Stories about sight and vision have been rattling around in the head of CTV crime drama Sight Unseen co-creator and co-showrunner Karen Troubetzkoy for years as a result of her own experiences with sight loss.

“I’ve always been haunted by the seeing and the non-seeing,” she tells Playback Daily, explaining she has a 20-year history of eye surgeries that began one morning after waking up half-blind following a night out. “I went into a really visual medium probably because of this and I always thought about doing a show about someone who couldn’t see.”

When Karen’s half-sister, Nikolijne (Niko) Troubetzkoy, heard about a woman with sight-loss who was equipped with technology that allowed her to use a virtual guide, the siblings knew they had their show. Sight Unseen is the result of those elements, mixed with the half-sisters’ love of crime dramas.

The CTV series stars newcomer Dolly Lewis as detective Tess Avery, a woman who experiences sight loss while on the job. She quits the force after a mistake nearly kills her friend and partner, played by Daniel Gillies (Saving Hope), but continues to investigate cases with the help of her own virtual guide, portrayed by Agam Darshi (Sanctuary). Jarod Joseph, Tony Giroux, Ennis Esmer, Alice Christina-Corrigan and Roger Cross also star.

The sisters, whose combined credits include projects such as Orphan Black, Killjoys, 19-2 and The Lake, pitched the project to Bell Media, and it was put into development in spring 2021 to create a pilot and a bible. They were able to tap into nearly $75,000 in development funding from the Canada Media Fund under their banner, Sisters Troubetzkoy Productions, and hired low vision and blind community consultant Yvonne Felix.

“When Bell started to hint that this was something they were interested in taking further, we began looking for a production company to do all of the financial and logistical stuff,” says Niko.

The sisters had worked with Canadian producer Virginia Rankin (19-2, Transplant) in the past and Karen had initially told her about the idea for the show during a “pandemic walk.” A year later, Rankin joined the newly established Blink49 Studios as executive producer of scripted and boarded the project, bringing along Blink49 co-founder and CEO John Morayniss and EVP of global scripted, Carolyn Newman.

“The minute Karen pitched the show, like in two sentences, I said, ‘That’s a show, that’s absolutely a show,'” says Rankin. “Then she came back with it at CTV, and they were enthusiastic about it. For Blink, it’s a very exciting show, but to have a main network like CTV on board, that’s the gold standard.”

For Newman, a transplanted Canadian in L.A., the show was something the market down there hadn’t seen before.

“It’s a Rear Window, buddy-cop procedural where they’re never actually in the same place,” she says. “That’s totally frightening but also incredibly exciting.”

To bridge the financial gap, Newman says Blink looked for a partner that would prioritize creativity “first and foremost.” Sight Unseen‘s first episode had initially been written for Toronto production, but the crowded landscape had creatives eyeing Vancouver instead. There, Front Street Pictures — which Blink49 acquired a majority stake in last November — became a natural and eager partner, one that was willing to invest before Sight Unseen had secured U.S. financing.

“They were here to support us. Not all producers do that,” says Newman. “Front Street and [president] Charles Cooper were right there with us. They thought the project had something to say.”

From there, Blink49’s anchor investor and lead strategic partner, Fifth Season, joined to head up distribution. So did the CW Network, thanks to SVP and head of scripted programming, Liz Wise Lyall, who had been tracking Sight Unseen during the network’s recent transition and before pro-Cancon entertainment president Brad Schwartz got the top job.

“It was, I think, one of the first things the new network had commissioned as a true copro out of the gate,” says Newman. “We give Liz a lot of love.”

With financing complete, the team ensured the show would represent experiences from the larger visually impaired community by making it a priority. Felix was the first of many consultants, one of whom was a real-life undercover detective with sight loss.

Series lead Lewis is sight-divergent and supporting actor Alice Christina-Corrigan is visually impaired. The team came across an article by writer Graham Isador about his experiences with sight loss, and hired him for the story team. And they hired Ryan Knighton, a blind Canadian TV writer whose credits include Billions and In The Dark.

“It’s invaluable,” says Rankin. “It informs the work with knowledge that we don’t have. We all learned a lot about the community, about what’s important to them in representation. It’s not a monolith; it’s a very diverse community and so also learning about the diversity of the community and the diversity of opinions was really amazing.”

To bring it all to life, the Troubetzkoys knew they wanted a director who could work with lesser experienced actors but also handle the technical challenge of filming a series in which the two leads are never in the same room. So they called up Orphan Black co-creator John Fawcett. He boarded as an executive producer, directed four of the 10 episodes, and oversaw the visuals and directing team.

Fawcett says he used a specific lens to craft the show’s signature visual: “a smeary, out-of-focus look that sometimes has circular patterns.” He also employed unique camera angles to tell the story from multiple viewpoints: the lead’s POV, “which is very out-of-focus and blurry and specific;” Darshi’s character Sunny as she watches Lewis’ Tess on the monitor; a narrative camera that tells the overarching story; and the mounted camera that represents Sunny’s POV as she travels with Tess.

“The thing that makes it challenging is that those actors were never really in the same seat,” says Fawcett. “Agam was often on set with us in the first couple of weeks every time they had dialogue together, so they established a relationship. She did all her own off-camera dialogue and then we went and shot her stuff at the very end of the shoot.”

“He coined our favourite term for the show, detective thriller,” says Karen. “That’s what we were doing; taking a walk on the wild side with this lady who could not see, with someone else in her head, literally walking out onto ledges. So he used the term detective thriller, and then he made it so.”