Premieres winter 2015 on CBC Television

Based on author Lawrence Hill’s award-winning novel of the same name, THE BOOK OF NEGROES is a six-part miniseries that follows the harrowing journey of Aminata Diallo played by Aunjanue Ellis, and her return home after being forced into slavery as a child.

Abducted from her village in West Africa, eleven-year-old Aminata (Shailyn Pierre-Dixon) is forced to walk in a coffle - a string of slaves - for months until they reach the sea. After enduring a horrific ocean crossing, she’s put to work on an indigo plantation in South Carolina. Here, she survives by using midwifery skills learned at her mother’s side and drawing on the strength of character inherited from her parents. After a clandestine wedding to fellow slave Chekura Tyano (Lyriq Bent), the couple’s first baby is sold by her jealous slave master, Robinson Appleby (Greg Byrk).

Aminata’s intellectual abilities are recognized by a Jewish indigo trader’s wife named Rosa Lindo (Amy Louise Wilson), who plucks her out of Appleby’s servitude and engages her as an indentured apprentice. When Rosa’s husband Soloman (Allan Hawco) takes Aminata on a trip to New York, she masterminds a successful escape, fleeing to the safety of Canvas Town, an early Black settlement in lower Manhattan. Here, after surviving the American Revolution, she helps register 3000 Black Loyalists in the “Book of Negroes,” a historic British military ledger that recorded their passage on ships sailing from Manhattan to Nova Scotia.

But upon landing in wintry Shelburne, Aminata encounters more hardship and disappointment as she struggles to locate her husband and witnesses flaring tensions between the white and black communities over the scarcity of work. It becomes clear that her journey isn’t over as she works to find a way back home and ultimately reunite with her long-lost daughter. Also starring, Cuba Gooding Jr. Jane Alexander, Cara Ricketts, Sandra Caldwell, Ben Chaplin and Lou Gossett Jr.

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Premieres winter 2015 on CBC Television

CAMP X is an emotionally-driven character drama, set in the thrilling and dangerous world of WWII espionage and covert operations. It follows the stories of five highly skilled young recruits - Canadian, American and British - torn from their ordinary lives to train as agents in an ultra-secret training facility on the shores of Lake Ontario.

The agents parachute behind enemy lines, where they’re fair game for torture and execution. From elegant hotels to hell-holes in the field, it’s one risky operation after another, masterminded by the brains of CAMP X. Sabotage, bombs, arming and training guerrilla fighters, rescue operations, deception campaigns, even assassination: we get up-close and intimate with both the adrenaline of the joyride and the dirty-hands nightmare, as shining ideals collide with the emotional realities of fighting a war where no rules apply.

At its core, CAMP X is about the unlikely path to heroism taken by Alfred Graves, a vulnerable young man with synesthesia - a brain condition that cross-wires his senses, but gives him a virtually infinite memory. Long burdened by his condition, it emerges that Alfred is a secret weapon in the field. Fighting by his side is Aurora Luft: half Jewish-German, half French-Canadian, all warrior, sworn to tear down Fascism by whatever means necessary. Aurora’s loss of a lover and comrade-in-arms shades her growing connection to Alfred as they help each other find the courage to face love and death on the battlefield.

Inspired by remarkable true stories, CAMP X is about the origin of spycraft. It’s an aspirational world, combining glamour, grit and gadgets. It’s about the birth of mass propaganda, the first fights against terror, and the people who led the charge to change our world.

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Premieres fall 2014 on CBC Television

Sundays at 8 p.m. (8:30 NT)

CANADA’S SMARTEST PERSON is a one-hour unscripted television series that takes audiences on an inspiring journey to explore a new definition of smart. In this high-impact competition format, Canadians from across the country participate in revealing intelligence challenges that go beyond your average IQ test or trivia quiz.

According the latest research, “smart” is about much more than an aptitude for facts and figures. CANADA’S SMARTEST PERSON is based on six shades of intelligence which have been internationally embraced as the new markers of brainpower: Math & Logic Intelligence, Visual & Spatial Intelligence, Body & Kinesthetic Intelligence, Linguistics Intelligence, Musical Intelligence and Interpersonal Intelligence. Most people have strength in two or three of these areas, but only a rare few excel in all categories. CANADA’S SMARTEST PERSON will seek out the special Canadian who can demonstrate he or she has the most versatile smarts in the country. In the series finale, eight finalists will battle it out but only one will earn the title of CANADA’S SMARTEST PERSON.

During the broadcast, viewers can participate in all of the challenges from home in real-time using the groundbreaking Canada’s Smartest Person app. Audiences will discover more about their personal smarts and see how they compare to family members, friends and the rest of the country.

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Premieres winter 2015 on CBC Television

FOOL CANADA is a new hidden-camera comedy show featuring Canada’s best improv artists travelling across the nation, in disguise and ready to prank an unsuspecting public.

The series irreverently pokes fun at what it means to be Canadian and stretches our famous sense of humour to new limits, from our propensity for politeness to our acceptance of a multitude of taxes. FOOL CANADA‘s colourful band of characters and comedians will set out to shock, surprise and shine a light on the comedy state of the nation.

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Premieres fall 2014 on CBC Television

Tuesdays at 9 p.m. (9:30NT)

New to CBC Television this fall, THE HONOURABLE WOMAN tells the story of one woman’s personal journey to right the wrongs conducted in a past life, set against a gripping backdrop of government paranoia and espionage.

As a young girl, Nessa Stein (Maggie Gyllenhaal) witnessed the assassination of her father by the armed wing of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. Now in her late thirties, Nessa is at the forefront of the Middle East peace process. An independent entrepreneur, equal parts idealist and pragmatist, she has worked tirelessly to help cultivate an atmosphere of reconciliation between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Ennobled for her campaigning work, the newly made baroness must fight forces that are conspiring against her as she awards a highly lucrative contract to a Palestinian businessman. When he is subsequently killed, Nessa and her brother Ephra (Andrew Buchan) come under the renewed close scrutiny of Whitehall and the Secret Intelligence Service.

From the corridors of governmental power to the sibling dynamic that bonds the Stein family’s private purpose, to Whitehall and MI6, Washington and the CIA, The Palestinian Authority and a Gaza safe-house, the visual backdrop of Hugo Blick’s compelling drama is as stunning and refined as the story that drives it.

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Premieres winter 2015 on CBC Television

Comedian Jonny Harris is on a mission to find humour in the funniest places. OF ALL PLACES is a quirky, irreverent and affectionate adventure into small-town Canada, and a celebration of the people who proudly choose to call those towns home.

The show follows Jonny as he journeys across Canada to explore small towns on the ropes and to meet the townsfolk who remain fiercely loyal to them. By immersing himself in the adventure of their everyday lives, Jonny comes to understand their passion for these places. In each community, he mines enough material to put on an original stand-up comedy routine for the locals. The light-hearted roast plays homage to his hosts and shows us that no matter what types of hardships Canadians may face in this vast country, there’s warmth, spirit, and most of all, a good laugh to be had.

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Premieres winter 2015 on CBC Television

PIRATE’S PASSAGE is an animated, made-for-television film based on William Gilkerson’s critically acclaimed novel. Produced and co-written by Canadian screen icon Donald Sutherland along with co-writer, Brad Peyton, Sutherland also stars as the voice of the lead character, Captain Johnson.

Set in 1952 Grey Rocks, Nova Scotia—a centuries old town that was famous 250 years ago as a favoured port of pirates—PIRATE’S PASSAGE follows the story of 12-year-old Jim. Fraught by the death of his father and forced to endure schoolyard bullying each day, Jim manages to carry on, buoyed by his optimistic imagination and fueled by his sense of adventure. His widowed mother struggles to keep their livelihood, the Admiral Anson Inn, from being sold. It is an ongoing battle until the sudden arrival of Captain Johnson, whose small sailboat has been thrown off course by a storm, changes the family’s life.

The Captain, under the distrustful eye of Meg, the inn’s housekeeper, quickly inserts himself as a mentor and friend to Jim, helping him with his school essay on pirates and, while he’s at it, giving him extraordinary lessons in self-reliance and determination. Soon, Jim turns the tables, developing a liberating self-assurance all his own that so deeply touches the Captain that he allows Jim to see evidence that the Captain may be more than meets the eye. Is Captain Johnson the same Charles Johnson who was a pirate there two hundred years ago? What does he mean when he talks about the “pirates” of today? The lad goes with him on a literal journey into the past to find out and emerges able to navigate the course of his life.

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Premieres Monday, July 7, 2014 on CBC Television

Mondays at 9 p.m. (9:30 NT)

A taut psychological thriller, SECRETS AND LIES is a nerve-wracking view behind the curtains of suburbia. When everyday family man Ben (Martin Henderson) finds the body of a four-year-old boy, he quickly becomes the prime murder suspect. As his world splits apart, Ben finds himself with no choice but to clear his name. At stake are his marriage, his kids, his reputation and his sanity. But is he innocent or guilty? SECRETS AND LIES is a six-part mini-series from BAFTA and Emmy Award-winning production company Hoodlum. Also starring Anthony Hayes, Adrienne Pickering, Diana Glenn, Piper Morrissey and Philippa Coulthard.

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Premieres winter 2015 on CBC Television

When a filthy rich video store magnate Johnny Rose (Eugene Levy), his soap star wife Moira (Catherine O’Hara), and their two kids - ber-hipster son David (Dan Levy) and socialite daughter Alexis (Annie Murphy) - suddenly find themselves broke, they are forced to live in Schitt’s Creek, a small, depressing town they once bought as a joke.

With their pampered lives now abandoned, they must confront their new-found poverty and discover what it means to be a family, all within the rural city limits of their new home.  SCHITT’S CREEK is a character driven, half-hour single-camera comedy co-created by Eugene Levy and Dan Levy.

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Premieres Monday, October 13, 2014 on CBC Television

Mondays at 9 p.m. (9:30 NT)

A fateful meeting in 1869 Alberta-Montana border country leads to tragedy, a struggle for survival and the search for justice and renewal.

STRANGE EMPIRE is a Western whose heroes are women. With most of their men gone, and those who remain battling for control, the women struggle to survive, to find their independence, and to build a life in which to thrive and raise families. As the stories of Janestown’s citizens unfold we see the clash between a power-hungry father and son and the deep prejudices among races, but also the start of something akin to community in this Wild West. Western stories take civilization as a goal; they begin in blood, and end in the morality of Main Street. Starring Cara Gee as Kat Loving, Melissa Farman as Dr. Rebecca Bloom and Tattiawna Jones as Isabelle Slotter.