WHATS-ON-IN-VANCOUVER-‘PAN AM’

Making the Connection at ‘Pan Am’

The CTV/ABC drama “Pan Am” looks great on-screen because every detail is so sharp in person. From the 707 jet replica in a studio warehouse at the Brooklyn Navy Yard to the constricting undergarments the stewardesses wear, everything is authentic.

On a recent blustery day, the cast rehearses the episode airing tonight. The action unfolds the day U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Walter Cronkite’s voice, thick with emotion but composed and ever professional, delivers the first news that the president “is wounded, his condition is yet unknown.”

A pall falls over the set. It’s called for, yet everyone here is acting; no one is remembering. One of the ways to tell if people are baby boomers is whether they recall the grim events of Friday, Nov. 22, 1963; these actresses are Gen Y. But they learn about Kennedy, just as they have learned about the Cold War, girdles and how Pan Am hired the best and the brightest, not merely waitresses of the sky.

During the stewardesses’ weigh-ins, much is made of the girdle, but Christina Ricci’s character, Maggie, refuses to wear one. She is also daring and politically aware, and she adores Kennedy. After rehearsing the scene in which the first news about Kennedy is broadcast, Ricci says she had learned a lot about the ’60s from a high-school class.

“I learned so much and how fascinating it was and how much society changed,” she says.

Though there are many watershed moments from the 1960s yet to be plumbed, there was no announcement at this writing that “Pan Am” would definitely be on the air past February.

“It is on very late for people who have to work on Mondays,” Ricci says of the show’s time slot. “It is doing so well overseas, it doesn’t make sense to stop making it.” w

WHATS-ON-IN-VANCOUVER-ARCTIC AIR TAKES

For a country with such a strong northern mythology, it’s amazing how little use our TV and filmmakers have made of the place.

For example, take Ian Weir, executive producer and creator of “Arctic Air.” Until he was contracted to write the pilot episode for the series, which airs Tuesdays on CBC Television, he’d never been north.

“I’m not a northern guy,” he says. “So this was a chance to immerse myself in the world of Yellowknife. And I found it was a totally wonderful place.”

Like most of us, he says, he had some ideas of what the North was like, and a lot of them were wrong. “The first thing that took me aback was how cosmopolitan Yellowknife is,” he says. “I figured the cultural mix would be white European and First Nations. I discovered that you can walk down Franklin Street and hear Caribbean accents. The first taxi driver I dealt with was South African.”

“Arctic Air” may be the first fictional series set in the Far North since CBC’s “North of 60” back in the 1990s. The series is set mostly in Yellowknife and deals with a small airline that flies bush planes and Second World War vintage DC-3s to remote locations around the Arctic.

That would ring a bell for fans of History Television’s “Ice Pilots NWT,” a reality series about Buffalo Airways, which serves remote northern communities with a fleet of Second World War vintage DC-3s, DC-4s and C-46s. “Ice Pilots” and “Arctic Air” are made by the same production company. Buffalo Airways provided the DC-3 that is used in exterior shots (the interiors are done in an on-set mockup), airline personnel provided expert advice on the series, and Buffalo Airways owner Joe McBryan did some stunt flying in the DC-3.

“In Episode 4 … there’s wonderful footage of Joe doing an aborted landing on a DC-3,” Weir says. “And my God, that man can fly a plane. It’s absolutely thrilling footage.”

However, the similarities between the two series are completely superficial, Weir says. “We’re in the same geographical region, and we’re using a DC-3 in the Arctic Air fleet. But the fleet is more broadly based than the Buffalo Air fleet. And, of course, our cast of characters is quite different from the ‘cast of characters’ of ‘Ice Pilots NWT.’ ”

“Arctic Air” stars Adam Beach as Bobby Martin, an aboriginal businessman who has been living in Vancouver and has come home to take over his 25 percent stake in the airline.

“When I read the pilot episode, I was drawn to Bobby Martin and who he was, his struggles,” Beach says. “His reconnection with home, family and friends, and the fact that he wants to use the talents he has to better his family and the company, Arctic Air. He’s been out in the world. He’s studied. He’s achieved. He moved fast up the ladder.”

In other words, he’s a lot like Beach, who left his impoverished northern Manitoba reserve to pursue a career in acting, which led from stage roles in the West to Canadian films and television and such Hollywood movies as “Windtalkers,” “Cowboys & Aliens” and “Flags of Our Fathers,” where he worked with Hollywood legend Clint Eastwood.

One of Beach’s early roles was a recurring character in “North of 60,” which was shot in Calgary.

“Arctic Air” shoots interiors on a soundstage in suburban Vancouver, but the exteriors are shot in and around Yellowknife. “I haven’t been that far north before,” he says. “Yellowknife is beautiful. A very small city, where everybody knows everybody. But the landscape speaks for itself. You can’t help but feel surrounded by Mother Nature.”

Co-starring with Beach in the series is Pascale Hutton as Bobby’s childhood friend and love interest, Krista, the daughter of the crusty old bush pilot (Kevin McNulty) who runs the company.

One of the bonuses of working in the series, Hutton says, was getting to fly around in the co-pilot’s seat of a Buffalo Airways DC-3, getting a feel for the ancient warhorses. “We have learned a lot from flying with the pilots of Buffalo Air,” she says. “Not so much in terms of personality, because ‘Arctic Air’ characters are unique to our

show. But seeing the way they fly the DC-3s and being up with them was very informative, especially for Kevin McNulty, Adam Beach and me.”

Like Beach and Weir, the farthest north Hutton had been was Edmonton, where she went to university. And like them, she says she was astonished at just how cosmopolitan and lively the city is.

“Yellowknife is incredibly culturally diverse, which I don’t think many people know,” she says. “There are lots of First Nation people, but we also met a lot of people from Somalia and Ethiopia.

“There are lots of opportunities to make a lot of money, and that brings people from all over the world.” w

WHATS-ON-IN-VANCOUVER-11TH IDOL

 Who will be the next Kelly Clarkson?

Or Carrie Underwood?Or Scotty McCreery?

As usual, the question won’t be answered until May, but much of the fun is in the journey … as “American Idol” is determined to prove again.

The hugely popular Fox singing competition, which broadcasts in Canada on CTV, starts its 11th season Wednesday, Jan. 18, with the last round’s panel of judges – Randy Jackson, Jennifer Lopez and Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler – back intact, and Ryan Seacrest in his traditional role as host.

Cecile Frot-Coutaz, an “Idol” executive producer from the start, hints the latest round has “more variety than in prior years. We had good turnouts at the stadiums (for the auditions, footage of which always starts an ‘Idol’ season), a lot of diversity in the talent with some very interesting younger talent and some big voices. It’s been interesting.”

That should keep things fresh for the “Idol” judges during the weekly Wednesday and Thursday episodes, with Lopez and Tyler going into their sophomore stints. “It’s almost like the kids this year have studied the show,” Tyler says. “They know what to expect. The ones who are really good, they’re the ones Randy and J. Lo and I give the toughest criticism to. We want them to get through.

“You hear a beautiful voice out of a 15-year-old girl, and you ask her, ‘Were you in choir? How did you learn how to sing like this? Did you fall from a star?’ I don’t know how they got here without playing clubs. They just sang every day in their house, or listened to their favorite artist, and this grew out of it. It’s astounding to me, and I’m falling in love with it. I wasn’t sure last year.”

Grammy-winning music icon Tyler claims he was helped by watching video of Clarkson in the first “Idol” season. “You saw her get out of a car after driving hundreds of miles to get there, young and green and wet behind the ears, then she came out a superstar. How much bigger could you get than Kelly Clarkson got at that time? And the same with Carrie Underwood.

“That’s the part of the game I’m in it for. I know that between Randy’s ear and J. Lo’s and mine – and the melodic sensibility that I got from my father – we’re always going to pick something above and beyond what ‘Idol’ was before, if I may brag about that.”

Last season’s contest came down to two country-flavored talents, Lauren Alaina and eventual winner McCreery. “At the very beginning,” Frot-Coutaz says, “the show was clearly looking for a pop star. I think over the years, it has broadened in the kinds of contestants it’s attracting … and, therefore, in what it’s looking for. Over the years, rockers have come up a little bit more; we’ve had (Chris) Daughtry, then last year, we had James Durbin.

“We also started to see people like Paul McDonald last year, sort of jazzy performers. This year, we don’t have more country than we did before. You could have thought, ‘Well, now the country kids are going to show up,’ and we do have some. But because we had such diverse talent last year, more diverse people have come to the show. Aspiring artists who would go, ‘That show’s not for me; it’s too commercial,’ are now coming. I think that’s a real tribute to what the show has become.”

Auditions for the 2012 edition of “Idol” meant plenty of travel for Seacrest and the judges, but having been through the process once, Tyler believes he came back to it more prepared for what it is.

“Writing my own songs and going up onstage and being best friends with the guys in the band, it’s a lot different than this,” he notes. “I’m not going to lie – it was difficult last year, in the sense that I didn’t know the game; I didn’t know the rules. I’m getting it from the ground up. It wasn’t rubbed into me for 10 years.

“I’m seeing it as kids coming in and wanting something bad, but they’ve got to be that special something. The critiquing is easier for me this year. I want to be honest, but sometimes on television, they’re brutally honest for television’s sake. That’s a little hard for me to be, so as J. Lo has said, you nurture, and they come out even better in the next round. They don’t feel put down; they feel massaged with encouragement. And that’s worked for us.” w

WHATS-ON-IN-VANCOUVER-ALCATRAZ

J.J. Abrams’ Alcatraz brings bad, bad men from the past into the present.

 When people muse upon the idea of meeting people from the past, it’s often someone along the lines of Elvis, Martin Luther King, Babe Ruth, maybe Abraham Lincoln or even Joan of Arc or Socrates.

In the new series “Alcatraz,” premiering Monday, Jan. 16, on Fox and Citytv, a whole bunch of folks pop through from the past into the present, but they aren’t singers, sluggers, emancipators or philosophers. But if you need a pocket picked, a safe blown up, a throat slit or a bank robbed, they might be the guys for you.

 Under the creative leadership of executive producer J.J. Abrams, “Alcatraz” focuses on the former prison, set on an island in San Francisco Bay, that was home to some of the most notorious criminals in American history until it was shut down in 1963.

 According to history, the inmates were evacuated and moved elsewhere. But in the world of the show, that “elsewhere” apparently lay somewhere beyond space and time.

 When SFPD Detective Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Jones) is assigned to a nasty homicide, a fingerprint leads her to a former Alcatraz inmate who supposedly died decades before.

 Since both her grandfather and surrogate uncle, Ray Archer (Robert Forster), were guards at the prison, Madsen digs into the case, only to have an enigmatic government agent, Emerson Hauser (Sam Neill), try to get in her way. She turns to Alcatraz expert and comic book enthusiast Dr. Diego “Doc” Soto (Jorge Garcia, “Lost”) to piece together the crime.

 A task force is formed to get to the bottom of the strange occurrences, and Madsen and Soto form a sort of oddball Starsky and Hutch.

 “We talk about chocolate and peanut butter here a lot,” says Jennifer Johnson, a writer on the show. “The two of them together are able to do what neither of them could do on their own. She’s got incredible detective skills, and he’s got a vast knowledge of Alcatraz. Both of them are driven to be on the task force for different reasons.

 “By the end of the first episode, she’s chosen this partner. The two of them are kind of underdogs, because Hauser doesn’t really want Rebecca there either, because she’s too young and impetuous.

Meanwhile, Doc – who’s a highly educated academic – is having the adventure of his life.

 For those who have seen such complex J.J. Abrams shows as “Alias” and “Lost,” which practically required notes, a folding map and an abacus, Johnson swears “Alcatraz” will be accessible to folks who just want to watch, and not study, their TV shows. “At the heart of this show is a procedural,” says Johnson, “and that’s the side of the story we break first in the writers room. “Hopefully, we’ll tell such a compelling story,” says Pyne, “that you could watch every other week and still completely understand what’s going on.” w

WHATS-ON-IN-VANCOUVER-O’LEARY’S-HUMAN

Dragon shows his human side

 Who would have thought: Kevin O’Leary has a heart. With “Dragons’ Den,” “The Lang & O’Leary Exchange” and his provocative commentaries on CBC News Network, O’Leary works tirelessly to brand himself as a one-man right-wing fringe. Now he comes along with “Redemption Inc.” which recently began airing Mondays on CBC Television.

In this reality series, O’Leary is using his TV persona to help ex-cons make it on the outside.

“When you’re caught for a crime in Canada, and you serve your time, what happens to you after that?” O’Leary asks. “You become basically tainted in perpetuity. You can’t get a job. You can’t borrow money. You can’t get a car loan. You can’t work in a public company. You can’t issue stock. You can’t do anything.”

“The end result is that we’re sending people to prisons, where they learn to be better criminals, and then dumping them out on the street where they have no way of making money other than as criminals.

O’Leary says the problem was “brought to my attention a few years ago.” Since then, he has become fascinated with the possibility of taking people who have honed their business skills on crime and seeing if they can turn those skills to something legitimate.

“I was completely unaware of the problem, and I’ve made it one of my causes now,” he says. “I’m putting my money where my mouth is.

“This system is completely broken. It doesn’t work at all. You’ve done your time. You’ve paid your price. Why can’t you start again?

“You’re absolutely worse than dead. There’s no way for you to support yourself.”

In “Redemption Inc.” 10 ex-cons compete for $100,000 in seed money to start their own business. Over the course of the series, the participants – eight men and two women – take on challenges until only one is standing.

O’Leary launched in business with a software company that he started in his basement – and which he later sold for a reported $3.7 billion.

With his three shows, his regular appearances as a news analyst on CBC, and the U.S. series “Shark Tank” and “Project Earth,” his face is all but unavoidable.

He talks about “Redemption Inc.” as if it’s a labor of love.

“This isn’t a charitable project,” he says. “I think the system is broken, and I want to do something about it.” w

WHATS-ON-IN-VANCOUVER-GRISHAM’S-“THE-FIRM”

 John Grisham is a brand name. Whether audiences have experienced “The Client,” “A Time to Kill” or “The Pelican Brief” in print or on film, the novelist’s law thrillers have had lasting impact. Now there’s fresh evidence: Almost 20 years after spawning a popular Tom Cruise movie, Grisham’s “The Firm” is the basis for a series that has a two-hour premiere Sunday, Jan. 8, on Global Television Network before settling into a weekly slot the following Thursday.

Grisham is an executive producer on the project being made by Entertainment One (“Rookie Blue,” “Haven”) in association with Sony, with Josh Lucas shifting from movies (“Sweet Home Alabama,” “J. Edgar”) to weekly television by assuming the former Cruise role of attorney Mitch McDeere.

The show picks up 10 years after the original story with McDeere believing he’s safe after a nemesis dies in prison, so he emerges from witness protection with wife Abby (B.C.’s Molly Parker) and their young daughter (Natasha Calis) and relocates to Washington, D.C.

Having barely survived his time with a corrupt Memphis firm, the attorney finds himself dealing with another law office apparently steeped in sneaky dealings. Tricia Helfer (“BattlestarGalactica”) plays the chief of that practice, which aligns with McDeere’s smaller office on cases he tackles with his ex-con brother Ray (B.C.’s Callum Keith Rennie) and street-wise assistant Tammy (Juliette Lewis, in the part that first gained Holly Hunter an Oscar nomination).

Thanks also to international sales, “The Firm” has a 22-episode guarantee, something very rare for a debuting series now.

Grisham’s “The Client” was turned into a 1995-96 show, and the author admits in a conference call that situation “certainly gave me great hesitation” about turning another of his books over for series purposes.

“It was such a dreadful show and painful experience, I didn’t want to do it again for a long time; I forgot about [doing] television over the years, though I never really forgot about film. The films have become difficult to make for a number of reasons, and I didn’t really think about ‘The Firm’ as a TV show until [fellow executive producer and former prosecutor] Lukas Reiter appeared on the scene and showed me a script. I thought it was very good, and I got excited about the idea of a weekly drama.

In becoming television’s McDeere, “Firm” star Lucas considers Grisham the viewer he must satisfy most. “There is a reason John Grisham is the massive-selling author he is,” the actor says on the show’s principal set near Toronto, “which is that he seems to have a literary respect that comes out of his iconic men. They have their failings, but their integrity is unwavering.

“There’s usually a great family sense to his stories as well, but consistently, the thing about his work is that it’s thrilling. That’s a difficult thing to drive forward in the world of procedural-based network television, and I pray that we do.”

If there’s any question Lucas is serious about his “Firm” work, consider the research he did for “The Lincoln Lawyer,” last year’s movie in which he starred with Matthew McConaughey (once a Grisham screen lawyer himself, in “A Time to Kill”).

“I went to the courthouse that was right near my house and just watched cases,” Lucas recalls, “and I really became fascinated, deeply moved a number of times.

“There’s such an extraordinary sense of life and death, it’s like the ultimate stage in so many ways.”

WHATS-ON-IN-VANCOUVER-DOWNTON-ABBEY-WW1

 

Characters who previously obsessed over planning a perfect garden party are struggling with life-and-death issues as “Downton Abbey” begins a new season Sunday, Jan. 8, on PBS’ “Masterpiece Classic” on KCTS.

The series, which bested such heavyweight competition as HBO’s “Mildred Pierce” remake to win Emmys as outstanding miniseries and for creator Julian Fellowes’ crackling scripts, opens two years after the conclusion of season one, with the Crawley family of Downton Abbey and its staff trying to cope with the challenges of World War I.

For Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville), that involves frustration over not being allowed to serve on the front lines and being relegated to serving as an aristocratic morale booster on the home front, while all three of his daughters — Mary, Edith and Sibyl (Michelle Dockery, Laura Carmichael, Jessica Brown-Findlay) — are forced by events to grow up and make personal sacrifices for king and country.

“That struck me as an interesting dynamic for the second series, taking these people that we know in peacetime from the first series where the big issue was whether someone had stolen a snuffbox,” Fellowes says. “Suddenly, we fling them into a war where the big issue is, are they going to be killed?”

Of course, a large share of the “Downton” fan base is going to be focused most keenly on the strained relationship between Lady Mary Crawley and her cousin, Matthew (Dan Stevens), the designated heir to the Downton estate. And as season two opens, things do not look promising for the couple.

“Mary returns from London, having spent time with Aunt Rosamund (Samantha Bond), and the first thing she hears is that Matthew is coming home, and Edith takes great pleasure in telling me immediately that he’s coming with his fiancée, which is a huge shock to Mary — and she discovers very quickly that Matthew has moved on, and she needs to do the same,” Dockery says of the first episode. “And she introduces the family to a new character, Sir Richard Carlisle (Iain Glen), with whom she pursues a relationship hoping that she can move on, too. It’s very clear, though, that they’re together not for the right reasons, for purely practical reasons, and she is still pining for Matthew.”

Even before “Downton Abbey” premiered last year, the cast members suspected they were part of something special. “You know when you’re onto a good thing,” Dockery says. “I don’t think I could ever have predicted how enormous it would be, though.”

It wasn’t long after the show bowed in the U.K. that all those involved realized they were part of a phenomenon, however. A few weeks into the run, Fellowes recalls opening the Times to see a huge picture of the three Crawley daughters and a headline suggesting that a Member of Parliament belonged in the outdated period of the show.

“It was a criticism of some bill he was trying to pass, and I thought, that’s the moment where you burst the banks and enter the zeitgeist, the national conversation,” Fellowes says.

As ratings for the show climbed with each successive episode, Stevens says he started noticing people referencing “Downton Abbey” in the oddest contexts, even in stories that had nothing directly to do with the show itself.

“It’s become kind of a cultural touchstone,” the actor says. “If you set up one of these Google Alerts to send you any articles that contain the phrase ‘Downton Abbey,’ the number of articles that come in (is staggering). It may be an article about, I don’t know, heating pipes or something like that and the first paragraph will be something like, ‘Well, it’s not quite Downton Abbey.’ It’s out there in the cultural vernacular now. It’s really strange.”

Unprecedented, perhaps, but maybe not really all that strange, given the acclaim heaped on the miniseries when it premiered on “Masterpiece Classic” in early 2011. Critics and fans alike seem to have caught on that Fellowes has created, for them, the best of both worlds: a sprawling period saga with vividly drawn characters that offers the opulence of the genre while moving at a brisk pace that defies a viewer to look away. It doesn’t hurt, either, that Fellowes isn’t shy about spicing up the dramatic brew with some sexual kinks that Charles Dickens and Jane Austen never could have dreamed of writing about, including a scandalous season one indiscretion on Mary’s part that still threatens to ruin innocent lives in these new episodes.

“Julian can actually slip in there and play a little fast and loose with the usual rules of period drama,” Stevens says.

“What’s different about Julian’s writing is that most people expect the pacing of a period drama to be quite slow and deliberate, but actually his writing has a very modern structure that keeps the audience riveted,” Dockery adds.

For his part, Fellowes says he is touched and grateful for the warm reception this program has received the United States, and he hopes audiences here respond to season two, even though it’s inevitably darker than last year’s episodes.

“It’s impossible that it’s not darker, but it’s still focused on Downton,” he promises. “It really is Downton at war, not England at war or the trenches.”

WHATS-ON-IN-VANCOUVER-ABORIGINALS’-HISTO

CBC Television embarks on a gripping and insightful journey into aboriginal country with “8th Fire,” a four-part miniseries premiering Thursday, Jan. 12, and continuing on consecutive Thursdays.

Hosted by musician and journalist Wab Kinew, the project takes its title from the Seven Fires prophecies of the Anishinaabe, writings that predate the European colonization of North America. Out of those prophecies comes the idea of an eighth: that now is the time for aboriginal peoples and the “settler community” to come together and build the Eighth Fire of justice and harmony.

Actually, in many respects, it’s past time for Canadians to confront and address an often uneasy relationship mired in prejudices, misconceptions and stereotypes, Kinew says.

“If you use the metaphor of the nuclear clock, we’ve already passed the critical point,” he says. “The reality is that children in the Far North are growing up, and children in the inner cities of Western Canada and even in Toronto are growing up, in situations that are past the point where we should have declared a crisis and taken immediate action on it. The reason I think it’s important for this series to come out now is that we are all in this together as Canadians, as people who live here together in one country. We have a shared destiny, and the well-being of young aboriginal people is going to be hugely important to the wellbeing of Canada in the future.”

That common destiny is the main topic of the second episode — titled “It’s Time! —which focuses on how reconciling native and non-native Canadians simply makes good economic and business sense, on top of everything else.

“Young aboriginal people are the work force of tomorrow,” Kinew points out. “This is where the population growth, especially in Western Canada — which is the part of the country that is driving the economy now — is coming from. So if we want to develop the economy, we have to make sure that young aboriginal people have opportunities to get educated and to work. Unfortunately, that is not the case, but the good news is that something can be done about it. Canadians by and large are good-natured, openhearted people who have compassion for their fellow human beings, and when you see attention shone on a given issue as this series will do, and as some of the coverage of Attawapiskat has done in the news, I think people are hungry and anxious to see change, to see something happen for the better.”

First, however, a lot of baseless myths and misconceptions need to be addressed and put to bed, something that is happening in part via programs that send consultants such as John Lagimodiere, a Metis from Saskatoon, and occasionally even Kinew himself into companies and other groups eager to understand more about Canada’s aboriginal peoples.

“I’ve done that here in Manitoba, go in and give two days of intensive training and teach them a bit about the history and the aboriginal culture and a bit about some of the contemporary issues that are happening in the community,” Kinew says. “There’s a growing demand for that.”

Almost invariably in those sessions, Kinew says, one of the first questions that arises is about the widely held impression that native people pay no taxes.

“I think it’s because it’s the one that seems most unfair to non-native people,” he explains. “But it’s not true. I get taxed at 45 percent of my income. I pay a ton of taxes — property taxes, income taxes, sales tax.”

WHATS-ON-IN-VANCOUVER-Programmed-to-be-fat?

It’s the New Year, and Canadians everywhere are seizing the occasion to make resolutions that will make themselves better, or at least more appealing to prospective partners.

But are their efforts in one department – weight loss – doomed to failure? Some scientists are starting to think so, as revealed in “Programmed to Be Fat,” a new episode of “The Nature of Things” premiering Thursday, Jan. 12, on CBC Television.

Thanks to research by a Scottish doctor who was frustrated because she couldn’t manage to lose weight, scientists are now looking at the notion that environmental factors may be programming fetuses to carry extra weight even before they are born.

Supportive evidence comes from studies of lab animals being tested with chemicals that disrupt the endocrine system.

“These are chemicals that fool the body into thinking that they are hormones,” explains Bruce Mohun, the director and co-writer of the film. “They can disrupt the system of glands that can release hormones into our bloodstreams. … And if that happens in a fetus, then the body is going to be changed possibly for the rest of its life because there is so much development going on at that time.”

Meg Tilly-Bombshells

 Of women, bombshells and a world at war

Meg Tilly was living happily as a wife, mother and novelist on Vancouver Island — until she told her agent she’d like to dabble in acting again.

What she had in mind was the occasional play, she says — such as the role of Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” that she did at Victoria’s McPherson Playhouse last summer.

The last thing the Oscar-nominated (for Norman Jewison’s “Agnes of

God”) actress had in mind was committing to a series on the other side of the country.

But when she read for “Bomb Girls,” she says, she was hooked almost immediately by the script and by co-producer Adrienne Mitchell’s directing style.

“I had no intention of doing film or TV,” she says. “When I thought of TV I didn’t expect — even in film, lots of times you don’t get directors who have deep, deep insight into the characters.

“By the time we finished, I was so happy I had gone, because I met somebody who I thought was an incredibly talented director, who gave me a deeper understanding of the character.”

The series, debuting Wednesday, Jan. 4, on Global Television Network, tells the story of a group of women working in a munitions plant in Toronto during World War II.

The story opens in 1941, when women were being hired en masse to staff Canadian munitions plants being set up to replace the ones that had been bombed in England.

“If it hadn’t been for our munitions factories, Britain would have fallen,” Mitchell says. “When we start our series, that factory has been in service for only about five months.”

Tilly plays Lorna, a 40-something shop matron who has to ride herd on an assembly line staffed by inexperienced young women.

The large ensemble cast includes Jodi Balfour, Charlotte Hegele, Ali Liebert and Anastasia Phillips as the women on the line; Peter Outerbridge (“ReGenesis,” “John A: Birth of a Country”) as Lorna’s embittered World War I veteran husband; and Antonio Cupo as a factory worker who is banned from joining the armed forces because he was born in Italy.

The series was created by Mitchell and Janis Lundman, best known for co-producing the dark, stylish cable drama “Durham County.”

“It was an incredible time,” Mitchell says. “Women went from extremes.

The transition they made in entering the work force was incredible.

“Suddenly they were thrust into a situation where they had their husbands’ and sons’ lives in their hands. And the responsibilities, the sacrifices they had to make, and the thrill of having this kind of responsibility and freedom that they never had — it’s an incredible world to explore.”

“Bomb Girls” follows the rush to replicate the “Mad Men” formula of stylish nostalgia blended with social commentary, which saw the experiments last fall with “The Playboy Club” (now canceled) and “Pan Am” (at this writing rumored to be on its way out).

However, unlike those series, and like “Mad Men,” this taps into something fresh and real. “Bomb Girls” is a story whose time is long overdue. This may be one of the last great, unexploited dramas of World War II.

Also, like the 1960s, the ’40s were a period of great upheaval and great energy, when many of the social rules were being rewritten, particularly about gender relations.

“It was a real culture shock for both genders,” Mitchell says. “If it hadn’t been for the women’s work force, those munitions factories wouldn’t have been up and running, and those bombs wouldn’t have been made.

“Yet the men couldn’t believe it. They couldn’t believe these women could do the job. It was mind-blowing to them.”

And Tilly’s character, Lorna, is right in the middle of it. She has a husband who is disabled and two sons who are fighting overseas. And she has suddenly been ripped from her home and thrust into a world she finds exciting and frightening at the same time.

“Women came from all over Canada to work in these factories,” she says. “Normal was you were born in a town. You were raised in the town. You were married in the town. And you died in the town.

“It was a challenging time, but it was a wonderful time, and some women have said those were the happiest years of their lives, because they realized what they were capable of, and it busted preconceptions of what a woman could do.”

Tilly admits that her situation isn’t completely removed from Lorna’s.

She’s a successful writer with four novels for young adults published and a screenplay in the works. Yet, like a lot of women with grown children, she’s re-entering the work force — as an actor.

“I guess I’m not primarily anything now,” she says. Then, she adds with a laugh: “You know what? I’m primarily Meg.

“The overwhelming sense I had when I was shooting ‘Bomb Girls’ is, ‘Oh it’s so much more fun this time around.’ ”

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