Parry Sound, get ready for your close up.
Months after filming wrapped up Northern Rescue is about to make its Canadian and worldwide debut on Friday.
The show is going to be launched exclusively on CBC’s new digital platform, GEM available through a downloadable app, and on Netflix in the rest of the world.
Showrunner and executive producer David Cormican says he is like an expectant father.
“I am definitely the nervous dad in the waiting room right now as we wait for Northern Rescue to hit streaming audiences worldwide,” he laughs.
Northern Rescue features star Billy Baldwin as a recently widowed man who brings his family to the fictional town of Turtle Island Bay to run a rescue station.
It filmed last spring and summer and Cormican says with the show translated to 27 different languages there will be international exposure for Parry Sound.
“When we landed in town we had our original thoughts in terms of where we would shoot certain scenes,” he explains. “But the more we sort of got in there, the more we were all discovering on our weekends off, we found this trail here or that location there. We said, ‘you know what, let’s start moving the scenes outside because everywhere we plunked the camera down in Parry Sound the camera loved it.’ ”
Because it is not going to be on regular broadcast television, Cormican will not get ratings information back, but he says the shows broadcast partners will get a real sense if audiences like the show through the metrics received from downloads.
“Now it’s direct, attributable, everything is countable, verifiable,” he says. “We don’t get access to those numbers from our streaming partners but they certainly do and they closely monitor that.”
Cormican will also get anecdotal feedback about what episodes, storylines or characters are showing well.
“In between seasons we will have a chance to pivot if necessary or carry down a similar path if certain things are working really well,” Cormican contends.
The real proof of success will come in late April or May if there is an order for more episodes.
The show may be broadcast later this summer on CBC as well.