This week, there’s lots happening on the TV side of things.
A popular teen drama series wraps up but its related witchcraft series starts up. Meanwhile, a reboot of a witch-based series is shooting a pilot. And another pilot follows two pizza place workers who become enlisted to hunt down alien criminals (hey, it’s a more interesting gig than food delivery).
There’s also a new series in which British and American female codebreakers team up. And a relocated comedy series, about a big city lawyer taking on small town cases, lands in town.
Let’s check out what’s going in Vancouver’s screen scene this week.
Hit TV series Riverdale wraps shooting 22 episodes of its second season on Wednesday (March 21). Production originally began back on June 22.
Netflix’s ensemble teen drama series has gained quite the following with its subversive take on the classic Archie Comics series.
K.J. Apa stars as Archie, Lili Reinhart as Betty, Camila Mendes as Veronica, Cole Sprouse as Jughead.
The cast also includes Ashleigh Murray, Casey Cott, Mark Consuelos, Marisol Nichols, Madelaine Petsch, Mädchen Amick, Luke Perry, and Skeet Ulrich.
The finale is set to air on the CW on May 16.
Yet just as that one is coming to an end, a sibling series, based on another Archie Comics character, is just starting up.
Production on the first season of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina gets underway today (March 19) and will continue until December 5.
This coming-of-age story is a darker take on Sabrina the Teenage Witch as it delves into the world of witchcraft, horror, and the occult. The series centres on Sabrina, played by Kiernan Shipka (Mad Men).
As she struggles to reconcile her identity as part-witch, part-mortal while fending off evil forces that threaten her and humanity, she is also trying to balance being a sophomore at a high school with her training in sorcery.
Ross Lynch (My Friend Dahmer) plays her boyfriend and the cast includes Lucy Davis, Miranda Otto, Michelle Gomez, Chance Perdomo, Jaz Sinclair, Bronson Pinchot, and more.
A release date hasn’t been announced yet so stay tuned for details on that.
Meanwhile, another TV series that starts shooting its first season this week is The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco, which commences on Tuesday (March 20). It runs until June 7.
This series, produced by World Productions and Omnifilm Entertainment, is from BritBox, a Canadian and U.S. streaming service run by BBC Worldwide and ITV.
It’s based on the U.K. TV series The Bletchley Circle, a period drama about four codebreaking women from the titular British centre during Second World War who applied their skills to cracking crime cases.
This new American spinoff will follows two of the characters from the original series, Millie (Rachel Stirling) and Jean (Julie Graham), who travel to the U.S. in 1956 to team up with two American codebreakers to investigate murder cases.
NBC sitcom Trial and Error relocated from Burbank, California, to begin production in Vancouver for 10 episodes its second season. It starts today and will continue until May 22.
This comedy centres around New York lawyer Josh Segal (Nicholas D’Agosto) who travels to take on cases in a small South Carolina town.
Each season follows one case through trial.
The first season featured a case about an eccentric poetry professor (John Lithgow) accused of murdering his wife.
The second season will focus on a new case starring Kristin Chenoweth (Glee) as a flamboyant heiress whose husband has been found in a suitcase in her car.
The cast also includes Jayma Mays, Sherri Shepherd, Steven Boyer, Krysta Rodriguez, and Amanda Payton (Animal Kingdom), who joins the cast as a regular in season two.
Elsewhere in the city, numerous TV pilots are being shot. Among them is a witch-based series that proves Sabrina is not alone.
The TV pilot for Charmed starts today (March 19) and continues until April 4.
It’s a reboot of the series that ran from 1998 to 2006, starring Shannen Doherty, Holly Marie Combs, Alyssa Milano, and Rose McGowan.
Like the original series, this new version will follow three sisters, living in a college town, who discover that they possess supernatural powers.
The new witch sisters will consists of Macy, played by Madeleine Mantock (Into the Badlands); Mel, portrayed by Melonie Diaz (Fruitvale Station); and Madison, played by Sarah Jeffery (Shades of Blue). (Wow, that’s a lot of M names.)
The cast also includes Ser’Darius Blain, Charlie Gillespie, Melonie Diaz, Rupert Evans, and Ellen Tamaki.
Another TV pilot starting today is The End of the World As We Know It. Production continues until April 5.
In this sci-fi dramedy based on a 2012 novel by Iva-Marie Palmer, two pizza workers—played by Gage Golightly (Red Oaks) and Quinta Brunson (Broke)—are recruited by a space cop to chase after criminals who escaped from a crashed spaceship. Sounds like fun times!
The cast includes Josh Helman, Liam Garrigan, Noah Crawford, Angela Elayne Gibbs, and Patrick Rinehart.
Well, that’s quite the rundown of things going on this week but check back in with again for there’s always more in store to chat about what’s happening here in Hollywood North.