Hospital Show (CAN) is a workplace comedy about the loveable, deluded, “wounded” actors who play TVs most respected doctors. In the centre of this petri-dish of dysfunction is Charlie, a med-school dropout who could have been a real doctor, but instead, now plays one on TV.
We spoke with creator and writer, director, producer, editor and actor of Hospital Show Adam Reid, who was the perfect person to get more of an insight into the series and how it all came to life.
Why did you decide on the web-series format?
I came to a place where I needed to make something for myself. I had been working in the industry, currently as a commercial director – and no matter what I directed – whether it was commercials, broadcast television, documentaries…I was ultimately executing someone else’s idea. And of course as a working actor, that’s the case as well. I had been developing “Hospital Show” as a pilot for a half hour series, working on it for several years – about these deluded, loveable, often “wounded” actors who play TVs most respected doctors, and I was going to start pitching it around, but then I decided I wanted to make it instead. I didn’t want to convince someone else how good it could be, not before I executed it myself. I wanted to ‘realize’ this idea with total creative freedom which I hadn’t actually done since film school. I think I wanted an opportunity to re-connect with my voice.
I could achieve this if I made it as a web series because there are substantial funds in Canada that exist to support the making of digital series – the Bell Fund, IPF, Telus, BC Creative, William F. White (who donated equipment) were my funders. Once I figured out how to apply for those funds (which was daunting at first) I took what I had written as a pilot script, expanded it, and then broke it up into bite size 5-7 minute chapters that could stand alone but also form a solid story arc for a “season”. In this way, I could create both a serialised 10 chapter web series, and a 55 minute SUPERCUT “pilot” that could act as a proof of concept.
The other reason for making it a web series was to find and engage with an audience directly. Web series’ are great for that because you can tie everything into social media, give fans, subscribers and followers direct links to episodes, respond to fans directly, and gather valuable data and analytics so that you can better understand who is watching. And of course, control this process and the resulting data yourself.
What is your favourite part of the series?
What I like most about the series is how we were able to create these believable, relatable, emotionally grounded characters and follow them to incredibly heightened, almost absurd places. It’s that slow build that I really enjoy. I like how it begins in a very grounded, fairly subtle place in Chapter 1, and builds into complete insanity by Chapter 10 – but always remains emotionally grounded. Because I cast myself amongst these absolutely fabulous actors and friends, I enjoyed creating every minute of it.
Probably some of the most fun I had as an actor was the “banana scene”, in Chapter 4, where my character, Will, performs surgery on a series of unlucky bananas. It’s so stupid and so funny. I think my favourite material to direct was the kissing scene between Charlie (Sara Canning) and Rich (Adrian Holmes) in Chapter 9, which leads into a big moment for Charlie. It was an interesting sequence to build because it begins as incredibly awkward…becomes ridiculous…and then transforms into this fierce and very real moment of defiance for Sara’s character. For me, it all comes back to the show’s ability to contain real and emotionally grounded moments with stupidity and sheer insanity.
What is the most interesting element of your series for the audience?
I think our cast and the characters they developed are some of the most engaging elements of the series to our audience. The cast is made up of well known Canadian dramatic actors (known for U.S. projects) – Sara Canning (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Vampire Diaries), Adrian Holmes (V-Wars), Jordan Connor (Riverdale), Kristin Lehman (Altered Carbon) to name a few – all of them are seasoned actors – and our organic audience came to see them. This was also the first time many of these actors had ever done comedy and each one of them knocked it out of the park in their own way, which was amazing to watch. In addition to the raw talent here, there was a real chemistry between us that’s tangible. I think because the cast is so good, and we know each other and are friends in real life, we feel very natural together, nothing feels forced – like these characters have been together for years. It feels and looks instantly comfortable.
Other than that, from what I gather from the feedback, people think it’s really funny. So that’s great! When you make comedy all you can do is make it funny for yourself and assume/hope other people will laugh too.
Has the end product strayed far from your initial vision?
Anything I didn’t like I hid or cut out. Sure, there were things that weren’t perfect because we were under a lot of pressure during the shoot, but then as I edited it, I discovered solutions that ended up solving things and often making them better – which was the great thing about cutting it myself. And since I created my own deadlines and had control of the release date, I was able to give myself the time I needed to make it all work, which I realise is a luxury. I wrote, directed, produced and edited it (and co-star in it), so it truly represents what I hoped it would be, and it took a long time to get it there – from getting the funding, to ramping up the production, to shooting it, editing it and then releasing it, it took almost two years, and I had been writing and developing the script for several years before that. It was a great process for the perfectionist-control-freak in me.
What was your greatest challenge creating the series?
The greatest challenge was wearing the producer’s hat. And I’m still wearing it. I have been writing, directing, editing, and of course acting, in one form or another since I was a kid so I feel very comfortable in all those areas, but I had never produced anything like this before. This was financed by three funding bodies, plus tax credits and was a union shoot. So it was ‘indie’ but it was a fairly large indie project.
Getting the funding, putting the series together, getting the right people, negotiating everything, working with the union, the financing…not to mention releasing it. It’s a huge huge job as a producer and I was lucky to have a wonderful team to support me, because I really had no idea what I was doing. I was learning on the job. It’s a tough job, and requires something different than the creative side, and it’s critical to the project’s success. Everything begins with the integrity of the production itself and the people behind it. So it was the most challenging, but I’m very proud of what I learned and achieved as the producer.
What aspects of the show are from your own experiences as an actor working on a television show?
Philosophically, the core of this series comes from my life as an actor, and some of the scenarios either came from my own history, or from things I heard from friends or from the cast. I think a lot of it sprung from my DNA of being an actor since I was twelve. Sara Canning and Kristin Lehman (my wife) have great stories they shared, that were built or twisted into the show. Sara, for example, had worked on a medical show before and used to practise her sutures on bananas. Then I remembered the characters from Grey’s Anatomy would do that too, because banana peels apparently are similar in texture to human skin, so I thought- perfect, there’s comedy there.
The producer of “Critical Condition’, Rosanna (played by Lynda Boyd), might be a hybrid of personalities I’ve worked with. I might have taken pieces of a certain person I had worked with, embellished it a bit, and created the ultimate creator with a God-complex.
Philosophically though, I’ve always seen what we do as actors- as just a job – and that’s a core concept of the series I wanted to get across. There’s nothing glamorous about being a working actor – you go to work very early, you put a costume on, you go to hair and makeup, you go to set and do the lines and you have fun in between it all, and that’s it. In this case, these people put white coats on and pretend to be doctors for a living.
Because people associate the showbiz culture that’s attached to the product with the job itself, people think ‘oh it’s so glamorous,’ when in fact, the actual job is not. It’s not something I relate to at all. When I was a kid actor on ‘You Can’t Do That On
Television!’, I treated it like my paper route. So to me, this series was all about humanising the process, grounding it, making it relatable, because the characters and their problems are just like everyone’s. We’re all searching for some shiny pearls amidst life’s bullshit.
What was the design process for the different characters?
It all stemmed from Sara Canning’s character, Charlie. I think I was working through some things with her character.
As an actor, I have experienced the somewhat foreboding sense that what I am doing is absolutely meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Making “Hospital Show” has helped me evolve my thoughts on this but it’s something I have struggled with. And that’s a scary feeling when you’ve been doing it most of your life. And so I wanted to explore that but make it funny, not…super depressing. I had a hospital show, I knew I wanted the irony to play out with these deluded, “wounded”, loveable actors pretending to be perfect, infallible doctors for a living…these people playing healers, who really needed healing…But then I decided I wanted the central character to have a more substantial dilemma, like an identity crisis. What if she was a med-school dropout and was almost a real doctor, but instead now pretends to be one on TV? That would really create a split. So she’s half in this world, half in the other world – like Dorothy in Oz.
From there I filled out the characters with archetypes, and each character would be wounded in some way, trying to figure something out and pretending to be something they’re not. I saw Rich (Adrian Holmes) as the cowardly Lion – someone who projects leadership, who is “Number One” on the call sheet, but who is totally incapable of leading in any way, and is basically a big kid – with a big temper and an equally big heart. Will, my character, is the neurotic. – a method actor who plays an alcoholic on TV and is an alcoholic in real life. Valerie Tian, who plays Astrid, is a wonderful odd-ball character who lives in her own universe, kind of like Val herself. Enid-Raye Adams plays Carol-Ann, a middle aged actress, drill sergeant-type character who is really vulnerable and looking for love in all the wrong places. And Jordan Connor came to me as I was looking for someone younger in the cast and my agency recommended him – so I asked him “ what kind of actor do you want to play ? “ – and he said he wanted to play a former model obsessed with his image and his followers. So he plays Vince, our narcissist, desperate to be “seen” but also loveable in his own way.
What is the future for your series?
The short answer is – we’re working on the future of “Hospital Show”, and we would love to do more.
I’ve partnered with another production company, and we’re developing the series further because I see it as a half hour comedy and I want a sustainable, fun job for me and my friends. So, we’re using all the creative that’s been developed so far, as well as the web series itself, and all the data and analytics I’ve accrued, to help us expand the series into something larger. In the meantime, I’ve just signed with HG Distribution to distribute Season 1 of the web series internationally, and I’m honoured to be sharing our series around the world through these wonderful festivals, it’s been great.
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