Hard Rock doctors take on the flinty North
An unlikely — or maybe just distinctly Canadian — setting for a TV medical drama series returns to the national scene when the second season of Hard Rock Medical airs on APTN starting April 4.
A co-production of Ottawa’s Distinct Features and Carte Blanche, the popular series about a group of medical students was shot in the Sudbury region, home to both the Canadian Shield and the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM).
The former lends the show its rugged, outdoorsy feel as the students tackle the challenges of practising rural medicine, while the latter inspired the series.
Director/producer Derek Diorio says he got the idea for the show when he heard about the “out-ofthe-box” NOSM.
“There’s a thirst for medical TV shows that just goes on and on, but they’re all downtown ER shows. Our show is pretty close to the reality (of NOSM).”
He pitched the program to TVO and the network made the show its first commissioned drama series. Using many northern actors and with the geography itself a character in the show, the series debuted on TVO in 2013 and was picked up by APTN in 2014. A $700,000 infusion from the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund helped launch the second season, which premièred on TVO earlier this year.
“Canadian mainstream television is on the outer reaches of the television universe; we are on the outer reaches of the Canadian television universe,” says Diorio, who also co-wrote the series. He describes the half-hour shows as having a HBO-like non-episodic structure: “You can’t just pick up in the middle and know what’s going on; you have to follow it.”
He says the new season’s overarching theme is mental health, with the fictional school’s associate dean Dr. Fraser Healy (Patrick McKenna) cycling into a dark place. Other recurring characters deal with thorny financial and relationship issues. Ottawa actor Rachelle Casseus is back as Farida Farhisal, a hijab-wearing medical student and, yes, so is the snowy white goat that found its way into the life of medical student Charlie Rivière (Stéphane Paquette).
McKenna, a familiar face from The Red Green Show and Traders, says part of the appeal of playing Dr. Healy was not only the character’s maverick attitude but also his ADD/ADHD. McKenna suffers from the same malady and has publicly championed a better understanding of it. The show struck him as an interesting way to educate people about ADD and to demonstrate that learning can come from not just books — a challenge for those with ADD — but from the people and environment the learner encounters.
The Gemini-winning actor says his background at Second City Theatre Company also figured into the equation: Like actors at Second City, doctors in the difficult, far-flung North have to improvise.
McKenna says that in the new season of Hard Rock Medical, Healy’s carefully maintained mental balance tips and he spins off in a bad direction.
w“We flirt with the depression and the history and guilt he has, and Derek (Diorio) set up scenarios where you get to see him play those out.
“Every great character will have a ghost, and this one kind of gets ahead of him for a little while.” The second season of Hard Rock Medical, Cycle 3, premieres on APTN at 8 p.m., April 4.