Tales of the people and personalities of Toronto told from both sides of the tracks come together in ctv’s new dramatic series The City (formerly Flesh & Blood).

Writer/creator Suzette Couture has spent much of her career penning scripts about Americans, but after a coffee shop shooting and a double murder close to home, it struck her and cocreator/producer Pierre Sarrazin that there were a lot of stories in their own backyard waiting to be told.

As Sarrazin puts it, the ‘ambitious’ series, budgeted at around $1 million per episode, is about the ‘first world and the third world’ coming together and how lives are connected through dramatic events in the streets of Toronto, ‘the city the country loves to hate.’

Unlike many mows or series shot in the provincial capital, the city plays itself in the show, which means not hiding the streetcars or masking the CN Tower. This time the more Toronto the better.

‘Our intention was never to mask that it was Toronto,’ says Couture. ‘But when we sat down with Pearson International [the series’ distributor] we thought we would be expected to downplay the city, because in the past that’s all we heard. You always have to hide the Canadian flag. Instead, they were totally opposite, which took us by surprise.’

The City is set to debut on March 7 at 9 p.m. as a two-hour movie. It will then settle into its allotted hour block on Tuesdays at 10 p.m., beginning March 9.

Thirteen episodes of The City are being shot by dop Milan Podsedly.

The directors on board are ‘a real mix of young, breakthrough directors with more established ones,’ Sarrazin says. The roster includes Richard Lewis (Whale Music), who helmed The City mow, Randy Bradshaw, Stephen Williams (The David Milgaard Story), Allan King (Road to Avonlea), Bruce Pittman (Captive Heart) and John L’Ecuyer (Cold Squad), who says he has drawn on his own life experiences to add nuances to his two episodes.

‘This is a mix of urban stuff with a bit of action, some romance, and humor, a bit of everything thrown in,’ says L’Ecuyer. ‘I enjoy doing shows like this one or Traders and DaVinci’s Inquest because they have that sensibility that I find stuff in my own life is applicable to.’

L’Ecuyer likes things a little dark and is using plenty of Steadicam movement, depth of field and interplane while focusing on keeping everything moving.

In order to achieve the sense of a bustling city, the show calls for a large cast with the action revolving around a few main characters.

Cast as an affluent Rosedale couple are Torri Higginson (TekWar, Storm of the Century) as Katharine Strachan and John Ralston (The Raven, Nikita) as Jack Berg, her real estate developer husband.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the tracks in an area referred to on set as ‘The Core,’ is Father Shane, played by Aidan Devine (Net Worth, The Arrow) and Angie Hart, played by Robin Brule (Nothing Too Good For A Cowboy, When Husbands Cheat), a single mother who is supplementing her welfare cheque with a gig as a personal escort.

The September to mid-February shoot takes place on the streets of downtown Toronto and at the Metropolitan United Church, with the rest of the action unfolding on set at 629 Eastern Avenue, home of the posh Rosedale residence.

When The City wraps this month, the Sarrazin Couture/ ctv relationship will continue with an mow on Sheldon Kennedy and a project called Wild Geese, which will be either an mow or a feature film.