TV Series Based in Nelson
Countless fans of Nelson can imagine a homegrown TV show in our beloved backyard - a certain version of Portlandia to bring our stranger than fiction bohemian city and all its quirky characters to the screen. The time has come for Southern Interior to be born. Watershed Productions got the ball rolling with a successful application to Creative BC's Domestic Picture Fund alongside top up funding from Canadian Media Producers Association - CMPA. We worked on a pitch deck (Jon Ramos's awesome design) and assembled the writing team. Sioux Browning came on as the Story Editor to work with Amy Bohigian, show Creator, to give the show a shape and a voice. Creative BC's profile of Showrunner, Amy Bohigian, can be found here in their featured online BC Creates page.
Then, with a Major Project Grant from Columbia Kootenay Cultural Alliance, the writing team stepped in the writer's room and started writing sketches in the Fall of 2022. Auditions for the Demo Reel cast were held around the same time with unprecedented interest from the acting community. The featured talent in our Demo Reel bring a mix of Second City comedy, TV acting and professional stage careers to Southern Interior. We landed distribution with Shaftesburv, a legacy media company based in Toronto and we're thrilled to have Gregory Mackenzie, veteran of TV and film, as our Producer for the series. Moving into 2024, Southern Interior is officially moving from development into pre-production after having been selected as one of the ten Bell Fund recipients across Canada.