CBC procedural Wild Cards is heading abroad in a raft of new deals from distributor Fifth Season as it continues to build momentum with U.S. audiences.

The L.A.-headquartered studio announced sales for seasons one and two on Tuesday (Feb. 18) in the Netherlands (Talpa TV), Portugal (Star Life), Spain (Mediaset España), Slovakia (TV JOJ), Africa (NBCUniversal International Networks & Direct-to-Consumer), Hong Kong (Now TV), Japan (Wowow), Singapore (Mediacorp TV), Australia (Nine Network), New Zealand (Warner Bros. Discovery) and Israel (yes and Hot).

The two seasons were also sold to Warner TV in the regions of France, Belgium, Switzerland and Africa.

Season one was additionally sold in Belgium (Play Media), Germany (ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE), Quebecor Content (French Canada) and The Walt Disney Company in Bulgaria and the Middle East.

Wild Cards is produced by Blink49 Studios, Front Street Pictures and Piller/Segan in association with U.S. network the CW for commissioning broadcaster CBC. The series is led by Ottawa-born Vanessa Morgan (Riverdale) and Italian-Canadian actor Giacomo Gianniotti (Grey’s Anatomy) as a con woman and a demoted detective who form an unlikely partnership to redeem their reputations.

The series was the No. 1 new show for the CW in 2024, according to Nielsen. Its U.S. momentum grew in January when it became the No. 3 series on Prime Video’s top 10 list after landing on the streamer on Jan. 9.

The CW president Brad Schwartz tells Playback Daily that the move to license the series to Prime Video ahead of its U.S. season two premiere on Feb. 6 was a strategic one.

“I was convinced that it would stand out on Prime Video amongst all their big-budget originals as a big procedural that could cut through, and it did,” he says.

The strategy is a familiar one from his days as chief of U.S. pay TV channel Pop TV. “I hate to follow my own playbook, but it’s very similar to what happened with Schitt’s Creek,” says Schwartz. “We had done the first and second season on Pop TV, and it wasn’t until we gave the show increased exposure on Netflix that it found this massive new audience that kept coming back to Pop TV for every new season.”

Wild Cards creator Michael Konyves says the “lightning in a bottle” success can be attributed to several factors, including the cast, the writing and the timing with audience demand.

“Our show is fun, it’s light; it has that kind of throwback romantic banter like Moonlighting and Castle that hasn’t been around for a while,” he says, noting that audiences are looking for easy-going shows at a time when real life gets dark.

Konyves says production “struck gold” with the co-leads and the rest of the cast, which includes Private Eyes actor Jason Priestley. Overall, he says Wild Cards is an example of how a series can be inexpensive to make and still be a hit in the U.S. — something Canadian creatives and crews excel at.

“The audience is not tuning in to watch a $5 million special effects action sequence. They’re tuning in to watch these two people talk,” he says. “[It helps] having a team on the writing side and the creative side that understand production and budgetary restrictions, and how to turn that into a positive.”

Schwartz says Sullivan’s Crossing (Reel World Management) is another example of a Canadian series that attracts “as wide of an audience as possible and differentiates [the CW] from what other people are doing.”

Executive producers on Wild Cards are Konyves, Shawn Piller, Lloyd Segan, pilot director James Genn and writers Alexandra Zarowny and James Thorpe. It is produced by Charles Cooper and Virginia Rankin and overseen by Carolyn Newman, Tashi Bieler and Alix Steerman on behalf of Blink49 Studios.

Image courtesy of Fifth Season