TORONTO – Cameras started rolling on innovative Canadian independent production company, Pier 21 Films’, comedy pilot based on the popular website The Beaverton, for The Comedy Network after network executives came to the realization that they “know what’s good for them.”
The television adaptation, a satirical news broadcast of fabricated weekly events, embodies the website’s reputation for biting satire, caustic wit, and an irreverent disregard for both Canadian institutions and broadcast executives’ safety.
Bell Media Senior Vice-President, Independent Production, Corrie Coe is rumored to have said, “Of course, the creators of The Beaverton would never stoop to physical violence,” in an interview from behind the eight inches of her panic room. “It’s just you can never be too careful.”
Although Comedy Network executives Sarah Fowlie and Bill Lundy denied that the Yakuza-style tattoo with repeating scorpion motif covering Executive Producer Laszlo Barna’s entire body had anything to do with their decision to commission the pilot, they did tell members of the press that “he made us laugh. Mostly nervous laughter. But a laugh, nonetheless.”
Co-Executive Producer Jeff Detsky (Call Me Fitz, Seed) was quick to implicate his co-creators Beaverton website Editor-in-chief Luke Gordon Field and Senior Editors Jacob Duarte Spiel and Alexander Saxton as “the kind of co-conspirators anyone would be happy to roll over on if this thing goes to trial.”
Executive Producer Melissa Williamson, Producer Paula Devonshire and Director Henry Sarwer-Foner (The Rick Mercer Report, Living in Your Car) are said to be part of the network’s decision to greenlight the pilot, although no one would corroborate that point.
Co-anchors and comedians Emma Hunter (Mr. D, Just for Laughs) and Miguel Rivas (Meet the Family) are reportedly “excited” to be handcuffed to a radiator with their correspondents Marilla Wex, Aisha Alfa, Donavon Stinson and Dave Barclay, but this could not be confirmed, presumably because cell phone reception is spotty inside the basement cellar in which the cast currently resides.
At press time, Senior Vice-President, Specialty and Pay, Bell Media Tracey Pearce could not be reached for comment, though her thumbs are reported to be healing nicely.
