Ryan J. Lindsay has tapped into the world of Canada’s blue collar workers for Crave’s newest original comedy, The Trades.

The Government of Canada estimates that about one in six Canadians work in skilled trades. The Trades creator and Sarnia, Ont. native Ryan J. Lindsay isn’t one of them, but he grew up along the St. Clair River area known as “Chemical Valley,” and his family and friends were. Whenever his brothers, a pipefitter and a carpenter, told stories at the dinner table, everyone howled with laughter. Lindsay knew these stories could be a show.

He was surprised to discover that a series revolving around skilled trade workers had rarely, if ever, been done in Canada.

“A third of the population globally is blue collar,” Lindsay tells Playback Daily. “So there’s a massive audience segment.”

The Trades (8 x 30 minutes), which debuts Friday (March 22) on Crave, follows refinery workers in a working-class Nova Scotia community. Trailer Park Boys star Robb Wells leads the crew as a pipefitter; Bomb Girls‘ Anastasia Phillips plays his sister and roommate, while The Red Green Show‘s Patrick McKenna plays their father.

Tom Green, Jennifer Spence, Enrico Colantoni, Jason Daley, Jesse Camacho, Daniel Petronijevic, Brandon Oakes, Raoul Bhaneja, Susan Kent and a raccoon named Gaby round out the cast bringing the situational humour to life.

Justin Stockman, Bell Media’s VP of content development and programming, says Lindsay’s instincts for this untapped audience and the Trailer Park Boys connection are already proving to be a winning combo.

“When we originally announced The Trades, the engagement and excitement on Crave’s social channels were through the roof,” says Stockman. “[It] illustrates the anticipation from fans to see something new from Robb and his creative team.”

Over the past five years, Lindsay has interviewed more than 200 tradespeople to understand and develop the world in The Trades. He secured a Canada Media Fund grant and shot a teaser with actual tradespeople and local performers from the Sarnia community theatre.

That teaser and a pilot script landed in Wells’ hands, and he boarded as a star and executive producer. From there, Trailer Park Boys collaborator and Rollercoaster Entertainment’s Gary Howsam and Trailer Park Boys Inc. joined the producing team.

“What we liked about it at the outset was that it’s a world of people that have a community, and there’s heart to it,” says Howsam. “It was one of the things we feel is the strength of Trailer Park Boys. Aside from the shenanigans, underneath is a bond among the characters, a community. We felt it was the same kind of world you could build with The Trades.”

Lindsay, who also executive produces under his banner Kontent House Productions, says Bell Media supported his idea early on. But when the Trailer Park Boys team joined, “they kicked it into overdrive.”

Crave greenlit The Trades at the end of 2022, with Blink49 Studios also executive producing and serving as the exclusive U.S. sales agent. (Rollercoaster retains all other distribution rights.) Additional funding came from the Nova Scotia Film & Television Production Incentive Fund, the Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit and Ontario Creates.

“We were very interested in getting more into comedy,” says Virginia Rankin, Blink49’s executive producer of scripted television. “Not only does this particular one come adjacent to an established brand, but it also comes with amazing, fresh new talent in Ryan Lindsay, who brought the authenticity and the humour.”

Part of that humour is exploring the female side of the trades, mainly through Phillips’ character, who decides to apprentice as a carpenter and follow in her father’s footsteps in the opening episode.

“Audrey joins a male-dominated workforce, which obviously spawns comedy and conflict, but you also get to see it from the apprenticeship angle,” says Lindsay. “It’s a double prong of interest.”

Blink suggested writer and EP Shelley Eriksen, who co-created Private Eyes, could help to capture that perspective. She joined the writing room for a couple of months and, according to Rankin, “really helped to cement those eight episodes that ended up going into production.”

To create the fictional refinery plant, The Trades filmed exteriors in Hamilton, Ont. There, production made use of a decommissioned refinery and flare stack. However, most production took place in Dartmouth, N.S., where filming utilized the Nova Scotia Community College’s Akerley campus during the vacant summer months. As a result, they had an entire wing of the trade school available for production, parking for base camps, and administration offices that doubled as fictional accounting offices in the show.

“They had all the welding shops and industrial training facilities that felt like a real refinery, but there was no product in the pipes,” Lindsay explains. “So it was completely safe to spark lights and have crew members around and simulate an active refinery.”

Lindsay and his producing partners believe that all-encompassing authenticity, from the research to the production to the characters, will hit with audiences when The Trades debuts in Canada.

“They call it a second high school for a reason. Yes, there’s intense physical labour and a mental and emotional side to this job. But also, there’s downtime. There’s a social element to being on a crew,” says Lindsay.

“That’s the thing about these mega corporations: They don’t look into the history of their employees,” he continues. “You could go on a crew one day and work with a retired priest and an ex-con. And you have to work together to get the job done. It’s an interesting workforce, and it brings such a unique dynamic to a show.”

Image courtesy of Bell Media