Producer Tim Alp didn’t want to spend a lot of money on his next show, so he came up with Be Real.

The idea? Hire and send a stand-up comic into the street with a small crew early in the morning – where they will find and then follow around the first person they meet who has an interesting day planned (job interview? driving lessons? rugby match?) and who is willing to play along with constant jabs and goofing from the host.

‘The comedian just lives with them in their day,’ as a kind of sidekick, says Alp, head of Mountain Road Productions in Ottawa. ‘But we make it way more interesting, way more dramatic, or way more humorous.’

The idea, and a pilot, sat on his shelf for years but was recently picked up for TVTropolis following a meeting with execs Christine Shipton and Nicole Hamilton. Mountain Road is now partway through a 13 x 30 shoot, on a slim budget of $60,000 per episode.

Curiously, the budget-conscious Alp has hired a spendthrift host, J.R. Digs, who briefly bought his way onto Global TV’s late-night schedule a few years ago – putting a self-made talk show on during what would normally be a slot for infomercials.

It didn’t pay off the way he’d hoped. ‘I had more money than brains,’ says Digs, laughing. ‘No networks called and no one noticed… it was a complete disaster.’

It’s ironic, he notes, that he tried so hard to get on TV and now, as the host of Be Real, it’s his job to give away screen time to random passersby.

‘You can just be a person walking down the street and get your own show,’ he notes.

Digs and Kevin Burton direct, handing daily mountains of footage to editor Jay Bond (Me, My House and I).

The premise bears a resemblance to Punched Up, a reality riff now underway for Comedy Network, though Be Real has been tweaked to include a show-within-a-show that makes fun of reality TV.

Be Real with J.R. Digs is set to air on TVTropolis in September. Mountain Road is also shooting a third season (13 x 30) of Design U for HGTV.