Freddie Highmore and Canadian television creator David Shore on the set of The Good Doctor in 2022. The pair have reunited for Crave’s upcoming drama I’m Not Here to Hurt You.
Photo credit: AXN / Courtesy of Bluper – El Español.
Freddie Highmore and Canadian television creator David Shore’s new Crave drama, I’m Not Here to Hurt You, has a British Columbia production schedule. Creative BC lists the first season from November 1, 2026, to March 25, 2027, with a production office in Victoria.
The listing offers a clearer timeline for the 10-episode series, which Bell Media and Sony Pictures Television announced in May. Highmore is set to star in the crime drama, co-created with Shore, his collaborator on The Good Doctor. The provincial agency lists a production address in Victoria, although it does not identify specific shooting locations or establish that cameras have begun rolling.
The production roster also names Leonard Dick, Ben Sokolowski and Pam Davies as executive producers alongside Highmore, with Tashi Bieler as producer, Brad Jubenvill as production manager and Laurie Kean as production coordinator. These credits supplement Bell’s earlier announcement, which identified Shore and Highmore as co-creators and non-writing executive producers, Claire Londy of Alfresco Pictures and Erin Gunn of ShoreZ as executive producers, and Blink49 Studios as the production company.
David Shore’s career began in Canadian television
Shore was born in London, Ontario, and studied mathematics at Western University before graduating from the University of Toronto’s law school in 1982. He practised corporate and municipal law in Toronto for almost five years, making partner at his firm, before moving to Los Angeles in 1991 to pursue television writing.
His first major credits included Due South, the Canadian series about an RCMP officer working in Chicago, for which he won a Gemini Award. Shore subsequently became head writer on Traders, the Canadian drama set in the financial industry. Both productions preceded his best-known American work, including the medical drama House, which he created and oversaw for eight seasons.
Shore later developed The Good Doctor for American television from a South Korean series. Highmore played Shaun Murphy, a young surgeon, throughout the show’s seven seasons, which concluded in 2024. Shore served as an executive producer and showrunner, and Sony Pictures Television was involved in the series. Their new collaboration brings that established working relationship to a Canadian streaming commission.
“We weren’t quite done with each other after all,” Shore and Highmore said in their joint statement announcing I’m Not Here to Hurt You. They also welcomed the prospect of returning to Canada to work with Bell Media and Blink49 Studios. The new British Columbia production listing provides a location and schedule for that undertaking.
Highmore has remained active on television since The Good Doctor ended. He stars opposite Keeley Hawes in The Assassin, playing Edward, the son of a former assassin. The drama has a second season scheduled for release in November 2026 in the United Kingdom and Australia, adding another project to his credits as the Crave production approaches its planned start.
The Irish crime story behind I’m Not Here to Hurt You
In Bell Media’s synopsis, an upstanding family man accidentally kills someone in a bicycle collision and becomes entangled in crime while attempting to avoid hurting anyone else. The premise is inspired by the Irish Independent’s 2023 true-crime podcast of the same name, which recounts the life of John O’Hegarty, a Dublin man known in Irish news coverage as the country’s “polite bank robber.”
The five-part podcast draws on O’Hegarty’s account of events following a bicycle collision and his subsequent bank robberies. At O’Hegarty’s sentencing in 2005, his defence lawyer told the court that he had struck a pedestrian while cycling in Dublin in September 2003 and that the pedestrian later died, according to The Irish Times. O’Hegarty pleaded guilty to multiple robberies committed in 2004, and his prison sentence was increased on appeal in 2006.
The series’ portrayal of the central character, including any changes to the real-life events, has yet to be detailed. Highmore is the announced lead, but Bell has not released the character’s name or a fuller description of the adaptation.
A Canadian commission with international distribution
I’m Not Here to Hurt You is the first co-commission between Bell Media and Sony Pictures Television. Blink49 Studios is producing the series for Crave, with Sony holding distribution rights in the United States and internationally. Bell’s June programming slate confirmed an order of 10 hour-long episodes.
The collaboration gives Shore another Canadian television project more than three decades after his early work on Due South and Traders. Bell and Sony have assembled the producing partners and begun identifying a British Columbia production team, while details of the series’ remaining cast and directing assignments are still to be announced.
Crave has not announced a premiere date. The November-to-March dates on Creative BC’s roster concern production rather than the broadcast or streaming release, and Sony has not named an American distribution destination for the series.
