Joe Pingue

Across the River to Motor City is a Canadian television drama series, that aired on Citytv stations. It debuted November 22, 2007. The series is about an insurance investigator named Ben Ford who works the border in both Detroit and Windsor. The story takes into account the shifting allegiances and ambitions that straddle the Detroit/Windsor boundary, and urban portion of the Canada/United States border.

Benjamin Ford’s 30th birthday happens to fall on a fateful day: November 22, 1963, the day of the Kennedy assassination. Coincidentally, it is also the day that his flight attendant girlfriend, Katie, disappears on a flight back from Dallas.

The mystery of what happened to her, and why, consumes the life of Ben Ford; it eventually involves his adult daughter, Kathleen, when Katie’s body turns up 40 years later. Family mysteries and intrigue play out against a backdrop of some of the more momentous events of recent American and Canadian history.

The six-episode series was shot in Canada in the Ontario cities of Hamilton, Toronto, and Windsor, as well as in the United States in the Michigan city of Detroit.

In April, 2008, Across The River To Motor City won a Canadian Screenwriting Award for Best Dramatic Writing for Denis McGrath and Robert Wertheimer.