Sheri Elwood wasn’t afraid to bring an autobiographical touch to her latest Canadian series Moonshine.

The series, which wrapped its first season run on CBC yesterday (Nov. 2), was an opportunity for the Call Me Fitz creator to show a “grittier and shaggier” perspective on life in Nova Scotia, where she grew up.

Moonshine takes place at a fictional summer resort in Nova Scotia and follows a dysfunctional family fighting over ownership of the resort after the head of the business passes away. It’s produced by Halifax prodco Six Eleven Media and Toronto’s Entertainment One (eOne), with Elwood serving as showrunner, director and executive producer.

“It was an idea that I had been thinking about for many, many years because my family runs an old, rickety resort on the south shore of Nova Scotia and I come from a big sprawling clan of half siblings,” Elwood tells Playback Daily, pointing out that the characters are a “huge departure” from her own family. “I always thought it would be really rich terrain for a family drama.”

Production has already wrapped on the series’ second season, with CBC to announce further details at a later date. Elwood says the storyline for season two takes place in the same summer as the first season.

Moonshine is part of a growing number of productions set up in Nova Scotia, which includes fellow CBC drama Diggstown and Epix series Chapelwaite. Elwood says crews are slowly making their way back to the province from production hubs Toronto and Vancouver as it recovers from the loss of its tax credit in 2015. The government has steadily increased the budget of the incentive fund that was launched in its place, moving from an initial $10 million in 2015 to nearly $50 million in 2021.

“There’s a huge willingness to work in this province because it’s a lifestyle choice,” says Elwood. “Our crew is incredibly experienced, some of the best I’ve ever worked with, and they’ve chosen to come back and they’ve chosen to live here because this is where they want to raise their families. My next challenge will be creating a winter-set show so I can keep them employed all year.”

Elwood says the creation of Moonshine began in the latter half of 2019 when executive producer Charles Bishop of Six Eleven Media reached out to her to see if she had a pitch for a Nova Scotia-based series. She just so happened to have a pitch outline for the series.

They brought the pitch — which Elwood describes as “blue collar Succession” — to CBC, who quickly came on board to develop it. As the development process ramped up, Elwood contacted executive producer Jocelyn Hamilton at eOne, who she previously worked with on Call Me Fitz, to see if they were interested in getting involved. The studio eventually came on as a co-producer and the series’ international distributor.

Elwood says the COVID-19 pandemic hit just as they were casting their leads. She was set to meet with star Jennifer Finnigan (Salvation) in L.A. to discuss taking on the lead role of Lidia, but when everything shut down it eventually became the first of many Zoom meetings to come.

After spending several years on the other side of the border working on series such as Lucifer and Whiskey Cavalier, Elwood says the casting process was a way to engross herself into the new generation of Canadian acting talent. She says Finnigan, Emma Hunter (The Beaverton) and Anastasia Phillips (Reign) were clear frontrunners from the beginning for the sister dynamic, which required actors who were incredibly different from one another while still believably coming across as family.

“There are not that many shows where the lead cast are women in their thirties and forties,” she says. “I just feel incredibly fortunate to be able to write for them and tell those stories in a non-traditional package.”

The series was officially greenlit in August 2020 under the working title of Feudal and subsequently went into production in Nova Scotia. It was part of the early days of the production restart and Elwood says they did extra COVID-19 tests for their cast to ensure everyone’s comfort level on set. She adds that they also used camera perspective tricks to make crowd scenes look fuller as they had to limit the amount of extras on set.

Moonshine was launched in its entirety on CBC Gem when it premiered on Sept. 14, which Elwood says works in favour of the show’s “bingeability.”

A U.S. distributor has not yet been confirmed for the series, with Elwood noting that eOne’s sales push was delayed until CBC, which has first window rights to the series, set the release times for CBC TV and CBC Gem.