The head cases of Cracked Having since seen the pilot, I can confirm it’s a fair analysis. Even Scott Stinson | 13/01/08 after one episode, viewers know considerably more about Det. Black than they do about most television cops. Sutcliffe’s character was a SWAT team member who has PTSD-like symptoms after two CBC Cracked, a police procedural about the fictional Psych Crimes separate shootings on the job. (He was the shooter, not the shootee.) and Crises unit, is “not Grey’s Anatomy, but it’s not Law & Order,” Then he had a bit of an episode with a fellow at a coffee shop that says David Sutcliffe, left, with co-star Stefanie von Pfetten. resulted in the tactical squad officer clucking like a chicken. Typical The forensic psychiatrist and the police detective are standing in the stuff. From there, Inspector Diane Caligra (Karen LeBlanc) decided bedroom of a Rosedale mansion. There are large blood smears on that Black would be an excellent candidate for the new psych-crimes the floor. The detective, analyzing the murder scene, guesses that unit, which seems a rather tough-love way of dealing with things — someone would only have come into this room — with two teenage have the guy who’s being shuttled from therapist to therapist assigned boys asleep in it — if they wanted something specific in it. to a job where he’ll be interacting with the mentally ill all day. Oh, and Sounds logical, says the psychiatrist. “So you think the killer was Det. Black is also newly single; his long-time partner has moved out of using logic when he put the light bulb in the boy’s chest?” their house, tired of him refusing to open up about his struggles. “Probably not,” replies the detective. “But I’ll start with logic and you We see the worst 10 minutes of everyone’s life, all the time can start with evil unicorns and we’ll see who solves it first.” “All those times you were staring off into space, or you’d say your This exchange, from the premiere episode of Cracked, nicely sums up eyes were just watering when you were folding laundry and I’d say, the nut of the new CBC drama: a police procedural about a fictional ‘Aidan, tell me,’ ” she says. “And you’d make a joke, and that would be Toronto police unit — Psych Crimes and Crises — that pairs the end.” detectives with psychiatrists, the series has a natural tension between Black looks thoughtful. “Well, on the upside, I fold laundry.” the cops and non-cops. In the opener, Detective Aidan Black (David He’s an interesting character, this Aidan Black, and Sutcliffe makes Sutcliffe, Gilmore Girls) thinks the Rosedale murder might simply be a for an interesting leading man. He has the requisite wiseass cop botched robbery. His partner, Dr. Daniella Ridley (Stefanie von attitude down pat, but also plays Black a little softer, and a little more Pfetten, NCIS), wonders if the killer has sensory or memory issues vulnerable. Cracked also has a roster of CanCon guest stars lined up, related to light. Thus the light bulb. And the crack about unicorns. including Enrico Colantoni, Kathleen Robertson and Carlo Rota. This is Cracked’s twist, then, on a familiar genre: The idea that in “There’s some levity and some humour, but it’s also an intense and crimes involving the mentally ill, there are numerable shades of grey. emotional ride,” says Peter Raymont, one of the series’ producers. He What if straight-ahead detectives were having their methods says he hopes it will “help people appreciate that mentally ill people questioned not by the suspect’s family members, but by their own are just like you and I, but maybe tipped over the edge a little.” partners? “It’s very delicate,” says von Pfetten of the subject of mentally ill In an interview at the CBC’s Toronto headquarters last month, the criminals, “but you try to show it in a light that’s honest. You’re not cast members agree that detective-doctor tension is a recurring making fun, not victimizing these people.” theme. But they also acknowledge that the basic building block of the Cracked was co-created by writer Tracey Forbes (Flashpoint) and series is a police drama. Calum de Hartog, an officer with Toronto’s Emergency Task Force. Sutcliffe, asked for his synopsis of the series, plays TV writer for a minute and comes up with some comparables. “It’s somewhere He says his experience on the real-life crisis intervention team, which between Law & Order and … it’s not Grey’s Anatomy, but it’s not Law is called to situations involving “emotionally disturbed” people, made & Order. There’s definitely a lot of focus of characters, and the him want to relate the experiences of people on both sides of the dynamics of their relationships, but not quite as much as Grey’s interaction. The front-line workers — the police and the medical Anatomy. And yet it’s not a straight-up procedural.” workers, in this case — suffer an emotional toll of their own. He looks at the rest of the cast, arrayed on a white leather couch: “Is He explains the job succinctly: “We see the worst 10 minutes of that a fair analysis?” He gets a series of nods in response. everyone’s life, all the time.” Jan 8, 2013 Cracked: How the new CBC drama gives mental illness a Cracked, which premieres Tuesday, follows an emerging pattern in starring role Canadian television to base cop shows on the specialized units of KATE TAYLOR real police forces. From 2008 to 2010, CBC’s The Border, also created by Cracked’s production company White Pine Pictures, was Published Sunday, Jan. 06 2013 inspired in part by stories from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the RCMP; Flashpoint, which recently wrapped up five In the debut episode of the new CBC-TV police drama Cracked, seasons on CTV, was directly based on the Emergency Task Force, Detective Aidan Black confronts a schizophrenic murderer who has Toronto’s non-paramilitary equivalent of a SWAT team. turned his knife on himself. The cop stops him from killing himself by Cracked heads into more delicate social territory, however: Inspired copying him, pulling out his gun and pointing it at his temple. by the pairing of officers with psychiatric nurses by Toronto Police, it A real police officer would never actually do this, notes the show’s features a fictional psych-crimes unit in which Black (David Sutcliffe) co-creator Calum de Hartog. He ought to know: He is a real police works with forensic psychiatrist Dr. Daniella Ridley (Stefanie von officer whose job includes talking down potential suicides. De Pfetten) to solve crimes that involve mental illness. She has the Hartog, a 35-year-old constable with the Toronto Police, works on medical knowledge; he’s got the street smarts – and some first-hand the Emergency Task Force executing high-risk search warrants and experience, too. After years on the SWAT team, Black is suffering negotiating with the agitated, violent and suicidal. On the set of from a touch of post-traumatic stress disorder himself. Cracked, he initially balked at the fanciful scene but has to concede “Clearly he’s got to be fit for duty; he’s got his wits about him but he’s that this is what the medium demands. got an edge,” Sutcliffe says. “He’s a little bit out of control.” “It’s TV,” he says. “I was standoffish to the idea but when I saw it, I The actor is creating a fictional character who, like Hamlet, may said, ‘That’s compelling.’” leave you speculating on the nature of the man’s madness, but The moonlighting de Hartog, a hobbyist filmmaker since his youth hearing de Hartog’s story you also have to wonder how much of this who is now both cop and screenwriter, is busy navigating the gap is autobiographical. between reality and fiction; so too is Cracked, a show that has to “Hopefully just a small part,” de Hartog says with a laugh. “Bits and walk a fine line between television’s melodramatic requirements and pieces of life become part of it, but he was created for theatrical its own desire to break new ground with a sensitive and realistic purposes.” depiction of the mentally ill. He adds that the key to avoiding Black’s kind of problem is talking openly about stress to family and friends. Also, he has done an excellent job following the advice of his father, a retired Ottawa police officer who always emphasized the importance of maintaining active interests outside policing. Jan 6, 2013 Creating his first TV series, de Hartog has discovered just how far Raymont, a documentary filmmaker who created The Border after he the medium does have to depart from real life. He arrived at White interviewed CSIS agents and heard off-the-record stories he could Pine Pictures with a concept inspired by the psychiatric teams who never film, believes TV drama can be a way of exposing the truth do front-line work on the streets of Toronto, and was paired with behind the headlines. “We said maybe to make a more honest and screenwriter Tracey Forbes, who wrote for Flashpoint. She created a true portrait of what these people do we need to do a drama,” he fictional psych-crimes unit with an investigative brief so that the says. Still, he also recalls how, as The Border progressed during its series could have a procedural element, a weekly bit of detecting three-season run on CBC, it became increasingly easy just to pull undertaken by a policing team.