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The Box

A Short-Form, Transmedia Procedural Series

The Format

The Box is an on-going murder investigation procedural that takes place entirely in the interrogation room, as Stick and Boyle try to get to bottom of Toronto’s most baffling murders. It is designed to be viewed online, on broadcast and on mobile, with an immersive interactive element to increase the viewer’s engagement. The audience has access to all the evidence the cops do; can you solve the crime before the detectives do?

“Crimes aren’t solved in the streets or in fancy forensic labs. Not real crimes. Real crimes are solved in the box.” – D.S. Nicholas Boyle, CID

Detective Sergeant Nicholas Boyle and Detective Constable Ricky “Stick” Gagnon are murder police. Toronto’s best and brightest, working homicides in the C.I.D. – Criminal Investigation Division. They are assigned the stone-cold whodunits – cop talk for murders that don’t have any obvious suspects. Maybe not even any suspects at all. These aren’t your Agatha Christie locked door and a single monogrammed hanky type mysteries. No, we’re talking a body gets dumped out of a car going 100 down the DVP at midnight. We’re talking gang related beatings, with no witnesses except the guilty. We’re talking prostitutes going missing at the Hooker Harvey’s, and no one at City Hall wants to spend any time solving it.

Stick and Boyle know what any good murder police knows; crimes are solved by talking to people. People lie, all the time, for all sorts of dumb ass reasons. Guilty people, innocent people, everybody lies. If you wanna get real answers, you put the ‘person of interest’ in The Box. The interrogation room, they call it. That’s where you ask your questions, trying to get to the one thing in life that’s really worth giving a damn about. The truth.

The Web Series

Each five to six minute episode is one interrogation session in an on-going murder investigation. Inspired both by real life, ripped from the headlines, Toronto murders as well as such seminal television series as “The Wire” and “Law and Order;”  The Box is a gritty peek at the day-to-day jobs of Toronto’s Criminal Investigators through the prism of one setting – the interrogation room. Often that’s the most gripping part of these shows anyway, so why don’t just show those dramatic moments? Each episode will ask and answer one question, giving each one a distinct, stand-alone aspect so that audiences can jump in without having to start from the first one.

The ongoing murder mysteries won’t follow any particular formula, with twists and turns playing out over multiple episodes. How many episodes each mystery lasts for will be determined by the creative needs of that particular storyline. Murders may even overlap, which is how real cops are forced to work them. Some persons of interest will stay in the box over multiple episodes, some will get called back as new evidence comes to light.

The heart of each episode is the collision of wills that takes place in the box, where the ‘person of interest’ tries to maintain their mask of lies while Boyle and Stick probe for weaknesses and inconsistencies in their story. Not every person who gets dragged into the box is the killer, or even a criminal. Like we said earlier, all kinds of people have all kinds of reasons to lie. It is Stick and Boyle’s job to get at the truth. No matter what it takes.

Like Law and Order, we only get the smallest glimpses into the ‘off-duty’ lives of our characters, but that doesn’t make them any less vivid, dynamic or interesting. Occasionally, there will be episodes where it is just our detectives talking about the case, trying to work through some sort of breakthrough in order to plan their next move. These scenes also take place in The Box.

Inevitably, Stick and Boyles get the answers they are looking for, and catch the killer. While someone always goes to jail (no case remains unsolved) it isn’t always the neat and tidy ending that we imagine from the safety of our suburban homes. Sometimes the killer is a real bad dude who doesn’t deserve another chance. Sometimes the killer is more of a victim than the dead person, giving the series the tone of an epic tragedy, and our audience something to disagree about around the watercooler.

The Interactive Element

The Box is a perfect concept for an interactive element. It will have a ‘home base’ website that will not only have the now-standard forums, blogs, and behind the scenes info, but it will also have a component where our audience become the detectives.

For each murder, the crime scene evidence (and other evidence as it comes to light) will be made available to the audience. They can comb through it, seeing what fits with what, and trying to see if they can crack the murder before our detectives can. Through a combination of mini-puzzles and Alternative Reality Game elements, audiences can actually unlock further evidence and become part of the hunt.

The website allows a high degree of collaboration, so that players can invite their friends to help them. It will integrate with Facebook, and other social media sites, which brings us to…

The Social Media Element

Between episodes, while our detectives are in the field, audiences can follow their progress, and even participate, using social media tools like Twitter. Drawing on co-creator Scott Albert’s experiences with Jill Golick’s social media storytelling experiment “Crushing It!”, The Box will weave a story of the investigation in real time over social media. Audiences can even advise the detectives, subtly altering the course of the investigation. It is also through these tools that we get more details of our detectives’ lives off the job, as their (fictional) family and friends stay in touch with them.

These sorts of social media story telling methods provide a very cost effective way to keep interest and engagement high between actual episodes.

The Characters

Detective Sergeant Nicholas Boyle – 32

Boyle is considered a bit of a wunderkind. Youngest guy to ever make Detective Sergeant in the Toronto C.I.D. And he earned it. He’s ambitious, maybe too much. He’s career conscious. Whenever he wants to motivate himself, he remembers his time in uniform, standing around “guarding” the yellow tape at crime scenes. Boyle wants to be in the thick of it, and he’s willing to work a little harder to get there. In most other work environments, this would be enough for people to dislike him. And don’t get me wrong, even here many do. But in C.I.D., if you close cases, that earns people’s respect.

Boyle’s facing a bit of a problem. The brass have their eyes on him for continued promotion, but any higher and he’s not gonna be in the thick of it anymore. He’ll be signing overtime forms and begging the brass for funding allocation or whatever. He’s having a hard time figuring out what he wants next. In the meantime, he’ll do the work.

He seems to take each case personally. It’s not about justice or seeing himself in the victim’s place. More like he takes personal responsibility for the case itself, for the work. If a case stalls, he can take it hard and beat himself up. If a case goes well, he does have a tendency to gloat. No, he’s not the single most popular guy around the office.

In The Box, Boyle lets Stick take the lead. He’s a master of coming back to the same question from different angles, testing to see if he gets the same answer. He doesn’t have Stick’s gut instinct for lies, but he does have an excellent memory. If there’s the slightest hiccup in your story, the slightest inconsistency, Boyle will find it and won’t let go until you’ve explained it to his satisfaction.

As a cop, Boyle has learned the value of paperwork. He was an English major before becoming a cop, and so the bosses love it when his reports cross their desks. Boyle has the lowest rating of any detective of cases getting thrown out due to shoddy or incomplete paperwork. It happens more than you’d think.

Detective Constable Ricky “Stick” Gagnon – 38

Gagnon was headed for the NHL as a teen, and although a knee injury ended that dream, he’s been called “Stick” ever since. Even his own mom calls him that.

Stick was a somewhat recent transfer from the RCMP. The brass fought for him, largely because of his hockey playing. These guys take their inter-agency sports rivalries seriously. He didn’t bring with him a reputation for being a great detective. He tends to come at things straight on – and just power his way through.

And before we go too much further, yes he’s a bit miffed that his direct superior, Boyle, is younger than him. But he tries not to let it get in the way of getting the job done. He’s keenly aware that he’s viewed as a ringer, kept around cause he can play (and he likes that part, he does. He loves being the hockey hero). He’s decided to prove to everyone, including himself, that he can work a case just as well as anyone. That gives him a dogged determination that just keep pushing long after less motivated detectives would have gone on to something else.

Stick’s got a big family. The Gagnons are something of a legend in the force – they’re everywhere. Any favours needed, Stick’s got an uncle or a cousin and even a couple of brothers he can ask. Of course, that goes two ways. Since Stick’s got the juice both in the C.I.D and the RCMP, he gets asked for some heavy favours. I don’t think anyone would be surprised if they catch up to him someday. But Stick’s got his own sense of right and wrong – you wear the blue you’re family. (Often literally.) And that’s more important than the regs.

In The Box, Stick’s a bulldog. While Boyle sits back and figures his way through, Stick hammers and hammers until something in the guy’s story goes soft. He tends to get focused on the moment, letting Boyle handle things like what the guy said an hour ago, but he does have the best nose for B.S. in the department. He may not know why the guy’s lying, or what the truth is, but he knows when the lie comes. Oh yes, he does.

As a cop, Stick doesn’t really care all that much for the regulations and paperwork. He’s a little intimidated by computers, and thinks that anyone who can send an email is a geek. He’s famous for taking all day just to fill out an incident report, writing in pen in block letters. He’s not illiterate, or anything. It’s just that he’d rather be doing something.

The Persons of Interest

The other person in the box with Boyle and Stick could be anybody. This isn’t just about street thugs, drug pushers and gang bangers. The interrogation could include King Street bankers, elderly grannies, young kids (with a parent or guardian present), cab drivers, other cops, joggers in the wrong place at the wrong time… anyone could get rolled up in the investigation. And almost everyone has something they want to hide.

Not every interrogation ends with a lead on the murder. A person of interest could be in The Box because something in their story doesn’t quite add up. But, it could be that they are lying just to cover up something unrelated to the murder – like an affair, or that they’re stealing from their boss, or that they’re secretly a drug addict…

But many of those brought in for further questions will be directly related to the murder. Each lead wrangled from the suspects and witnesses leads us further along until, ultimately, we’ll have the killer sitting in the room – and Stick and Boyle angling to get an iron-clad confession from them.