Something Undone is a very unlikely Canadian thriller

When Something Undone co-creators and co-stars Madison Walsh and Michael Musi first conceived of the short-form web-series thriller, they never thought it would turn into a full streaming television series of 10 half-hour episodes and a cast full of beloved Newfoundland actors.

The series started its life as just six 12 minute episodes, featuring only Walsh, in a house in Toronto. 

"It started from the Creative Relief Fund, actually," says Walsh, referring to the fund the CBC created in the summer of 2020 to help creatives rendered jobless by the pandemic. "[The requirement was] pitch a show that could be filmed under the strictest conditions."

They wound up shooting in a single location, with Walsh, a director and a sound person.

"Because we had a very limited location, we thought, 'OK, let's create a story that revolves around sound,'" she says.

In Season 1, Walsh plays a Jo, a sound effects artist, who is creating gruesome sounds for various movies and podcasts while also trying to clean out her late mother's house, and talking to her partner, who is out of town for work. As the season progresses, you start to see her slowly unravel. 

By the time they shot Season 2, restrictions had been lifted, so they were able to shoot with a bigger cast and in more locations. In that season, you see the other side of those calls: her partner, Farid (Musi), who is in Newfoundland, making a true crime podcast about an unsolved murder in a small town. 

"This guy [is] listening to his girlfriend back home unraveling," says Walsh. "He's kind of powerless to help her because he's getting embroiled in this small town mystery, getting closer and closer to uncovering who murdered a family back in the 1980s."

The idea to interlace the two seasons together into one, going back and forth between the two plotlines, came when they decided to try and sell the series overseas. Buyers liked the story and the look of the series, but were put off by the short run-time. They decided to repackage the series, interweaving the two seasons, turning the short episodes into 30 minute ones.

"We didn't think it would work, but it worked really, really well," she says. "We had some of the same phone conversations that we were able to now, all of a sudden, cut back and forth between. It just informed the story in a more interesting way when you were able to see what was going on simultaneously in both homes."

They sold the series to British streaming service ITV X, and with that money, they were able to shoot four more episodes, developing the story further. They subsequently sold the series in Sweden, Finland, and Australia, as well. Musi adds that while the series' length was initially an issue for foreign broadcasters, its distinctively Canadian flavour — being set half in Toronto and half in Newfoundland — never was. In fact, it was a selling point.

"What we learned is that in Europe, they want really hyper specific local Canadian stories," he says. "They were into that. We were afraid that that was going to be a bit of a weakness for us, trying to take it elsewhere, but we really found that people want local stories. They love how Canadian it is."

In addition to Musi and Walsh, the series also features This Hour has 22 Minutes veterans Mary Walsh and Shaun Majumder and Kim's Convenience's Nicole Power. It may seem odd to have so many comedians in a thriller, but it shouldn't: Musi and Walsh both come from comedy backgrounds. In fact, they initially pitched several comedies to the Relief Fund, and threw Something Undone in at the end. 

"We said, 'You know what, let's put in a drama. They're not going to pick it,'" says Walsh. "And that was the one they picked."

Musi says that all the comedians in the cast turned in great performances because "with comedy, you just naturally know characters really well. because you're constantly building them." He points to Mary Walsh's performance as an example.

"Mary Walsh's character — Sandra Loughty — on paper she's this dog loving, weird woman in town," he says. "People keep calling her cuckoo. She's a little strange. She says things at the wrong time. That character could very much be an SNL character, but she could also be this really powerful, sad woman who went through this horrible thing, and nobody takes her seriously."

Musi says that, while they were proud of the show in its initial short episode format, it didn't garner a ton of viewers in its first two seasons on CBC Gem. Now that it's been re-imagined as a more conventional half-hour series, and is getting both distribution and press attention overseas, he hopes the new, longer version of the show — available on CBC Gem — will find new viewers at home, as well.

"We're making some really cool things in this country," he says. "I think the support from our country is massive, and we seem to be getting it now. People are really watching and responding to the show, and it means that it means the world to us."