Leila Basen says the story of the Heartland series winds its way back to the summer of 2005, when she received a crackly call on her cell phone. “I couldn’t quite hear everything the producer on the line was saying,” the Montreal-based screenwriter recalls. “I could just make out, ‘I hear you’re a great rider!’ And I replied, ‘Yes, I’m a great rider!’ I thought he was talking about horse riding. Actually, he was asking about my writing.”

 

It was an honest enough mistake, and an understandable one, given the nature of the call. It turned out to be the moment Basen and her long-time writing partner David Preston were approached with the idea of turning Heartland, the best-selling series of books by British author Lauren Brooke, into either a MOW or TV series for the CBC.

 

“I immediately loved the idea,” says Basen from the Calgary set of the show. “I own a horse, I’ve ridden all my life, and these books have such a following. There was an immediate appeal in it for me.”

 

Since its germination, Heartland has blossomed into a 13-episode first season, a beautifully-shot series that has a 15-year-old girl, Amy (played by Amber Marshall), dealing with the tragic death of her mother. Life on the ranch changes completely for Amy when her older sister Lou (Michelle Morgan) returns from a high-powered job in Manhattan to help manage things, while Grandpa Jack (Shaun Johnston) must also learn a new role in the complicated family life. As the family stories unfold, we learn that Amy is something of a horse whisperer–she has a way with the animals that allows her to help damaged horses heal. The healing process she goes through with each horse in turn allows her to come to terms with her own grief over her mother’s passing. The books, which have sold over 6.5 million copies worldwide, provided a fertile terrain of story ideas.

 

Heartland showrunner, Heather Conkie, who’s written half of the episodes and is one of the show’s executive

producers, says part of the mandate for Heartland was to reclaim that Sunday-night 7pm time slot–one the CBC practically owned with shows like The Beachcombers, Road to Avonlea and Wind at My Back. “So many people loved those shows, and they were programs you could watch with the entire family–they appealed to viewers of all ages.” For Conkie, the idea of having that choice bit of prime-time real estate back where it belongs was very appealing.

 

“Family movies get sky-high ratings,” she notes. “People really want to see shows like that; they have a nostalgia for them. They want it back.”  Kristine Layfield, CBC’s executive director of network programming, agrees: “Heartland is a heart-warming, indisputably contemporary drama for Sunday nights that reflects CBC Television’s long-standing tradition of great family series.”

 

But as Conkie also notes, writing for family shows is no walk in the park. And she’d know, having written multiple episodes over the first five seasons of Road to Avonlea. “Shows of this sort are really hard to write. It can’t be squeaky clean–no one wants to watch that. A good family drama allows you to laugh and to experience a broad range of emotions beyond that. There has to be a balance–the show is going to appeal to people of  different generations. If it’s going to work, it’s got to appeal to kids but adults also have to be intrigued. You can’t write down to anyone.”