Shaftesbury isn’t afraid to reinvent itself.

The Toronto company has been producing films and series for more than 35 years, and has spent more than half of that time with its flagship series Murdoch Mysteries, encompassing 19 seasons and more than 300 episodes to date.

Murdoch Mysteries alone has generated more than $1 billion in total economic output in Canada, according to a report generated by Shaftesbury and the Canadian Media Producers Association. Over 18 seasons, the series has contributed more than $766 million to Canada’s GDP and created over 9,500 domestic jobs.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Shaftesbury’s production volume is continuing to grow, thanks to its partnerships with domestic and international broadcasters. New series commissioned and produced over the last year include Netflix’s The Granville Girls, Crave’s Slo Pitch (pictured right) and The Borderline, Shudder’s Hell Motel and Acorn TV’s You’re Killing Me. They’re also still going strong with Citytv’s Hudson & Rex (produced with Pope Productions in St. John’s), which is now eight seasons in, in addition to its array of kids and digital-first series.

According to Shaftesbury, the company’s production volume for 2025 will exceed $135 million, topping the $133 million achieved in 2024 and $117 million in 2023. The company projects that its production volume will grow another 25% in 2026.

At the helm of Shaftesbury is chairman and president Christina Jennings (pictured above), who founded the company as Shaftesbury Films back in 1987. She leads a staff of roughly three dozen employees, with a senior leadership team that includes EVP, business and legal affairs Scott Garvie and Hayley Phillips, SVP, finance and operations.

“[Jennings] is a force of nature,” Trish Williams, CBC’s executive director, scripted content, tells Playback. “She engenders in the people around her a desire to do better, keep going and come up with new ideas. When you’re with her, you feel energized.”

Tara Woodbury, Netflix’s director of content for Canada, concurs. “[Jennings is] like a heat-seeking missile for finding new opportunities,” she says. “I think that curiosity and lifelong learning has been the key to her success.”

As Jennings tells it, Shaftesbury’s drive to innovate and attract new partners is baked into the company’s DNA, reaching back to its early U.K. coproductions, such as Deepa Mehta’s 1994 dramedy feature Camilla. “I think we have always been risk-takers,” she says.

Some of their more recent risks have been tied to their oldest franchise. In a bid to attract a younger generation of viewers to Murdoch Mysteries, the company produced a short-form spinoff series called Macy Murdoch, with two seasons available on CBC Gem.

To promote the series, Shaftesbury worked with gaming studio Pears.gg to create a tie-in video game on the online platform Roblox, which accrued more than 128 million unique plays in its five-week run between April and May. The company has also created the Murdoch in the Classroom curriculum, targeted to grades five to nine, to incorporate the show into subjects such as history, social sciences, English, math, science and the arts.

Shaftesbury also tapped into the adult-skewing Bravo fandom this year, casting Luann de Lesseps (pictured left) – better known as “Countess Luann” to fans of The Real Housewives of New York City – for guest appearances in the season 18 finale in April and season 19 premiere in October.

According to Shaftesbury, media coverage of the guest spots accrued a combined 211 million monthly hits.

The company is also tapping into the popularity of rewatch podcasts in the vein of Office Ladies (The Office) and Fake Doctors, Real Friends (Scrubs) by enlisting comedian and Murdoch Mysteries superfan Jason Mewes as the host of their own Murdoch podcast, which is now in production.

“He’s an uber-fan of the show. He’s watched [the series] twice,” says Jennings, adding that the intent of the podcast is to help make the series more accessible to people who are intimidated by the sheer volume of episodes.

Shaftesbury has also tapped into live entertainment with Murdoch Mysteries in Concert, in which audiences watch an episode of the series in front of a live orchestra. According to Shaftesbury, close to 20,000 tickets have been sold to date.

“The way Shaftesbury and Christina keep the show fresh is quite phenomenal to me,” says Williams. “I have never worked on a show that lasted 19 seasons before, and the fact that they constantly innovate and try to push the boundaries … while still keeping the core tone, themes and character at the heart of it has been a master class for me to observe.”

A key factor in Shaftesbury’s success over the last few years is its investor AMC Networks, which became a strategic partner in the company in 2021.

“I was looking at how to not just grow [Shaftesbury], but to make sure that the company was absolutely secure,” says Jennings. “I thought if we could have a strategic partnership with a broadcaster that didn’t interfere with the Canadian market, that could be a true partner.”

That agreement has expanded Shaftesbury’s reach on AMC streaming services. The company has two series at the horror-focused streamer Shudder: the anthology series Slasher, and spinoff Hell Motel, with creators Aaron Martin and Ian Carpenter.

Over on Acorn TV, Shaftesbury produced the Canada/Ireland minority copro Irish Blood (pictured right) with Dublin’s Deadpan Pictures. The series stars Alicia Silverstone, and boasts behind-the-scenes Canadian talents such as writers Martin, Christina Ray and John Krizanc, and director Molly McGlynn.

Irish Blood was the platform’s No. 1 series of all time based on viewership and subscriber acquisition, AMC Networks stated when it renewed the series for a second season in September.

This year, Acorn TV greenlit the Brooke Shields-led series You’re Killing Me, which Shaftesbury is producing with Halifax’s Topsail Entertainment. The series is currently in production, and is set to debut on the platform in 2026.

Jennings says AMC has also been vital in getting other projects off the ground, like the Crave original series SisterS, created by Vancouver-born actor Sarah Goldberg and produced with Irish prodco Peer Pressure, in association with Mermade and Gaze Pictures.

Not only was the series picked up in the U.S. by AMC’s IFC and Sundance Now, but the company was also essential in helping Shaftesbury forge the connections to fund and distribute the series. Fremantle is the international distributor outside of Canada, the U.S. and Ireland. (RTÉ holds the latter rights.)

Jennings says season two is in the can and will be released sometime in 2026.

Shaftesbury is now paying it forward as an investor in the U.K. prodco Turning Point, led by Carlo Dusi. Jennings says the company has seen the value in working with the U.K. and was mulling opening a London office, but saw greater opportunity as an owner of a local company to tap into Dusi’s knowledge of the U.K. creative scene.

Jennings says the investment is starting to bear fruit now, and the companies will be announcing some coproductions “in the next year or two.”

And more news is on the way. Shaftesbury has an unannounced one-hour series with a U.S. partner that’s currently in production, which Jennings says is “100% Canadian,” including the writers, directors and actors. They’re also working on a new kids show “with a big partner.”

She adds that Shaftesbury is in talks about a possible fourth season of the crime drama Departure (pictured left), which ran for three seasons on Global. The series caught a second wind at the beginning of this year after Netflix released the first two seasons in multiple territories on Jan. 1. In its first six months on the streamer, season one accrued 13.5 million views and 57.7 million hours viewed, and season two garnered 8.8 million views and 37.4 million hours viewed, which Jennings attributes to “the Netflix effect.”

Now, the company is looking to achieve the same with the upcoming Netflix original The Granville Girls, based on The Gilbert Girls book series from author Cat Cahill, with writer Adriana Maggs attached as showrunner. The period romance is set in the Rocky Mountains and follows a young woman as she begins a job at a rail hotel.

“[The Granville Girls is] totally different than anything we’ve done yet,” says Netflix’s Woodbury. “It has a really strong point of view, a strong sense of what audience it’s going after. The romance that is at the heart of the show and this group of young women finding their first taste of independence while working at this rail hotel felt very clear to us.”

Jennings counts Maggs as one of the many Canadian writing talents that Shaftesbury has been able to support over the last three decades. A new addition to the list is Graeme Stewart, creator of the upcoming Crave original The Borderline (originally commissioned under the title Underbelly).

According to Jennings, Stewart wrote the pilot on spec and submitted it to Shaftesbury, which eventually made it to her desk and immediately impressed her. The series – set in a riverside Ontario town caught up in an international drug ring – went into production in late 2024 with a cast led by Stephen Amell, Hamza Haq, Minnie Driver and Tamara Podemski, and is expected to be delivered in early 2026.

“We’ve got so much talent in this country,” says Jennings. “We punch above our weight in every category all the time. If [Shaftesbury] can be a cog in [that wheel], then that’s what I set out to do all those years ago.”

Images courtesy of Shaftesbury