Trenna Keating and Gord Rand on the set of CARDINAL. — Keating is Isla McNeil in the film AWAY HOME, written & directed by Jana Stackhouse, which had its first screening at the Ryerson University Film Festival in Toronto on 6 May.
Trenna Keating (Felicia Brand, the attorney for CoreLactic Industries in DARK MATTER Episode 2.1) is Kristin Baldwin in the CTV crime drama CARDINAL, which tells the story of two detectives, John Cardinal (played by Billy Campbell) and his partner Lise Delorme (Karine Vanasse), who determine that a serial killer is in their midst after a girl’s body is found frozen in ice. The tale, which is based on the novel Forty Words for Sorrow by Giles Blunt, is set in a place called Algonquin Bay (a thinly disguised version of North Bay, Ontario, where Blunt grew up) and was, in fact, filmed in and around North Bay and Sudbury. All eight first season episodes of the critically acclaimied series will be available to stream in the US on Hulu on 16 June. A trailer is available on YouTube. CTV has renewed CARDINAL for two more seasons.
Melanie Liburd (Nyx Harper) will be Alexis in GYPSY, which will follow Manhattan therapist Jean Holloway (Naomi Watts) as she begins to develop inappropriately intimate relationships with people in her patients’ lives. Six of the ten episodes will be directed by women, two each by Sam Taylor-Johnson, Victoria Mahoney, and Coky Ciedroyc. Created by Lisa Rubin, GYPSY premieres 30 June on Netflix.
Kirstin Rae Hinton as Sadie Hopkins,
and Richard Davis as her son Finn in MURDOCH MYSTERIES episode 7.9 “A Midnight Train to Kingston”. The episode can be streamed on Netflix (US).
Kirstin Rae Hinton, (The Android’s diagnostic double at the end of Season One) will be Grace’s mother in ALIAS GRACE, a six-episode series based on the 1996 novel by Margaret Atwood (which was in turn based on the true story of Grace Marks, a housemaid and immigrant from Ireland imprisoned in 1843 for the murder of her employer and his housekeeper). A decade after her conviction, the fictional Dr. Simon Jordan tries to help Grace (Sarah Gadon) recall her past. (Grace became one of the most notorious women of 1840s Canada for her alleged role in the double murder, and was eventually exonerated after 30 years in jail.) Margaret Atwood will make a cameo appearance as a “disapproving lady in church“. Written by Sarah Polley and directed by Mary Harron, ALIAS GRACE will be broadcast later this year on CBC in Canada and on Netflix elsewhere.
Yvonne Strahovski, Amanda Brugel, and Margaret Atwood. Brugel is Faith in the TV movie SOMETIMES THE GOOD KILL, which will next air on 13 May at 8/7c on Lifetime
Amanda Brugel (Keeley in the DARK MATTER pilot) is Rita, one of two domestic servants assigned to the Commander’s household in THE HANDMAID’S TALE, a science fiction drama based on the 1985 Margaret Atwood novel of the same name. It takes place in an alternate USA, one which has been transformed into a totalitarian theocracy and renamed Gilead. Women’s rights have been taken away and a class system imposed forcing some women to bear children for powerful men and their infertile wives. Atwood has a cameo in the first episode. (She gets to slap Elisabeth Moss.) New episodes of THE HANDMAID’S TALE happen Wednesdays on HULU in the US (Episode five aired on 10 May). In Canada the show is seen on BravoTV Sundays at 9/8c. (Episode three aired on 7 May.) THE HANDMAID’S TALE is the most popular show in the history of HULU, and has been renewed for a second season.
Showrunner Joe Mallozzi‘s first live-action production was STUDENT BODIES, a high school comedy that ran on FOX and YTV from 1997 to 1999. A 20th anniversary reunion special is in the early planning stages. Fans of the show who would like to see this happen should go to the Student Bodies 20th Anniversary Facebook page and let them know.