From Ice Cove to Snooks Arm: Netflix’s New Canadian Screen Geography
Mackenzie Davis as Fonda Howander in Below.
Photo credit: Jan Thijs/Netflix.
Ice Cove doesn't exist, although much of what viewers see around it does. North of North is set in a fictional Nunavut community, but the Netflix comedy was filmed in Iqaluit, where local residents appeared on screen, worked with the production and took part in a mentorship program that provided experience in television production.
Creators Stacey Aglok MacDonald and Alethea Arnaquq-Baril had a reason for inventing the town rather than setting the series in one real Nunavut community. Communities across the territory are different, and Ice Cove allowed them to draw from different Inuit communities without presenting one place as representative of them all. Netflix says the production included 500 local background performers, 45 Canadian cast members and more than 300 Canadian crew members, while also working with Canadian and Nunavut vendors.
A year after North of North introduced Netflix audiences to Ice Cove, another specifically Canadian community is arriving on the streamer. This time the setting is Snooks Arm, Newfoundland, and the genre is a creature thriller.
Below stars Josh Hartnett as Calvin Penney, a fisherman living in a small Newfoundland town where a mysterious sea creature begins terrorizing the community. Netflix's official synopsis says Calvin must protect his family and his community's “vanishing way of life.”
Creator Jesse McKeown has been coming to Newfoundland for years and has said the province has become part of his life. When he spoke to Netflix about developing Below, he connected the idea for a series set in a small fishing town directly to Newfoundland.
“It’s such a unique landscape and such a rugged, dangerous, isolated, scary place in a lot of ways,” McKeown told Netflix. “But then there’s also this other side to it, which is that the community is so warm and the people are so funny and unique and there are so many eccentricities about the place.”
The series was filmed in Newfoundland, and Netflix Canada content directors Danielle Woodrow and Tara Woodbury have described it as an opportunity to bring viewers to coastal Newfoundland. Calvin is identified specifically as a fisherman from Snooks Arm, keeping the province's name attached to both the character and the story.
The two series otherwise have little in common. North of North is a comedy about a young Inuk woman rebuilding her life after leaving her marriage, while Below puts a fisherman and his family at the centre of a sea-creature thriller. Ice Cove draws from different Inuit communities and was brought to the screen largely in Iqaluit; McKeown conceived Below around Newfoundland and filmed the series in the province.
Netflix's own material gives considerable attention to geography in both productions. Its coverage of North of North details the decision to film in Iqaluit and the involvement of local residents in the production, while its material on Below repeatedly identifies Newfoundland, discusses McKeown's relationship with the province and describes the series as taking viewers to its coast.
The two arrive close together in Netflix's Canadian production history. North of North, which premiered in 2025, is identified by Netflix as its first Canadian original series. Its fictional Ice Cove is grounded in Nunavut and was filmed largely in Iqaluit. Below arrives Oct. 8 with Newfoundland's coastline and fishing life attached to an entirely different genre.
Ice Cove is fictional, but much of it was built and filmed in Iqaluit. Below keeps Newfoundland's name attached to its coastline, its fisherman and Snooks Arm — right down to whatever is lurking in the water.
