The claim of numerous viewers complaining does not surprise me. Speaking out against evil is something their church encourages. When the church’s commercial television station is the means of distribution of the evil it probably wouldn’t take many complaints to get them to remove the programme but it would likely also generate a lot of complaints. If you haven’t witnessed or experienced that kind of conditioning it is hard to really understand.

I don’t think NBC creating their own new O&O in SLC would change the complaints. It would mean the station’s ownership would be less inclined to give in to the complaints of viewers. At the same time such a station could end up alienating its core audience.

Not impressed with affil either, I do hope NBC chooses to not renew their contract with the station, I would certainly be annoyed to lose Hannibal if I lived in SLC. Another benefit of O&O stations it appears.

Yes it is.

Anyway, when they say different things and the various broadcasters produce press releases with apparently contradictory information what the fuck is anyone to make of it. It has succeeded in turning me off of this show and the works of both Graeme and John. If they can’t get their stories straight why the hell should i not think they stole it from some third guy whose name will pop up 4 months from now!

I already detest the generic setting concept. Nigh all the shows i follow have specific settings and are usually filmed on location rather than in suburban-Atlanta-pretending-to-be-New-Jersey. If Fitz weren’t my fantasy bad-boy i probably wouldn’t watch Call Me Fitz either. I kinda got into it before the generic setting became obvious. It is supposed to be a Canadian show but it is sooooooooo full of Americanisms that there really is no option but admission or denial and the writers of the show have gone the denial route. If a show needs to pretend to be nowhere so that some can assume it is in the USA then it is a show i don’t want to see. It tells me the creators have a fundamental disrespect for our country or they have sold out to corporate American interests and they offend me either way. When two Canadian guys create a show and set it in some ambiguous fictional place that is supposed to be not-Middle-Earth i do usually just ignore it for the crap it inherently is. I was not aware of what was done with Orphan Black and so i let myself be interested. If i had just watched the trailers which spoiled things like so many others had done i probably would have noticed it long ago and the words “Orphan Black” would not have been found on this domain.

About the only thing that might have me watch Orphan Black now is to chronicle the varying ambiguity of the setting. That would assume i ever feel even that much inclined to watch it and could even be bothered.

Why isn’t there Generica Fire on NBC or Generica Hope or The Generica Code or TNT’s revival of Generica or TNT’s Genericaland or Generican Dad or Hart Of Generica or Generica Five-0 or NCIS: Generica (please don’t confuse that for my wanting the NCIS Red show to be made) or Generica’s Next Top Model or Made In Generica or Generica Country or Generica 1-8-7 or Law & Order: Generica. When the show is American it is not ambiguously set; though the location is not always in the title it is often NYC or LA. When the show is Canadian the expectation is that it be made ambiguous to satisfy foreign interests. If ever there were an example of selling out….

Examples of shows that aren’t ashamed of where they come from and freely mention Canadian places and events include rookie blue, the eleventh hour, Republic Of Doyle, godiva’s, cra$h & burn, this is wonderland, and Continuum. Two of those shows are produced by Ilana Frank, two of them created by Malcolm MacRury, two of them are from famous Canadian playwrights, and one of them is from a Brit who grew up in Canada and had moved to the US.

I would rather a Canadian tv show creator retain the integrity of their show than sacrifice it for the American market. Suppose you like Murdoch Mysteries. Imagine what would have been done to it if BBC America had picked it up. The British company UKTV, which ironically is also a subsidiary of BBC Worldwide, hasn’t demanded things like obscure settings or illogical casting. For a few years they got first showing and an episode was actually set and made in the UK. That seems pretty reasonable. It really is an American thing to insist non-American shows be set in Anytown, USA. It saddens me to learn such was done with Orphan Black because i was interested in the show prior to reading that article in The Globe And Mail which was meant to sing the praises of the show and others like it.

How do you want me to take you seriously when you make things up? That’s not true at all. They’ve been conceiving this show together for years and years, first as a feature film. Here’s a quite from John Fawcett on Twitchfilm.com:
“John Fawcett: You know, it started back … Graeme and I have known each other for a long time and a good while back we were working together on a little TV movie that we were kind of thrown together on. It wasn’t anything that we had come up with ourselves, it was a gig for somebody else. But we were finally working together in a professional way so we started talking about other things that we might want to do together.

I have always been into genre stuff, Graeme not so much. I had a bunch of ideas and I kept pitching him stuff that he wouldn’t go for. They just weren’t his thing. But I had this very basic idea, basically the opening scene of Orphan Black. A girl gets off a train and sees herself across the platform, her doppelganger, commit suicide in front of a train. And the girl steals her identity. I went, “Wouldn’t this be cool?” And I pitched that to Graeme to try and get him interested. As soon as you pitch that opening, the opening of the pilot, it’s cool. It makes you ask, “What is this?” And he was into that.

The emphasis at first was to make a feature film out of it, but we worked on that for a couple years and just couldn’t crack it. We couldn’t figure out what it was as a film. We knew it was clones but we couldn’t figure out what the answer was, especially not in a two, two and a half hour format. And so it languished for a while until Graeme came to me in 2008 and said, “Hey, I’ve been thinking about this. Maybe we should do it as a TV series, instead.” And I was open to that, for sure. My priorities had shifted a little bit, from making feature films to television, because in the last decade television had just completely changed.” http://twitchfilm.com/2013/03/orphan-black-creators-john-fawcett-and-graeme-manson-talk-origins-and-clones.html

Anyway, I’m pretty sure they feel like setting it in “Generica” is a small price to pay for the other creative freedoms and publicity BBC America’s participation has given them. Trust me, i’d rather see Canadian show like Orphan Black not hide their setting either, but that’s not really what we’re discussing here.

“It’s meant to be Generica,” says Mason. “It’s part of the price you pay for this kind of co-production.” http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/television/how-canada-is-becoming-the-sci-fi-nation/article11157191/?page=all

If BBC America were allowing Messrs Manson and Fawcett to make the show they wanted it wouldn’t be a generic setting. That is of course unless you assume the two Canadian men were seeking to make a show in Toronto that was overtly set in the USA and it was Bell Media who demanded the concessions that the show not be explicitly set in the USA. If you look at Bell Media’s history they love generic settings and prefer their own shows be set in the USA and even thought of as American shows they picked up rather than commissioned so i doubt Bell would be insisting they make it generic if the creators and BBC America were all in favour of an American setting. Can you say ‘Being Human’, ‘Skins’, or ‘Sanctuary’?

Graeme Manson created the show and BBC America even admits so. John Fawcett came in afterward to tweak and revise and whatevers to get co-creator status. I therefore take Mr Manson’s statements on origin to be inherently more accurate as he is most intimately familiar with the origin of the show.

There remains the matter of Bell Media announcing the commissioning of the series at the Banff World Media Festival on 12 June 2012 and BBC America waiting a fortnight before declaring their interest and intents. It could be an elaborate rouse or it could really be that Bell Media did indeed come first and John Fawcett didn’t know. As silly as it seems to say the co-creator didn’t know his show had received a 10 episode commissioning the timeline and that quote from him does suggest just that.

Bell press release, 12 June 2012:
http://bellmediapr.ca/space/releases/release.asp?id=15230&num=3&yyyy=2012

BBCA press release, 26 June 2012:
http://press.bbcamerica.com/press-release.jsp?id=78678

Subsequent press releases from Bell mention that BBCA has picked it up and tossed enough cash at it to be called a producer.

http://bellmediapr.ca/space/releases/release.asp?id=15558&yyyy=2012
http://bellmediapr.ca/space/releases/release.asp?id=15694&yyyy=2012
http://bellmediapr.ca/space/releases/release.asp?id=16126&yyyy=2013

Either the time line established by the press releases is a bold collection of lies or John Fawcett is wrong. With Temple Street being the one making the show it was expected that BBCA would pick up the show since both are at least in part owned by the same parent company who surprise-surprise is distributing the show internationally. They wouldn’t have had BBCA without Temple Street being the production company. They took it to Banff to find domestic and foreign distribution. Bell picked up domestic for 10 episodes. If John Fawcett is telling the truth about BBCA being the one to actually commission the series why did it take BBCA a fortnight after Bell’s announcement to say BOO about the show?

Mr Fawcett’s claims just do not make sense except if it was a conspiracy to allow Bell the announcement of commissioning when Bell wasn’t the actual commissioner.

Jessica, that’s all completely incorrect. This is a quote from ORPHAN BLACK co-creator John Fawcett:
“I mean, we had a very difficult time getting ORPHAN BLACK made because nobody wanted to make a serialized show. BBC America was really honestly the first network that came to us and said, “Not only do we love your show, we would make a serialized show with you. We want you to make the show you want to make.” And it was their love and belief in ORPHAN BLACK that allowed us to kick things off. We’re Canadians and we didn’t even have a Canadian distributor or network at the time. We had BBC America. It was really their love and support for it that allowed the show to become a reality.” More of his interview can be found here: http://www.thetvaddict.com/2013/04/06/orphan-black-scoop-straight-talk-from-star-tatiana-maslany-and-executive-producer-john-fawcett/

I’ll address the other stuff in your post some other time.

Having seen what happened when NBC pulled the episode of The Black Donnellys “God Is A Comedian Playing To An Audience Afraid To Laugh” a few years ago and more recently delayed the two episodes of Haven i have little tolerance for it happening this week with Hannibal, especially given the reason for it.

With The Black Donnellys it was testing the limits of acceptable content and NBC decided it was over the line. It is pretty simple and some will disagree.

With Haven the episode did involve a school; it is a sci-fi cop show so chances are someone would be killed, duh! It otherwise bore no resemblance to the mass murder in Connecticut. It was however already done post-production at the time. Haven scored big time in the free publicity as it wasn’t just the US or US+Canada but rather a planetary delay in broadcast which had people from all over hyping it for weeks.

With Hannibal it is an entirely different story. Child soldiers existed before the episode was written and the mass murder in Connecticut happened two months before filming wrapped on the season yet he chose to do nothing until days before broadcast. Whether intended or not the net result is free publicity for his show as people discuss why an episode of Hannibal won’t be broadcast in US+Canada.

“[...]involving a bombing and in it’s place the 103rd episode[...]”

It’s should be its. Just a little something.

Get your facts right. It was commissioned for a 10 episode season BEFORE that nasty BBC America ever entered the picture. That right there makes it NOT a BBC America original series. It simply does not originate with BBC America in any literal or twisted meaning of the word. Canadian television does not NEED the asshole Americans or their money. It is when the asshole Americans get involved that the quality is stripped and the ambiguity enhanced and fans of Canadian television feel like they are watching another fucking annoying American import.

I do concede that there are more than a few Canadians in the industry who get their rocks off on intentionally making things ambiguous with the explicit intent to pillage all the Canadian funding sources they can whilst crafting their shows to pass as American shit. That really is despicable.

But look at the newer trend of Americans taking their projects north of the border and having them made by Canadian companies. You don’t see any reciprocal concessions being made that have Copper set in Toronto or Hell On Wheels being about the building of the railroads in Canada. The creators of both shows had to turn to Canadian production companies to get the shows made. Neither of those shows would have been made if not for the Canadian companies. One of those little secrets burried deep in the history of the world is that CSI was originally a majority Canadian owned/produced show. Over the years the public faces of CBS have gradually re-written the public record of the origin. It wasn’t until 2007 when Alliance Atlantis closed up shop and sold most of their assets to CanWest Media in Canada that CBS finally gained majority ownership (actually sole ownership) of CSI. The great CSI franchise had to turn to Canadian production company, who in turn travelled to the USA, to get the show made and then continued to do so for another 7 years. So don’t just flippantly say Orphan Black couldn’t be made in Canada without some Americans holding our hands.

The idea of Canadian currency being used in the USA is ridiculous and no insane director would allow it because even some vending machines are designed to reject it. Canadian currency just isn’t worth the paper it is printed on if you are in the USA. When currency appears in Canadian shows it could be real Canadian currency, real American currency, sometimes even Euros or Pounds Sterling, or something that somewhat looks like any of those. That you can’t tell what it is (or is suppose to be a facsimile of) is not really an indication in favour of the anti-Canada arguement.

In American tv shows often there is nothing else in the world for people to travel to or from. That is to say the edge of the world is synonymous with the border of the USA. It sounds silly but sometime actually watch with the intent to find mention of places foreign. It is a rare thing for an American show to acknowledge Canada or Mexico without blaming either for drug smuggling or terrorists. Canadian shows will acknowledge Cleveland or Miami or Boston or London or Vancouver as real places.

From what i have so far seen and read it is pretty clear that the creator is an asshole who is catering to BBC America on the surface whilst blatantly setting the show in Toronto for those who realise all the little references are to actual real things and places. It is very annoying. It is why i probably won’t watch episode 4. British shows don’t pretend to be American. Irish shows don’t pretend to be British. American shows don’t pretend to be Canadian. So, why the fuck are Canadian shows needing to pretend to be American? Any Canadian show that feels it has to pretend to be American is inherently not worth it. It shows a fundamental disrespect for everything – crew, tax credits, audience, just everything.

That bloke you directed me to shares a sentiment very much like mine but i don’t censor myself. You might want to re-read that article you link to, and be sure you read the whole article. It basically has a go at Linda Stasi and every other American critic for their ignorance and assumptions and politely rips the people behind Orphan Black into tiny little fucking pieces of shit for hiding the origin of the show and pandering to real or perceived American demands.

Just this evening i watched the finale of Flashpoint and though they used the Air Canada Centre (hockey arena) and said it was Fletcher Stadium (Fletcher’s Fields is a real rugby complex in Markham) they did not at all hide the fact the show is set in Toronto. I can understand why no real university was willing to be associated with such a character and so a fake university was named. When they blew up city hall there was that nice on screen text giving the location and time which said the scene was Toronto City Hall. They probably couldn’t get clearance to name the ACC or the baseball stadium next door because they are owned by Rogers, a rival media conglomerate, and would Air Canada really want to in any way associate itself with a bombing? Flashpoint started off somewhat like Orphan Black did with the ambiguity. The difference is that people just assumed Flashpoint was set somewhere in the USA because CBS just did not broadcast Canadian shows whereas with Orphan Black there is overt and intentional misdirection which to some will be seen as validation of a setting somewhere in the eastern USA. Flashpoint easily climbed out of the obscurity but Orphan Black is still digging itself a deeper hole.

Jessica, that’s not true. It is a co-production between BBC America and Space that likely would not have gotten made if not for BBC America’s participation.

Furthermore, with regards to you other comments about the NY Post’s TV critic being wrong… I’m going to copy and paste bit from DK Latta’s blog, Pulp & Dagger, about why it isn’t such a stretch for Linda Stassi to think the show is set in the US. Here you go:

“Place names: at a train station it’s announced that the next stop will be “New York”. Later in the episode, the boyfriend arrives from Cleveland. At no point do they say what city the heroine is actually in! (For that matter…aren’t Canadian train announcements usually repeated in both official languages?)

The Currency Fold: Maslany does the ol’ “currency fold” whereby an actor, when holding Canadian bills, carefully folds them up in a closed hand so the viewer can’t really make out any markings. Still later — and this was a new one for me — a stack of bills are repeatedly shown from the side! So you can tell it’s money…you just can’t tell what money.

Pronunciation: Lieutenant is pronounced the American way (and I have a vague feeling, though I could be wrong, that lieutenant isn’t even a rank in most Canadian police departments).

The cinematographer didn’t just “happen” to shoot the stack of the bills from the side. The writer didn’t just “happen” to cite Cleveland. The sound editor didn’t “forget” to repeat the train announcement in French. The intention was to make it ambiguous enough that most viewers would mistake it for the United States.

The entire blog post can be found here: http://pulpanddagger.com/blog/2013/04/05/orphan-black-the-good-the-bad-and-the-canadian/