CANADIAN director/screenwriter David “Sudz” Sutherland has scored big with his latest project, the television drama series Shoot The Messenger.

Sutherland, whose parents are Jamaican, directs the project and is credited as co-writer along with Ian Barr and Jamaican Jennifer Holness.

Shoot The Messenger airs on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on Mondays at 9:00 pm and is produced by Hungry Eyes Film and Television, a Toronto-based, and independent production company co-owned by Sutherland and Holness. The first season, comprising eight episodes, premiered October 10.

“The response to the series has been incredible. There has been very good feedback from the fans, especially on social media where it’s a trending topic. The ratings have also been reasonable,” Sutherland told the Jamaica Observer.

Shoot The Messenger is shot on location in Toronto, on a budget of CAN$2 million per episode.

“It’s a killer show with a killer cast and a killer story,” Sutherland boasted.

It stars Elyse Levesque as Daisy Channing, a young journalist who witnesses a gang-related murder and is drawn into a criminal underworld with ties to Toronto’s political and business elite.

The cast also includes Alex Kingston as editor Mary Fowler, Lucas Bryant as Simon Olendski, and Jamaican actor Lyriq Bent as homicide detective, Frank Lutz.

Sutherland acknowledged that the series is indirectly inspired by the Rob Ford scandal of 2013. Ford was the flamboyant mayor of Toronto who got embroiled in a substance abuse scandal.

Despite his admission, Ford refused to resign, but handed over certain mayoral powers to his deputy. He died of cancer in March. He was 46.

“We’re inspired by shows such as Scandal, The Wire and The Killing. We looked at our environment and saw who had stories that inspired us. It’s a story about politicians in high places, police, journalists, and people in low places,” Sutherland explained.

This is Sutherland’s second television series. In 2011, he served as co-creator for the half-hour comedy She’s The Mayor which lasted one season on Vision TV.

Sutherland was born in Toronto and studied at York University.

“My interest in film really developed around the time that Spike Lee was doing his thing in the late 1980s. I decided I was going to study film and video at university. But before that, I wrote some plays and did some short films,” he said.

His first feature film was 2003’s Love Sex and Eating The Bones which won Best Canadian First Feature Film Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. That film starred actor Hill Harper.

Sutherland’s other film credits include Dooms Town And Guns and the 2012 feature film Home Again, which was shot in Trinidad and Tobago and Kingston.