Sort Of says goodbye after three groundbreaking seasons

Creators Bilal Baig and Fab Filippo reflect on the award-winning CBC and Max original series' impact, and some of its unsung heroes.

The 2023-24 broadcast season marks the end of some of Canada’s most acclaimed and lauded TV series in recent years. Playback is raising a glass to celebrate the shows that made us laugh — and cry — by asking the creatives and producers behind the series to reflect on the magic-making process. See our ode to CTV’s Transplant here. Next up, CBC and Max original Sort Of.

There’s no question that Sort Of made Canadian TV history during its three seasons on CBC and CBC Gem.

Produced by Sphere Media, Sort Of followed the journey of Sabi Mehboob, a non-binary Millennial in a transitional period of their life, both personally and professionally, played by co-creator, executive producer and co-showrunner Bilal Baig. The series wrapped its run on CBC at the end of 2023, while the final season dropped on U.S. streamer Max on Thursday (Jan. 18).

Not only was the show billed as the first to have a non-binary lead in a Canadian series, it was the first to be led by a South Asian, queer Muslim actor on Canadian primetime. The comedy won a Peabody for its groundbreaking first season, followed by a second Peabody nomination the following year. It has also won seven Canadian Screen Awards, including Best Comedy Series for two consecutive years, with Baig and co-creator, co-showrunner, EP and director Fab Filippo each winning multiple honours. And that’s just to name a few of its many accolades.

Sort Of has also been widely sold internationally, with distributor Abacus Media Rights bringing the title to a number of regions, including the U.K, Australia, France, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, to name a few.

Baig and Filippo shared their thoughts on the last three seasons with Playback, as well as CBC executive director, scripted content Trish Williams.

What was your most memorable moment on set?

Fab Filippo: The end of season one when we did our final shot, Bilal and I cried. It was huge to just achieve that, so that was a big one.

You know what jumps out at me too, when we were doing the sizzle reel and Amanda [Cordner] started to speak Italian. For me, particularly, it was an incredibly memorable moment. Amanda almost didn’t do the sizzle reel and she was the perfect person for the show, for a bunch of reasons. She’s amazing as 7ven, but also she’s me and Bilal combined. When she started to ad lib in Italian, I was kind of floored.

Bilal Baig: I think I was probably the one who broke the most. Amanda got me, like, all the time, but the kids, too. I remember they started to feel like actual siblings by the end of season one. And I remember being annoyed with them, but in a cute way.

When I think about all three seasons, I do think about laughing. Even though we work quickly on our show, there was still room for some joy, and I felt lucky enough to actually feel that.

At what point did you know you were on to something special?

BB: Around season one, while we were filming. For me, it was the fact that it felt like we were doing something different when it came to the representation of trans people, because I had consumed so much media with us in it and us getting killed in it. Just to present multiple trans and non-binary people as alive, moving through their life and having different feelings and actual [character] arcs.

I thought about my friends who, for years, were saying that the [on-screen] representation does not feel honest or it’s hard to find stuff that feels like it is really speaking to a trans/non-binary experience.

FF: I had two moments, and one was before we were even greenlit. We made this little sizzle reel that was around four minutes, and that’s how we were pitching the show. It had been shared around CBC, so by the time we went to pitch, the executive assistant who came out to greet us was starstruck by Bilal. That’s when I was like, “wow, if we get to make this show, this is something.”

The second one is more cheesy. I was in a restaurant and I got a notification that Mindy Kaling had tweeted about our show and I was like, “oh my God!”

Who would you say is an unsung hero of the show?

BB: I’ll just speak for myself, but Fab and I have talked a lot about [executive producer] Jennifer Kawaja from Sphere Media… she’s such a huge part of how this show comes together and the way she fights to make things happen for us and the show. I just feel like producers, and really good ones, maybe don’t always get the credit they deserve, so Jennifer feels like an unsung hero to me.

And then I’m thinking of Ann Tipper, our DP. I remember getting through filming, which is always a very intense experience, and remembering her calmness on set, that energy while a million things were happening all the time. I just felt so grateful for that.

FF: I’m gonna second Jennifer Kawaja. Unsung in the sense that this show doesn’t exist without Jennifer, and until I did this show, I didn’t realize how much a producer does… She wants networks to be happy, she wants us to be happy, but she also wants the show to be what it is, and to balance all of those things at the same time is incredibly difficult. A great show can’t be done without somebody who’s doing that.

The second thing I want to say is editors really are the last writers on the show and nobody really looks at editors like writers, or maybe not as often. Hugh Elchuk, Maureen Grant, Marianna Khoury, Omar Majeed, Sam Thomson; they’re doing draft after draft after we shoot stuff, constantly, and laying music. They have so much influence and so much of an effect on the show.

Looking back, what would you have done differently?

BB: I just sometimes think about the time. Like if in a magic world we could have more time in every sense of the word: more time to write, more time to shoot, more time in between a season. Maybe that’s not a fair answer because I don’t understand how we would be able to get more time, but that’s one thing I think about when I think about these three seasons, is how quickly everything was made.

FF: I think, for me, what I would have done differently is how I literally feel about my entire life, which is to not approach it with so much fear and anxiety… I don’t like that feeling of being in the middle of the creative confusion and that fear that you can’t do it. I don’t know if it goes away, but I’d really like it to go away.

Why do you think the show resonated with audiences?

Trish Williams: Sort Of is able to connect with audiences because it tells stories about our deepest desire to be seen and loved for who we really are. It shows that this is a struggle for everyone. It playfully uses humour and wit to remind us that the kindest, most heart-expanding thing we can do is to simply understand and accept each other.

A version of this story appeared in Playback‘s Winter 2023 issue

Image courtesy of CBC