his lead performance as a bank robber on Marilyn — the one he won the Leo for. Here’s Robbins talking to fellow short drama nominee Ben Cotton as they wait to walk the red carpet and one of Robbins at the Media Wall with girlfriend Karyn Baltzer. Plus a link to a photo of him taking a big bite out of his Leo.

The very tall Christopher Heyerdahl, aka Sanctuary’s sasquatch Biggie who dies so heroically in the finale,  also garnered and won for his performance on another show, R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour. Here’s a photo of him — visiting from the fifth season set of True Blood – with fellow nominee Sara Canning.

Sara Canning, who co-stars in the upcoming Vancouver-set series Primeval: New World, may have been the most photographed woman at the Leos, with three of seventeen photographs on the Vancouver Sun website featuring her.

CBC’s Arctic Air had a big showing at the gala too. despite the absence of its main trio and showrunner. Bradley Stryker, nominated for his guest performance hijacking a plane, presented the first award of the evening. And Emilie Ullerup of one-leg-Angie-pose fame and fellow pilot Stephen Lobo had supporting performance nominations for their back-in-Yellowknife roommate hookup on the wonderfully-titled episode Vancouver is Such a Screwed-Up City. (See the photo below of Lobo chatting with his Continuum castmate Jennifer Spence and her husband/perennial Leo nominee and winner Benjamin Ratner, who won this year for his guest performance on Toronto series Flashpoint.)

Timothy Webber (in kilt below) and Carmen Moore garnered supporting perfromance nominations for a different Artic Air episode, CTVAC.

Here’s Carmen Moore (centre) posing with castmates from her other show Blackstone and then in a two-shot with Justin Rain.

Moore didn’t win for either her lead performance on Blackstone or her supporting performance on Arctic Air. Bomb Girls’ Meg Tilly pipped her for lead performance and Blackstone castmate Tantoo Cardinal took home the trophy for supporting performance. With Blackstone’s Steven Cree Molison winning for his lead performance that gave the Calgary-filmed series four big awards.

Cancelled-but-maybe-resurrected Vancouver-set Endgame wasn’t forgotten either. Star Shawn Doyle, who played Russian-chess-master-turned-sleuth Arkady, visited us at the Media Wall and David Frazee won the best directing award.

Comedy is a bit less incestuous than drama if only because there are far fewer shows filmed here, with an enormous vacuum left by CTV’s cancellation of Hiccups. Maybe that comedy series pitched by Hiccups star Nancy Robertson and Ryan Robbins could fill the gap? Brent Butt and wife Robertson both attended the gala where Hiccups won Best Comedic Series for its second and final season. Graphers chatted with the hometown comedy duo on their way in but they avoided the media hoopla, skipping the red carpet and the Media Wall entirely.

At least we still have teen sitcom Mr. Young to bring the funny. The entire cast was in attendance and thrilled to be at the Leos, especially Gig Morton (below) and Milo Shandel (one of the many I failed to photograph properly) both nominated for their performances. Even though R. L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour took home Best Youth/Children’s Series and Christopher Heyerdahl the only performance award, there’s always next year for Mr. Young.

In the realm of feature film, Sisters & Brothers won six of the awards, but who had more fun than the cast of puppets and porn mockumentary Sunflower Hour? Lead performance nominee Patrick Gilmore (centre) entertained Twitter with his hilarious and debauched twist on a celeb’s getting-ready diary, which incuded a photo taken by Ben Cotton (left) of Gilmore drinking champagne and signing grapher Justin’s chest on arrival at the Leos. Supporting performance nominee Peter Dew the pornmeister rounds out the trio on the right.

And here’s fellow puppeteer Kacey Rohl below.

Rohl also played a bratty teen to nominated film Mom Gabrielle Rose (below) in Sisters & Brothers. But only Rose has appeared in each of Carl Bessai’s trilogy of films about dysfunctional Vancouver families, along with nominated Benjamin Ratner, so it’s fitting that they presented the last award of the evening to the film they both collaborated on. Amanda Crew ended up winning for best lead performance and Tom Scholte best supporting performance of the eight leading and supporting performance nominations racked up by the cast. Essentially they were competing against themselves. No wonder Bessai dedicated his Best Directing award to his actors.

It turned out to be a great year for Vancouver playing itself despite cancellations and other setbacks.

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.

Two months later, I got a chance to ask three of the Arctic Air cast, in an interview ahead of the Vancouver season preview. if Kevin McNulty’s absence meant Mel didn’t survive the season finale. “This is the Adam Beach Show” quipped Beach, intimating McNulty had gotten too big for his boots. But Beach is joking. Only the writers know what will happen in season two’s thirteen episodes next year. I did volunteer how much I’d enjoyed Beach punching Brian Markinson’s sleezy mogul Ronnie Deardon in the bar after one-too-many a-hole remarks by Deardon. And later when Aleks Paunovic’s prospector Jim McAlister single-handedly took on a group of thugs. Beach says Paunovic’s nickname on set is the “Griz”. A question about who’s left for Leah Gibson’s hotel receptionist Candi to sleep with in season two got some laughs, too. Pascale Hutton opined that Candi might have run out of options in Yellowknife.

When asked what they enjoyed most about the first season, though, the answer was quick — CBC’s support. It really was an unprecedented rollout for a Canadian drama series, like nothing we’ve ever seen before in this country, and the backing continues. Unfortunately Adam Beach and setmance girlfriend Leah Gibson had a previous engagement so they couldn’t stick around for the presentation, to George Stroumboulopoulos’s surprise. He’d expected both Beach and Hutton to be on stage against that beautiful backdrop of the far north, as they were in Toronto.

It’s unlikely Adam Beach or Kevin McNulty will show at the Leo Awards this Saturday night at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver either. Arctic Air has nine nominations, including one for Best Dramatic Series, but none for the performances of the main trio (Pascale Hutton got a separate performance nomination for The-Exorcist-meets-Glee musical episode of Sanctuary). I am happy that screenwriter Susin Nielsen is nominated for the only episode actually set in our city, the wonderfully-titled “Vancouver is Such a Screwed-Up City”, about Bobby going south with Mel and Krista to buy a new plane in Vancouver and finding his old life here coming back to haunt him. Among supporting cast, Stephen Lobo and Emilie Ullerup are both nominated for their back-in-Yellowknife roommate hookup in this episode, as they should be. Lobo’s giddy face as Dev-after-sex is a wonder. Carmen Moore and Timothy Webber are nominated for a different episode, CTVAC, about Bobby putting lives at risk to find out how his father died. And two guest actors, Bradley Stryker and Luke Camilleri, are nominated for their work hijacking an Arctic Air flight. Add a well-deserved picture editing nomination for Lara Mazur for the season finale and that makes nine.

UPDATE: Susin Nielsen won the Leo Award for best screenwriting for the set-in-our-city episode, Vancouver is Such a Screwed-up City. And that was it for Arctic Air at this year’s Leos (Pascale Hutton did win a Leo for her guest appearance on Sanctuary).

If you follow either of them on Twitter or tracked their progress at Comic-Con last year you’ll know that Amanda Tapping and Robin Dunne are a madcap comedy duo off screen.

The other big TV series represented at this year’s Leos is CBC’s northern adventure series Arctic Air with nine nominations. Adam Beach wasn’t nominated for his lead performance but he’s probably not considered a B.C. actor.  I was surprised though not to see Pascale Hutton or Kevin McNulty’s names on the list for Arctic Air, but pleased by the supporting performance nominations for Stephen Lobo and Emilie Ullerup  plus a writing nomination for the one episode that was actually set here, the wonderfully-titled Vancouver is Such a Screwed Up City (Tim Webber and Carmen Moore got supporting performance nominations for the episode CTVAK).

The thing that made me happiest though is reborn-on-Hulu but cancelled-on-Showcase Endgame getting a dramatic series nomination for its production filmed mainly in the Westin Bayshore Hotel in Vancouver. Various B.C. actors Warren Christie (Alphas), Laura Mennell (Alphas), Erin Karpluk (Being Erica) and Meg Tilly (Bomb Girls) also got lead performance nominations for their productions filmed in Toronto, while Carmen Moore (Blackstone) got a lead performance nomination for her production filmed in Calgary. And there were other nominations for B.C. crew and actors on American productions filmed here, such as a guest performance nomination for Keegan Conner Trcy as the Blue Fairy/Mother Superior on Once Upon a Time and a supporting performance nomination for Brandon Jay McLaren for his role as Rosie’s teacher and suspect in her death on The Killing.

And in the youth or children’s drama category, The Haunting Hour is squaring off against multi-camera sitcom Mr. Young. I’m thrilled to see the talented Gig Morton and Milo Shandel get nominated for their lead performances on Mr. Young.

And of course Brent Butt and Nancy Robertson’s cancelled-on-CTV grownup comedy Hiccups is expected to clean up in its music, comedy or variety series category as it did last year.

Wow. The CBC is kicking simulcast-American-show butt this winter with its made-for-Canadians-by-Canadians dramas, comedies, unscripted and current affairs programs, led by set-in-Yellowknife aerial adventure series Arctic Air and set-in-St. John’s father-and-son private detective series Republic of Doyle. Both dramas premiered in the Million-Canadian-Viewers-Plus Club earlier this month and remain there after three episodes apiece, although Arctic Air dipped below a million viewers for its second outing before climbing back up.

While nothing is going to touch this country’s love for CTV’s simulcast of American comedy hit The Big Bang Theory, CBC shows like Dragons’ Den, the Rick Mercer Report, new comedy series Mr. D. and a rejuvenated Marketplace have all hit the Million-Plus Club and are winning or placing well in their time blocks. As is Global’s new hit mini-series Bomb Girls, filmed in Toronto. So what happened to CTV, proud home of Corner Gas, during this resurgence of homegrown shows? Well our most financially-successful Canadian TV network has no Canadian dramas or comedies on its prime time 2011-12 schedule so far although it remains a giant in covering Canadian news and sports.

Why are CBC’s dramas so popular this winter? Just as The Beachcombers represented B.C.’s West Coast to the world for almost twenty years, Arctic Air and Republic of Doyle showcase a specific region of Canada with adventure and humour, plus something new — sexiness. Feel free to argue, but Bruno Gerussi with his giant medallion on his overly hairy chest on The Beachcombers did not exude sexiness like today’s CBC leading men — Adam Beach of Arctic Air and Allan Hawco of Republic of Doyle.

Adam Beach has said he likes that the Arctic Air creators made his character Bobby Martin a “player”, especially because — in a sweet twist — Bobby’s first hookup on returning to Yellowknife is Frontier Hotel receptionist Candi played by Leah Gibson, who became his real-life girlfriend. Gibson is on Beach’s right in the photo below (the pair even kissed for the cameras). And Allan Hawco has been juggling dozens of women for two seasons and counting as swaggering Jake Doyle on Republic of Doyle in Newfoundland. Last week’s episode ended with his character in a hot kiss with his remarried ex-wife.

I was fortunate to be invited by the CBC to the red carpet premiere of Arctic Air at the Vogue Theatre on January 10th and an Actors Studio-style session at the Vancouver Film School with Republic of Doyle star and Newfoundland native Allan Hawco a week later.

It all began late last November when I got the chance to meet the stars of CBC’s 2012 Winter Season out in Aldergrove and go on a guided tour of the Arctic Air set. I opted out of one-on-one interviews with stars from Little Mosque on the Praire, Republic of Doyle, Mr. D and Redemption Inc. because my YVR shoots series is about TV shows and movies that film here. I did write about and photograph Arctic Air’s interior sets in Aldergrove for my post Vancouver as Yellowknife. And I did make an exception for Marketplace, chatting briefly with Vancouver-based host Erica Johnson and her Toronto-based co-host Tom Harrington (who joined last year and is someone I know slightly from my time as a CBC news producer) about the amazing resurgence of this 39-year-old investigative program.

But of all CBC’s Winter Season shows it’s Arctic Air which got the big promotional push for its January 10th launch. Everywhere I went over the holidays I saw bus stop ads, billboards, TV and movie theatre teasers and Beach seemed to be a permanent guest on The National ahead of the premiere. CBC later sent me an e-vite for the red-carpet premiere screening at the Vogue Theatre on Granville Street. While it’s common for American TV networks to throw big premiere screenings, it’s pretty much unprecedented for Canadian shows to get a red carpet rollout with stars, cameras, fans and other celebrity hoopla.

Asked to arrive before 6:30 p.m., I showed up unfashionably early to take photos of the lit-up theatre and a lineup stretching north on Granville Street. Inside the lobby, I spied rows and rows of CBC Live popcorn boxes and then found a spot in the small media area, squeezed in beside the enterainment media and late-arriving news photographers. CBC asked us to “play nice”, which basically meant giving way to the pros. Fine by me. All I needed was a vantage to sneak a few photos and live-tweet the red-carpet event on #CBCPremiereVan, with tweets about the lineup, the popcorn boxes and some arriving local celebrities like actor Steve Bacic. A combination of Twitter jail and Auto correct slowed me down but I did manage to tweet about the roar of “Woo Hoos” greeting Adam Beach outside the theatre, as he stepped out of a black limousine with co-stars Pascale Hutton and Kevin McNulty.

]]> http://yvrshoots.com/2012/03/yvrshoots-series-cbc-dramas-arctic-air-republic-of-doyle-soar.html/feed 0 http://yvrshoots.com/2012/03/yvrshoots-series-vancouver-as-yellowknife-for-cbcs-arctic-air.html http://yvrshoots.com/2012/03/yvrshoots-series-vancouver-as-yellowknife-for-cbcs-arctic-air.html#comments Sun, 18 Mar 2012 18:33:17 +0000 yvrshoots http://yvrshoots.com/?p=323 Published December 2, 2011 on Vancouver is Awesome

Vancouver as Yellowknife. That’s a first. Upcoming CBC adventure series Arctic Air works on two episodes at a time, filming the exteriors in Yellowknife for a week and the interiors on Vancouver sets for two weeks. Walk into these sets out in Aldergrove and you’ll feel like you’re in real-life Yellowknife institutions like Bullock’s Bistro and The Explorer Hotel, or flying in a cramped, ramshackle Buffalo Air DC3.

Years ago, I experienced all three: flying up to Yellowknife on a prop plane with someone’s household goods in the back; staying in The Explorer (long before Will & Kate made it famous); and walking very quickly in sub-zero temperatures down the hill to Bullock’s Bistro, where everyone signs their name — on walls, on tables and on the bar.

Is this the CBC’s next Beachcombers? Adam Beach, whose American credits include big feature films like Cowboys and Aliens and Flags of our Fathers, and Pascale Hutton, who sang beautifully on Sanctuary’s Glee-meets-The Exorcist episode last week, hope their new series will represent Canada’s North to the world as well as The Beachcombers did with the West Coast. Although perhaps not for as long. Beach looked taken aback at the thought of matching The Beachcombers record of nineteen seasons. In Arctic Air’s 10-episode first season debuting on January 10th, Beach is the headstrong son of the now-dead partner of a renegade prop airline, who after a decade down south returns to Yellowknife where he reunites with his childhood friend Hutton, whose TV father Kevin McNulty is the very much-alive and cantankerous other partner of this dysfunctional two-family business. The fourth lead has to be the place itself. “Yellownife is another member of our cast,” Hutton told me.

Since Arctic Air owes its inception to the success of documentary series Ice Pilots NWT, I expected filming of the new drama series to be done up north too. CBC Live in Vancouver at the end of September seemed like my only opportunity to see the show’s star Adam Beach.

Of course I didn’t take into account the harsh conditions of filming in the far north, where frozen camera lenses crack in the extreme cold and cast and crew can get lost in the whiteout of a blizzard. Turns out, Arctic Air is doing the bulk of its filming here, beginning right after Labour Day and scheduled to end in early January. People have spotted their APL production signs at the Pitt Meadows and Langley airports, as well as Fort Langley and in Coquitlam near the Lougheed Mall. Last week Arctic Air even made an unexpected trip downtown when it needed Vancouver to be Vancouver at a two-day shoot at the Woodwards’ Redevelopment complex in Gastown. The prop Vanny’s cab parked in the courtyard is a bit of an anomoly in our cityof hybrid taxis.

Adam Beach and Pascale Hutton did a dimly-lit exterior scene of them entering SFU’s Goldcorp Centre for the Performing Arts for the aptly-titled episode, Vancouver is Such a Screwed Up City. The show’s RED cameras will capture it perfectly in the rainy gloom of that night where mine didn’t.

Arctic Air executive producer Gary Harvey later told me how thrilled the cast was to be downtown for once and not an hour’s drive away in Aldergrove where the permanent sets are. I got to experience that lengthy drive myself this Tuesday, albeit on a black luxury bus packed with media of all types heading out for a set tour.

It began in the DC-3 fuselage, with too many of us crammed in to even have a hope of hearing what Harvey, Beach and Hutton had to say. Behind me, Marketplace host Erica Johnson pronounced the aircraft unsafe, getting a big laugh. Clearly the DC-3, purchased in the U.S., hadn’t been airborne for years but that doesn’t matter for on-the-ground green-screen flying scenes. A removeable cockpit is rolled away and green screens put in front of the actors who must pretend to know the fine art of flying a DC-3. Ahead of filming, cast did fly with real-life Buffalo Air pilots to get an idea what it’s like navigating those cold, clear northern skies, but the idea of Beach piloting a real prop plane got another laugh from Hutton.

That’s Leah Gibson, who plays Candy from the hotel reception desk and is Adam Beach’s real-life girlfriend, peeking through the media throng. Next up on the tour, Bullock’s Bar — a mu