Canada Reads-winning author Mark Sakamoto launches TV show about solving social problems and finding hope
Good People is a five-episode TV series streaming now on CBC Gem
Mark Sakamoto's memoir Forgiveness won Canada Reads in 2018, when it was successfully defended by fashion journalist Jeanne Beker.
Forgiveness is about Sakamoto's grandparents who survived two very different experiences of the Second World War. His paternal grandmother was one of many Japanese Canadians forced into internment camps during the war, while his maternal grandfather was a prisoner of war in Japan.
It also shares his mother's struggle with addiction and mental health. These stories of survival and reconciliation shaped him as a Canadian, a man and a father.
It was the #5 bestselling Canadian book of 2018, as determined by sales data from independent Canadian bookstores.
Sakamoto is a lawyer, author and political advisor who currently works in healthcare technology.
Sakamoto's latest project is an extension of the positive message found in Forgiveness. He's the host of Good People, a five-episode TV series streaming now on CBC Gem.
Good People is about finding hope and solutions for the problems facing contemporary society.
Each episode tackles a social issue — homelessness, gun violence, the opioid crisis, veterans issues and waste management — that has been solved somewhere in North America. Sakamoto explores the problem and the solutions.
"We tried to unpack problems that seemed intractable, that are national," Sakamoto said. "The key point being, let's share these solutions."
Some of the issues tackled were chosen because they were close to Sakamoto's heart. His grandfather, Ralph MacLean, was a veteran. And his mother struggled with addiction and poverty.
"I gravitated to issues that were, in some way, close to my own experiences. My mom was tour de force. I mean a real firecracker. Then she got sick and drank herself to death.... By the time she passed away, she was living a life of abject poverty," Sakamoto told CBC in an earlier interview. "So our first episode was on homelessness. It took me back to my hometown of Medicine Hat, Alta. It took me back to my mom in the final stages of her life."
Sakamoto shared both their stories in Forgiveness.
In fact, Good People came about because of Sakamoto's Canada Reads success.
"In 2018, fortune struck and my book won Canada Reads. We did a whole bunch of media and CBC said, 'We'd like to keep working with you, what would you like to do?" Sakamoto said.
"I thought, what a great opportunity to be a counterbalance to our social media feeds and endless conveyor belt to seemingly insurmountable problems. Let's go find towns and cities and states and provinces that have actually put these big scary problems to bed."
Sakamoto feels that although Good People was conceived and filmed before the COVID-19 pandemic, it's a great show for this moment in time.
"The whole world has hit a pause button," he said. "In that pause, decision makers and citizens really can think about what kind of society we want to emerge back into — and what kind of choices we want to make."
Good People is streaming on CBC Gem now.
Sakamoto is also a juror for the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize, the biggest prize in Canadian fiction.
