[URBAN NOTE] "That time when Train 48 left Union Station"

[rfmcdonald]

blogTO's Ed Conroy makes the case that Train 48, a local soap opera set on a Toronto area commuter train that lasted from 2003 to 2005, was more important than people gave it credit for.

Does anyone who watched the show have any opinions? I did not watch myself, one small reason why the show ended.

Anyone who commutes daily on GO Transit knows about Train families - those groups of 2-4 people who sit together morning and night, gossiping loudly about their mundane lives, the weather, their idiot bosses, current events, did you see that on TV last night? Blah, blah, etc., etc. Spending ludicrous amounts of time huddled together in transit hell with strangers forges unlikely bonds, so it's not all that surprising these mostly annoying archetypes might yield dramatis personae for a soap opera.

Australia got there first with Going Home (2000), a shot-on-the-same-day-as-aired soap detailing a shared public transit commute between a cast of local characters, with loosely improvised storylines based upon suggestions made by viewers on the show's interactive website. While in Australia participating in a debate about the importance of lucrative international co-productions to compete with moneyed American TV hegemony, Toronto based producer Steve Levitan optioned the rights for Going Home on the spot.

Its creator had offered up a compelling argument that cheap local content married to audience interaction could be just as compelling and competitive as bigger budgeted U.S fare. "I instantly became very excited about the production model. I still think it is the way of the future" muses Levitan.

[. . .]

Focusing on 12 or so GO commuters, Train 48 took its cues from British "kitchen-sink" soaps more than glossy American dailies (Coronation Street has been a CBC fixture for almost 50 years and its warts and all realism is certainly more "Canadian" than the assorted waxworks of Genoa City), specifically its improvisation techniques a la Mike Leigh.

Scripts were written very loosely, then beefed up through actor input and improv - shot by 1:30pm, edited by 5:00pm and ready to air by 7:00pm - allowing for timely real life events to be incorporated. Many wrongly recall Train 48 as being driven by headline news such as the Iraq war, SARs and Transgender issues, but mostly the material served as window dressing for defining the characters.