#BellMediaUpfront Sets The Star-Packed Lineup For ‘a Year Full of Taking Big Swings,’ Says Enthused Exec Justin Stockman

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede From the rural beauty of a Canadian farm, to an exotic luxury resort on the other side of the world, the 2025 #BellMediaUpfront covered a lot of fertile ground on Thursday. Bell Media executives teed up every aspect of the coming year at a gala event in Toronto. And there was a full crop of on-screen talent on hand, including Canadian comedy legend Tom Green from the upcoming Crave Original series TOM GREEN’S FUNNY FARM, and Canadian actress and filmmaker Charlotte Le Bon, fresh from her role as mischievous Chloe in Season 3 of HBO’s THE WHITE LOTUS (available on Crave). “I’m feeling very patriotic now, for obvious reasons, as we all are in Canada,” said Green, whose unique new interview series is set on his farm in Eastern Ontario. “I moved back to Canada about four years ago, because I missed living here. I have this farm that I love, so I want to show it off to the world, and show off Canada.” In a wider sense, that’s also the plan for Bell Media, given its ambitious 2025/26 original content slate. Le Bon, meanwhile, is coming off her recent huge success on THE WHITE LOTUS, which remains one of the most talked-about shows on TV. “It’s really something to be on such a mainstream success,” Le Bon said. “Especially online – like, to see memes with my face was really life-changing. I would never think that would happen, having been in movies that are seen by, like, five people, usually. So it was really, really weird. But it was also heartwarming to see that wave of love, and just how all these people were so invested in the show.” Speaking of being invested in shows, Justin Stockman, VP, Content Development & Programming for Bell Media, said he’s looking forward to “a year full of taking big swings. And we are taking them based on where we’ve had our most success.” Stockman explained that the concept relates to noticeable trends on both sides of the border. “You can contextualize the big swings with what has been working in the U.S., too – shows such as HIGH POTENTIAL and WILL TRENT (both on CTV), which have really popped in the past few years – came from people taking risks, and trying new things,” he said. “We’re really invested in doing that. If we’re going to put our efforts into something, let’s try for something big. LETTERKENNY is the best example. It’s a gift that keeps on giving. It’s a portfolio game, so not everything works, but we’ve got interesting choices, the average will be very positive, and we’ll have some real hits.” Stockman explained that Bell Media’s commissioning processes have become even more fine-tuned over the past year, based upon the strategic identification of two programming “buckets,” to borrow his term. “We’ve realized that we have two streams, but it’s not the notion of CTV and Crave any more,” Stockman said. “The first bucket is ‘capital-C Canadian,’ and the best example we have is THE AMAZING RACE CANADA, which is the #1 show in Canada every summer. It’s so Canadian, and we’ve figured out how to make it profitable within the country.” Stockman continued, “so then the other bucket is, the things that we’re building as officially Canadian content, but maybe feel more global in nature, sometimes partnered with an American network, and really designed to sell internationally. There are great Canadian creatives connected to all this content, but it’s being built for a global audience. We’ve really tried to operationalize those two streams, with those two clarified goals in mind.” Stockman also is pushing for a significant industry-wide initiative, and he’s doing everything in his power to help make it happen. “With something such as THE PITT specifically, which was a massive performer for us (on USA Network and Crave), they’ve committed to bringing it back one year after it premiered this year,” Stockman said. “Those long gaps between seasons that maybe work for complicated series, I think there’s going to be more of an effort to eliminate those gaps – this is partly a prediction, but also a hope. With all the producers we work with, we’re asking, ‘how quickly can you bring things back?’ So that we aren’t expecting people to remember a show from two and a half years ago. There’s something cyclical and habit-forming about it, so we have to feed viewers a bit more consistently. With COVID, and then the strikes, it was hard to do. But with all of that over, what we’re saying now is, ‘let’s get this back on a cycle, everybody.’ ” Looking ahead to the coming year, here’s an analysis from Stockman on a show-by-show basis: ORIGINALS HEATED RIVALRY “This is one of those big swings for us, for sure. Every single person who has looked at the creative is like, ‘we have to do this,’ but it’s definitely in the ‘not safe’ category. The premise is, what if a bunch of people playing hockey were all secretly in love with each other? Although clearly, in Season 1, we’re really focusing on one pair of rivals. It’s based on a novel of the same name that started as fan fiction. This is going to have everyone talking, because it’s quite steamy. It’s not for network television, let’s put it that way. We’re working with Jacob Tierney, who directed so many episodes of LETTERKENNY and SHORESY. He knows how to direct hockey, and now he’s going to direct hockey players in love. It’s more about life off the ice, though. There are more hotel rooms and condos than ice rinks. But, yeah, we’ve really gone there. It’s just wrapping production now, so it should be early next year.” MASTERCHEF CANADA “We were looking at, how many of these formats could we bring back? Because the audiences for these types of shows, competition formats, are growing again. We had many great years previously with MASTERCHEF CANADA, and just felt like it needed a little freshening up. We didn’t even think twice about making Mary Berg the host. Her career started on MASTERCHEF CANADA. She has the opposite personality of Gordon Ramsay. And so we thought, how could we set her up on a panel that would let her be herself, and not ask her to do things that aren’t going to be who she is. So, we were able to round out the panel, with Hugh Acheson and Craig Wong, in a way that you’re still going to get all the different sugar and spice you need from judges on a show like this.” UNTITLED JARED KEESO SHOW “We made a deal with Jared Keeso to keep doing more versions of LETTERKENNY and SHORESY, other spin-offs. But this is not officially a spin-off. I can’t really go into what the concept is, but it was so outrageous, and so much fun, that we couldn’t say no. This has been front-loaded as the next Jared project, and we’re working on the title. I can tell you that the title he came back with was a title that is already a very popular show, which I can’t share. What I can say is that he is working on other titles and ramping up to start production.” THE BORDERLINE “It’s sort of OZARK-ish in tone, and it takes place in the Thousand Islands, which apparently, because of the close proximity to the U.S. border and all the different inlets and islands, is a hotbed for smuggling. It’s the story of two childhood friends, one’s now a police officer, one is a criminal, and how they deal with that relationship. It has a great cast, with Stephen Amell as the cop, Hamza Haq plays the smuggler, and Minnie Driver is a crime boss who comes in from the U.K., to supervise how things are going. It’s pretty much ready, they’re just putting the finishing touches on it, and it looks great. It has come together even better than we could have imagined.” MAKE YOURSELF OVER “It’s from Drew and Jonathan Scott, and I could best describe it as sort of like the show NAILED IT, but with makeovers and makeup. It’s comedic in tone, with real people trying to replicate different looks that they’ve seen, and then not always necessarily doing it right. The host, which is still being locked down, will be crucial in getting that comedic tone, to ensure it’s laughing with them, not laughing at them.” MATCH GAME “This is a very big deal for us. As I mentioned earlier, we’re looking to partner with the U.S., in that sort of second bucket of, what could we bring to the world? ABC wanted to bring back MATCH GAME, and have decided to do it in Canada. They’re shooting in Québec this summer. So we are partnering with them, as the commissioning network, and Martin Short has agreed to host. I know for a fact he is flying directly from the set of ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING to Québec to start shooting this. And everyone knows the MATCH GAME format, so you can already see how this will be easy for him to make amazing.” ANNA PIGEON “It’s a Canadian production where we’re partnering with USA Network, about an investigator who works at national parks, so that’s the setting. Otherwise, it’s a crime procedural, and it’s based on a book series, so there will be a built-in fan base. We launched USA Network in January, and this will be its first new Canadian production. Some of our unscripted Canadian series have already moved to USA Network, such as HIGHWAY THRU HELL, but this will be the first original coming out of USA, and it’ll also air on USA in the USA. It’s a collaboration between us and them. Some of the key creatives are identified, but no casting yet.” SLO PITCH “This is a comedy that we were pitched – oh, that was a pun, not intentionally – about a beer league team, a typical sort of workplace comedy, just with the different characters and how they’re interacting. And then when we did our partnership with Elliot Page earlier this year, we shared where the show was at with Elliot and his production team at PAGEBOY, and they were very interested in it. So we’ve paired Elliot up with the series now, to just sort of elevate it, and make it even bigger than it could have been.” TOM GREEN’S FUNNY FARM “We were sort of like, ‘Tom, what do you want to do?’ And Tom told us what he wants to do. He lives on a farm between here and Ottawa. He swears to us that people who are doing gigs in either Toronto or Ottawa drive right past. Tom knows everybody, so he has been able to lure many famous faces to his farm. But he also wants to make sure we include some of the interesting people from around that area who aren’t necessarily famous. It’s going to be a little bit talk show, a little bit day in the life of Tom on the farm, a little bit of COMEDIANS IN CARS GETTING COFFEE, except on a farm with Tom Green. We’re going to let him do his thing. He’s an accomplished producer, and he really knows what works. I think his dream is still to do a talk show, and this is, I guess, his version of a quirky talk show. He has been great to work with, and super collaborative, and is raring to go. We’re already in pre-production.” PROJECT RUNWAY CANADA “Similar to what I said about MASTERCHEF CANADA, we really were looking at what competition formats we could bring back, and that were ready to be brought back. We just felt like this was a space where there was lots of interesting Canadian creativity that we could bring to the world. We partnered with Toronto Metropolitan University to host it there, the biggest fashion school in Canada, and they’ve allowed us to use their campus and all of their facilities. And then we got this cast together. Literally everyone thought of Jeanne Beker, and she said yes, luckily. Coco Rocha has agreed to host as well as judge, and then we just added Spencer Badu as the other judge. It’s going to be late fall.” TEMPTATION UNDER THE SUN “OCCUPATION DOUBLE and its spinoff TEMPTATION UNDER THE SUN is such an iconic brand in Québec, and we couldn’t believe the numbers it was getting, so we simply said, ‘OK, let’s try it, and see what happens.’ So you know how we did FARMING FOR LOVE, which was our attempt at dating in the very safe, sweet, loving sort of zone? Well, this is more dating in the sense of … maybe they’re not looking for love. They’ve had many seasons in Québec, so we were able to partner with the French team to figure out how to double-shoot a production. We’ll be using the same location that the French team does, and just bringing in our English contestants right afterwards.” HOCKEY FANATICS “When we saw the pitch, we sort of thought, ‘how has this not been a show before?’ We were working with Dave Foley on a couple of different things, and then he brought us this, and he promised some pretty big names. We were basically like, ‘if you can get those names, sure, absolutely, yes.’ And he has delivered. Even if you’re not a fan of hockey, you might be interested to see what Mike Myers thinks, or what Jay Baruchel thinks, so there are different ways into it for the viewer. Dave Foley interviews them in various places, and then, if available, he goes to a game with them.” SIGIL “This goes under that category of really big swings. It has been in development for a while, but it keeps getting bigger. It’s a sci-fi story, and it has just sort of morphed and changed along the way. It’s using some pretty interesting technology that mixes live action and animation, to give it a really unique look, from what we’ve seen so far. It’s creating a super complex world, with all sorts of mystical elements and different groups of people. And the calibre of everyone involved is very impressive, from Devery Jacobs, to Lilly Wachowski. It’s a big team of well-known people. We’ll have to be patient, because they’ll have to do a physical shoot, and then marry it with the animation. But it’s something totally new that we think will get people talking.” SEOUL PALACE “This is a fun drama about a Korean family that comes to Toronto, and they’re connected to the punk rock and rock music scene in Korea, and they open a venue that is very similar to Lee’s Palace in Toronto. It’s funny, because I used to live in that area, and there’s a Korean village, and then there was Lee’s Palace, but I never really connected the two in my head. But it turns out they were quite linked. So this is a fictionalized version of how Lee’s Palace came to be, and the family that brought it here. It’s a bit of a period story from the ’70s and early ’80s, and that sort of era in rock music and punk music.” TRUE CRIME PROJECTS “We’ve really seen that true crime is working on Crave, so there are a lot of new true crime projects coming up. We’re leaning into Canadian true crime in a way that we’ve never done before. There’s ABOVE SUSPICION, which is the Colonel Russell Williams story. There’s THE CHRISTINE JESSUP STORY, which her family really wanted to be made, and they participated, which made us a lot more comfortable with it. And then there’s NARCO MENNONITES, which is what it sounds like. We’ve seen that Canadians are interested in true crime that involves Canadians, or takes place in Canada. BILLIONAIRE MURDERS is still the top Canadian original we’ve ever done, and THUNDER BAY also did really well for us. We’ve worked with producers who could find us other untapped Canadian crime stories, especially the ones that people remember from the headlines, but who can tell those stories in ways that are engaging but not exploitive.” ACQUISITIONS THE FALL AND RISE OF REGGIE DINKINS “We saw the pilot in L.A., and it’s very funny. Tracy Morgan is a former football player who lost his chance to be in the Hall of Fame because of a gambling scandal, but he has one more year of eligibility left. To rebuild his reputation, he hires Daniel Radcliffe, who is a serious documentary filmmaker. As it turns out, Daniel Radcliffe’s character also had a scandal, and is trying to rebuild his own reputation. So, Daniel Radcliffe only wants to do things on the up and up, using all journalistic integrity, while Tracy Morgan obviously just wants to spin the story so he gets into the Hall of Fame. Daniel Radcliffe is giving you what you’d expect as the serious documentary director, while Tracy Morgan is giving you Tracy Morgan. It really works. That duo is the core of the show, but the surrounding characters around them are great as well. It was a joke a minute.” THE FLOOR “It’s a game show hosted by Rob Lowe, and it’s in the same spirit as a lot of competition series, where it’s what they call ‘one arc.’ It’s basically one cast for the full season, so you do get to know the contestants a little bit. And people recur. Fox is really serious about it. They’ve given this show THE MASKED SINGER time slot this fall, and they also gave THE FLOOR the post-SUPER BOWL slot last February on Fox. They’re very bullish on this show continuing to grow.” 9-1-1: NASHVILLE “9-1-1: LONE STAR was one of our top shows. We were happy to have it. They decided it was time for it to end, so this was sort of a no-brainer, to get the next incarnation. The creative team obviously knows how to put this concept into a different city and build the characters around it. And Chris O’Donnell has been announced as the lead, which feels like perfect comfort food for TV viewers. They’re shooting it in Nashville, so it’ll have some of that city flavour to make it feel real. We’ve also been told that there will be country music stars in cameos in some of the emergency situations, because there are so many country music stars in Nashville, so we look forward to that as well.” BOSTON BLUE “BLUE BLOODS was such a tradition on Friday nights, it always did well. The decision for that series to end wasn’t based on ratings. So, this feels like a great idea to fill that time slot with a spin-off. Donnie Wahlberg’s character is moving to Boston, and he’s being paired up with Sonequa Martin-Green, from STAR TREK: DISCOVERY and THE WALKING DEAD, so she’s a familiar face to audiences as well. I’m sure there could be some walk-ons from other BLUE BLOODS characters, too, contracts permitting. And from what we’ve been told, it’s going to have a similar structure, with the family dinner and all that, but in a new setting, and now with Donnie at the head of the table.” BEST MEDICINE (mid-season) “Nothing has been produced yet, but there are scripts, and the tone of the scripts felt great. Josh Charles, you say his name, and people are like, ‘oh, I’d watch a show with him.’ It’s in that dramedy space, where it’s a little bit funny, a little bit heartfelt.” MEMORY OF A KILLER (mid-season) “Again, there are only scripts of this, but it’s about a man with a secret life, where his family thinks he’s a salesman, but he’s actually a hit man. And then in the first episode, it’s revealed he’s having memory issues, which later throughout the season plays out that he has Alzheimer’s. So the base of the story is how he deals with that very complex situation, and it’s Patrick Dempsey, which again feels like, ‘oh, Patrick Dempsey’s on TV, people want to see that.’ We read the script before the casting was done, and we’d heard a few names of who it could be, but when we heard it was Patrick Dempsey, we were like, ‘perfect, that seems exactly right.’ I think viewers are going to be very happy to see him.” billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv