Mennonite drug dealers: not such a simple life after all
When it comes to successful television shows, sometimes you just have to go for the WTF effect.
Breaking Bad: A chemistry teacher learns he has cancer, and decides to make meth to pay for treatments. WTF?
Game of Thrones: Families fight for control of mythical lands, with dragons and beheadings galore. WTF?
And The Walking Dead: Two words — zombie apocalypse. WTF?
All those shows are unmistakably distinct, and all widely successful. The new CBC series Pure is banking on that formula of uniqueness. Set in southern Ontario, it follows a pastor who tries to bring down the Mennonite mob by working for them while feeding the cops intel on their drug-trafficking.
“The show revels in its specificity, in terms of community and where it’s set. If one looks beyond our shores to see which shows have been successful — internationally, at least on the cable front — every one of them has that in common,” says director Ken Girotti.
Creator and writer Michael Amo didn’t have to look far to find his concept.
“The inspiration was my grandparents. They were Mennonites from Russia who came to Canada, and I was always interested in that aspect of my family,” he says. “Then I came across stories about the Mennonite mob, I thought it was a fabulous way into that community.”
Though Amo had done plenty of research on Mennonites in Canada, he acknowledges that there’s a risk of Pure offending its subjects.
“I want to emphasize that the people who are involved with (drug trafficking) are a very small minority,” he says.