Southern Interior Origin Story

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 Producer’s Association. The team 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. Then, with a Major Project Grant from Columbia Kootenay Cultural Alliance, the writing team of Sioux Browning, Jackie Atkins, Lucas Myers, Michelle Hart, Georgia Hamilton, Jon Ramos, Deryn Collier and Amy Bohigian stepped in the writer’s room and started writing sketches. The result was many laughs about what makes Nelson unique and several sketches emerged from those 4 days locked in a room together. From mounds of sticky notes and the bowels of Writer Duet we polished the pilot episode, which is currently making the rounds with industry folks. Auditions for the cast were held last fall with unprecedented interest from the acting community here and way beyond. We landed a cast of talented performers (official announcement forthcoming) who bring a mix of Second City comedy, TV acting and professional stage careers to Southern Interior. Our cast and crew is hard at work creating a demo reel as part of our bid for production funding. In the meantime, we’ve landed distribution with a well known Canadian media company (official announcement also forthcoming.) We’re thrilled to name Mosaic Entertainment, industry veterans in the comedy space based in Vancouver, as our production partners for that upcoming phase of the show. We hope that this is just the beginning of making these dreams appear on a screen near you!