Where Yaletown meets Burnaby

By Dan Hilborn
Published Feb. 4, 2006


There was a definite buzz in the air on the last day of filming on the set of the TV series Godiva's.

Bill Vigars, the unit publicist, had just wrapped up an interview with a reporter from Star TV and had sandwiched an interview with the Burnaby NOW before a similar chat with TV Guide magazine.

"Here we are in Yaletown," he announced with a broad sweep of his hand at the elaborate restaurant around us.

"But it really is Burnaby," he added in a conspiratorial hush.

Godiva's, which debuts its second season on CityTV (Cable 13) on Valentine's Day, is one of those sexy, adult 'dramedies' that Canadian TV excels at.

Set in a trendy Vancouver restaurant, the show features a cast of gorgeous, young Canadian actors and it is as steamy and edgy as anything on the tube today. Stephen Lobo plays the womanizing head chef Ramir and Erin Karpluk is the talented but frustrated manager Kate, who work together while their absentee employer travels the world.

"It's a little risque," Vigars says of the new season, which opens with Ramir seeing a bright side behind his parents' plan to have him enter into a loveless arranged marriage with a lesbian.

"It's fantastic," Lobo said of the show during a short break inside the MJM Studios on Byrne Road. "It starts with the writing, which is rock solid."

A Canadian-born graduate of the Drama Centre London, Lobo was working in England when he got the call that he had landed a starring role in the tight-knit 'tribe' that works in Godiva's.

"All of us are best friends," Lobo said while co-star Michael McMurtry, who plays the "gayest waiter in Vancouver," did his best to disrupt the interview.

"These are the people I hang out with," Lobo added, almost apologetically, as McMurtry went into great detail about his ambitious plans for the post-wrap after-party.

Juan Riedinger plays Det. Brett Longoria, an undercover officer who falls for the manager, Kate, while he's looking into allegations of shady dealings in the restaurant.

Just two years out of his university theatre program, Riedinger recognizes that his recurring role - he's in two back-to-back episodes - could be his big break in the business.

"I feel very lucky to have gotten this opportunity," said the 20-something actor who landed the role at an open casting call. "Everyone here is really approachable, and it's definitely taken my career to a different level."

Despite his success, Riedinger hasn't given up his night job, just yet. Unlike other cast members, who will be joining McMurtry at the afterhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.italic.gif-party, he'll be heading to work at a real restaurant - Taki's Taverna on Davie Street - when the day's filming is finished.

And if the atmosphere around the studio is a little more relaxed than what typically occurs in the television industry, the credit probably belongs to the series' producer, Gigi Boyd, who had her start behind the camera as a production assistant with the CTV series Cold Squad, another Burnaby-shot production that was also created by Julia Keatley of Bread and Butter Productions.

A former director of the federal funding agency Telefilm Canada, Boyd said there's nothing she'd rather do than work in the Burnaby's burgeoning film and television industry.

"It's a great life," Boyd said as she gave a guided tour of the elaborate set.

Godiva's is set inside a full restaurant, complete with an elaborate, fully equipped kitchen, dining areas, a complete bar and lounge plus a little loading bay out back where all kinds of suspect activity takes place. The front doors and loading bay are exact replicas of real locations in Yaletown, where the outdoor scenes are shot, and inside there is ample 'stagecraft' to give the impression that the restaurant was converted from a former law office.

Boyd considers the set - the restaurant where the action takes place - to be one of the main characters of the show.

Originally built on Boundary Road, where the first six episodes of the series were shot, the entire set was disassembled and rebuilt in the MJM Studio space in the Big Bend district of Burnaby last summer.

For the past half a year, Boyd and a crew of about 130 technicians, craftspeople, stagehands and the others who make up a film crew have toiled diligently on the 13 new episodes that will air on both the Bravo and City TV channels this spring.

Once the new season starts - 10 p.m., Feb. 14, Channel 13 - the cast and crew will wait anxiously to hear whether or not they will be renewed for a third season. If successful, Vigars is confident the show will return to Burnaby.

"I can't imagine us going anywhere else," he said.