The Englishman’s Boy
A 2 x 2-hour mini-series

Winner of the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, the Saskatchewan Award for Best Novel and for Best Book of the Year, and short listed for the Giller Prize.

The Englishman’s Boy brilliantly links together Hollywood in the 1920’s with one of the bloodiest, most brutal events of the nineteenth century Canadian west – the Cypress Hills Massacre. A young screenwriter, Harry Vincent (Michael Therriault – Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story), newly arrived to Hollywood from the prairies, meets the famed studio boss, Damon Ira Chance, who enlists him to find the elusive old-time western actor, Shorty McAdoo. Chance wants to make the big film about the American West, and McAdoo will provide the authentic content he seeks. In counterpoint is the parallel story of a young drifter, known simply as the “Englishman’s Boy.” In May 1873 the Englishman’s Boy joins a group of wolf hunters on the trail of horse thieves. It is a journey that climaxes in a brutal encounter with the Assiniboine Indians in the Cypress Hills. Harry finally locates McAdoo and uncovers a story that will become the basis for Chance’s film. But the story also leads to disturbing revelations about the darker side of the studio owner’s ambition.

Author and screenwriter Guy Vanderhaeghe’s rendering of the stark, dramatic beauty of the western landscape and of Hollywood in its most extravagant era provides a vivid background for scenes of action, adventure and intrigue. Richly textured, evocative of time and place, this mini-series is an unforgettable story about power, greed and the pull of dreams that has at its centre the haunting story of the Englishman’s Boy, whose fate, ultimately, is a tragic one.

Produced by Minds Eye Entertainment for CBC, the Executive Producers are Kevin DeWalt (Minds Eye Entertainment) and John N. Smith. Smith (Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story, The Boys of St. Vincent) also directs.