CBC is debuting a new 10-part digital original comedy series today.
Save Me, produced by Toronto-based digital content studio iThentic, hails from writer/creator/director Fab Filippo, who previously starred in iThentic’s Emmy Award-winning digital series Guidestones.
iThentic’s VP content and production Lisa Baylin will serve as producer, with Jonas Diamond, Catherine Tait and Filippo acting as exec producers.
Billed as a “traumcom,” each episode of Save Me follows the lives of random individuals right before they have to call the paramedics. It features 46 Canadian actors across the episodes, including The Beaverton‘s Emma Hunter, Mr. D‘s Suresh John and Kim’s Convenience‘s Jean Yoon.
The episodes, which run between five and eight minutes, can be viewed in any order, which Baylin said was a conscious decision to help build audiences. “In each episode we look at a different slice of life, so someone can watch episode eight, which could be geared to a younger demo or the LGBTQ community, and that could be that demo’s first access point into the series. From there, they can watch the remaining episodes in any order. There are essentially 10 access points into the series,” she told Playback Daily.
Filippo added audiences will be grounded by one paramedic, his character Goldie, who appears in every episode.
While the goal is to appeal to a wide audience, Save Me’s target demo is women between the ages of 35 and 55 – an under-served digital content demo, said Filippo.
Targeting that older demographic played into the decision to focus promo efforts on Facebook over YouTube, said Baylin. According to a March 2016 report by Insights West, 54% of online Canadians use Facebook Daily. Moreover, 28% of internet users aged 35 to 54 reported spending more time on Facebook than they did six months prior to polling, while only 23% of users in the 18 to 34 demo said the same.
A CBC original series, Save Me is produced by iThentic with the participation of the Independent Production Fund (IPF), and the support of the Ontario Media Development Corporation.