CBC’s The Porter and Sort Of emerged as the most lauded Canadian drama and comedy, respectively, at the 2023 Canadian Screen Awards.

Best Drama Series winner The Porter walked away with 12 awards at the Comedic and Dramatic Arts awards ceremony on Friday (April 14), while Best Comedy Series winner Sort Of picked up seven. Both series are produced by Sphere Media.

The Porter led TV nominees going into the ceremony with 19 nods, with Sort Of tied with Detention Adventure (LoCo Motion Pictures) for the second-most nominations with 15. The series tied with Clement Virgo’s drama Brother for the most wins overall, after the feature broke a CSA record on Thursday (April 13) for the most awards for a film.

In addition to Best Drama Series, The Porter earned a directing win for Charles Officer, writing for co-showrunner Marsha Greene, and Best Guest Performance, Drama Series for Alfre Woodard, who was also an executive producer on the series.

Greene, Officer and Woodard were named in the Best Drama Series honour, alongside Jennifer Kawaja, Ian Dimerman, Bruno Dubé, Annmarie Morais, R.T. Thorne, Arnold Pinnock, Bruce Ramsay and Aml Ameen.

Rounding out the drama category wins for The Porter were original music (Jonathan Goldsmith), picture editing (Sandy Pereira), and photography (Jordan Oram).

The Porter also won Best Production Design or Art Direction, Fiction (Réjean Labrie, Jon Van Winkle and Sara McCudden), Best Costume Design (Heather Neale), achievements in hair (Heather Streilein and Tremaine Thomas) and makeup (Tracy George, Krista Hann and Alisha Talbot), and original song (Goldsmith, Kaïa Kater).

“To finish [The Porter] and share it with the world and then receive these kinds of unbelievable accolades… it just shows the dedication and the hard work that everyone took on,” co-creator and executive producer Pinnock told reporters backstage. “A single passion project became everyone’s passion project, so I’m just so proud for all the hard-working people across this country that took my dream and made it their dream.”

The awards come after CBC recently confirmed The Porter would not return for a second season due to a lack of a coproduction partner.

“We need to be able to finance our own stories,” said Kawaja. “We need to be able to tell Canadian stories, we need to not have to go to the U.S. , or England or Europe to keep making stories. That is the most important takeaway for me, because Black stories, Indigenous stories, white stories, political stories, union stories, Canadian stories, things that happen here… we can’t afford to make them. That’s a problem.”

Sort Of co-creators Bilal Baig and Fab Filippo picked up multiple trophies at the ceremony. The two shared the prizes for Best Comedy Series, alongside Kawaja and Dubé, and best writing. Baig won Best Lead Performance, Comedy, and Filippo won for directing.

“The more [transgender and non-binary people] get to be seen as existing, the better it is for all of us,” said Baig.

The series’ additional comedy category wins include best guest performance for Amanda Brugel, picture editing for Marianna Khoury and original music for Ceréna, Emily Persich, Moël, Terrell Morris, Shan Vincent de Paul and Vivek Shraya. Sort Of was renewed for a third season by CBC and HBO Max in late 2022. It was also nominated for a second potential Peabody Award this week, after winning the honour for its first season last year.

Filippo said the third season “sinks in to the characters you’ve come to love.”

Academy Board of Directors’ Tribute winner Jennifer Podemski (Little Bird) took the opportunity in her acceptance speech to echo the call for the federal government to provide fast, additional funding for the Indigenous Screen Office (ISO).

“There was an obvious absence of Indigenous voices for so so long, and until the ISO was launched, so many of us had nowhere to go for support,” she said backstage. “It transformed the industry, I know it’s transformed my life and my career, and gave me another chance to feel like I could do something in this business with the support that they offer.”

She also discussed the recent success of Little Bird, which Podemski co-created with Hannah Moscovitch and won the audience award at Series Mania in France, where it had its world premiere. “The response to Little Bird was overwhelmingly positive… taking home the audience award was a testament to the fact that this does resonate deeply with audiences, even outside of Canada.”

CTV’s Transplant (Sphere Media) picked up three awards at the ceremony, including best lead performer for Hamza Haq, achievement in casting for Andrea Kenyon, Randi Wells, Jason Knight and John Buchan, and best sound. The series was recently renewed for a fourth season at CTV.

The final season of CBC’s TallBoyz nearly swept the sketch comedy categories, winning three of four awards. The Accent Entertainment-produced series won Best Sketch Comedy Program or Series, as well as a directing win for Bruce McCulloch and writing for Guled Abdi, Vance Banzo, Tim Blair and Franco Nguyen. This Hour Has 22 Minutes (IoM Media Ventures, 22M-Hour Production) rounded out the category with Best Performance, Sketch Comedy (Individual or Ensemble) for Mark Critch, Trent McClellan, Aba Amuquandoh and Stacey McGunnigle.

The other multi-award winners of the night were CBC’s Pretty Hard Cases (Cameron Pictures), which won Best Stunt Coordination (John Stead, Anita Nittoly, Dejah Dixon-Green, Nova Zatzman and George Tchortov) and Best Photography, Comedy (Kristin Fieldhouse), and annual music celebration The Juno Awards (Insight Productions), winning Best Live Entertainment Special and Best Host, Live Entertainment Special for Simu Liu.

Pretty Hard Cases ended its run on CBC with its recently-aired third season, while the broadcaster recently renewed its broadcast agreement for the Junos for the next five years.

CBC Gem’s Detention Adventure won its second CSA of the year for Best Visual Effects, after picking up Best Children’s or Youth Fiction Program or Series earlier in the week.

CTV Life’s Swindler Seduction (Muse Entertainment) won Best TV Movie. The TV movie directing honour went to Lisa Rose Snow for CTV Drama’s Under The Christmas Tree (Neshama Entertainment), writing to Rhonda Baraka for CTV Drama’s Miracle in Motor City (Cineflix Productions), and lead performer, given posthumously to late actor Martha Henry for CBC’s Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women (Melbar Entertainment).

APTN and CBC’s Buffy Sainte-Marie: Starwalker (Insight Productions) was named Best Performing Arts Program.

Christopher Plummer was posthumously awarded Best Supporting Performer, Drama for his work on Global’s Departure (Shaftesbury). Ennis Esmer won the prize in the comedy category for CTV’s Children Ruin Everything (New Metric Media).

The one-hour pre-recorded broadcast of the Canadian Screen Awards, hosted by Samantha Bee, aired on Sunday (April 16) on CBC.

Updated on April 17

Photo courtesy of George Pimentel Photography