Vancouver’s Keatley Films is cooking up a little promotional innovation as a side dish to a new six-episode CHUM restaurant drama, Godiva’s, set in Vancouver. Check, Please is planned as a six-episode talent search that will run concurrently with Godiva’s in January across the CHUM group of stations. Check, Please is a cross-Canada, open-audition contest to find a full, regular cast member for season two of Godiva’s, assuming that season two is a go. The twist in this Canadian Idol-like’ competition is that only fulltime restaurant employees can audition – which shouldn’t be a stretch since, as the stereotype goes, most restaurant workers are unemployed actors, anyway. Check, Please details were still being worked out at press time, but the schedule calls for audition stops in Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver.
The drama, meanwhile, turns up the heat when production gets rolling in Vancouver Sept. 30 to Nov. 22. Godiva’s started life as a 13-episode pitch, shrunk to an MOW in last year’s funding crunch at the Canadian Television Fund, and grew again to six episodes when new money was found. In the series, Godiva‘s is an upscale fine-dining restaurant that is trying to find its way through its eclectic buffet of multi-ethnic characters. As the prodco is currently ‘building a restaurant from scratch’ there are still product placement opps.
