Showcase will roll out a darker second season of its law office comedy Billable Hours on Sunday, thanks to U.S.-style showrunning by new executive producer Frank van Keeken.

‘My mandate was to make the show really dark, really fast. The episodes just fly by… there’s so much crammed into them,’ van Keeken tells Playback Daily, adding, ‘we wanted to make our lead characters suffer as much as possible.’

He was brought on board as showrunner last year by prodco Temple Street Productions, returning to Canada after a stay in Hollywood where he worked as a writer on comedies including Mad About You. (He also appeared in the ‘The Butter Shave’ episode of Seinfeld.)

He says he was quick to make up his mind about working on the second, 10 x 30 round of Billable Hours — which shot last fall at Toronto’s Dufferin Gate Studios — after his agent set up a meeting with Temple Street executive producers Ivan Schneeberg and David Fortier.

‘The sensibility of the show was close to mine and I liked the world that had been created in season one,’ van Keeken says. ‘You just don’t get an opportunity to do sitcoms in Canada as much.’

Set in a Bay Street law firm, the show stars Fabrizio Filippo (who also co-created the series with Adam Till), Brandon Firla and Jennifer Baxter as bored barristers. Joining the regular cast this season are Arnold Pinnock (Life with Derek), Robin Brulé (Puppets Who Kill) and David Alpay (Ararat).

Van Keeken ran an American-style room with ‘bright, funny’ writers that included Filippo, Till, Sarah Glinski (Life with Derek), Dwayne Hill (What It’s Like Being Alone) and Max Reid (What It’s Like Being Alone).

‘We worked on everything collaboratively, which I think is a new notion for Canada… but the best way to do a sitcom,’ he explains. ‘The writers will go off and write drafts, but all the stories are broken in the room and a lot of the rewrites are done in the room.’

The crew has already ‘begun the process of season three,’ and will start writing soon, according to van Keeken. ‘This year we’ll hit the ground running. We all really know our characters much better and we’re excited about how far we can go.’

Season two of Billable Hours debuts Sunday at 9:30 p.m. ET.