Topsail Entertainment has a busy summer ahead. Not only is the Halifax-based prodco going back into production on season three of its popular travel series Steeplechasing (13 half-hours for Vision), but it has a number of new productions in the works and slated to hit the airwaves, cable wires and big screens in the coming year.

Topsail, a member of the Citadel Group in Halifax, was established about five years ago. Since opening its doors, the prodco has been behind such projects as Black Harbour, The Bette Show and Journey into Darkness: The Bruce Curtis Story.

A number of new projects will come to fruition this summer.

Production on the company’s new series Trailer Park Boys will officially get underway in mid-June. Described by Topsail’s director of development Greg Morris as ‘a black-comedy-drama-faux-documentary series,’ the unique project is based on Mike Clattenburg’s feature film Trailer Park Boys, featured at last year’s Atlantic Film Festival.

The series will focus on its two leading characters, Ricky and Julian (portrayed by Robb Wells and J.P. Tremblay, respectively) who, as the title may suggest, live in a trailer park on the outskirts of Halifax.

‘We are a fly on the wall of these two lifelong friends in a trailer park,’ says the show’s executive producer and Topsail president Mike Volpe. ‘You get to see the trailer park community as you’ve never seen it.’

The lives of Ricky and Julian, up to the point when we meet them on television, have been stereotypically trailer parkish, each having a past that includes elements of fighting, stealing, smoking, drinking and listening to hard rock music. Ricky decides he wants to clean up his lifestyle and spends the series trying to straighten himself out.

An interesting note about the six-episode first season (not to give anything away) is that episode one begins with the boys getting out of jail and the season ends with them going back to the slammer. All episodes in between, to be directed by Clattenburg, will be shot on mini-dv (as the film was) and will feature a great deal of improvised dialogue by Wells and Tremblay.

‘It will be largely improvised,’ confirms Volpe. ‘It’s certainly scripted, but scripted improv, so there is going to be a very free-flowing feel to it. Out of that you get a lot of gems. The performances are very real. It’s very interesting and innovative.’

Despite the improvisation, Clattenburg will receive a head writer’s credit. Barry Dunn is producing on behalf of himself and Clattenburg under the Trailer Park Productions banner. The inaugural six half-hours will air on Showcase.

Another Topsail series ready to begin production this summer is the half-hour lifestyle show Marrying Well. Morris says 13 episodes of the slightly askew look at the marriage game are being produced for wtn.

‘It is sort of an alternative take on a wedding show,’ says Volpe. ‘We look at the alternative, consumer aspects of getting married. It is irreverent and we sort of try to peek behind the vale and look at different ways of getting married. We will just try to expand people’s minds in that sense, giving a fresh hip take to it all.’

Volpe believes there is definitely a market for this type of series, and says it will serve as a nice alternative to the standard wedding program. Brian Heighton is cohosting with the series’ creative producer Angela Vermeir. Volpe will again serve as executive producer.

Also on the Topsail slate is the American feature film production of Scotland pa (aka MacBeth’s). Topsail is pulling service producer duty for the shoot, currently underway in Halifax, with Abandon Entertainment’s Jon Stern and Richard Shepard producing.

Scotland pa, written and directed by Billy Morissette, is a send-up of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The conflict in this version, set in 1975, orbits around the acquisition of a Pennsylvania diner. The cast includes Christopher Walken, Maura Tierney, James Le Gros and comedian Andy Dick, who scored a role as one of the witches.