A Queer Team Of Underdogs Steps Up To The Plate In New Series ‘Slo Pitch’
The upcoming Crave series follows a struggling beer-league softball team led by a coach determined to turn heartbreak into a winning season.
Featured image courtesy of Crave
Canadian streaming service Crave is adding a new title to its original slate with Slo Pitch, a mockumentary comedy about a queer, underdog softball team and their determined coach. Produced by Shaftesbury in association with Boss & Co and Elliot Page’s PAGEBOY Productions, the ten-episode, half-hour series is currently in production and will premiere in both English and French.
Set in the familiar chaos of community sports, Slo Pitch finds humor and heart in the world of beer-league softball. The show leans into the quirks of queer rec-league life, capturing the sense of family that builds when you’re losing together and still having the time of your life.
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The series follows Joanne Pico, played by Jess Salgueiro (Frasier, Letterkenny), who coaches “The Public Lass Brovaries,” a beer-league team infamous for losing six seasons straight. According to the official synopsis, “Coach Joanne is dead set on turning things around this season despite having just been brutally dumped by her girlfriend and co-founder of the team.” With her ex now playing for a rival squad, Joanne finds herself juggling heartbreak, eccentric teammates, and questionable fundraising schemes (including one particularly disastrous carwash) as she tries to prove she can lead her team to victory.
The ensemble cast features Karen Knox, Gwenlyn Cumyn, Chelsea Muirhead, Emma Hunter, Lane Webber, Khadijah Roberts-Abdullah, Amanda Cordner, and Emily Hampshire. Guest appearances include Varun Saranga, Laura De Carteret, Don MacLean Jr., Nadine Bhabha (who is also a writer on the series), and comedians Carolyn Taylor, Chris Locke, and Chris Sandiford. Japanese softball pitcher Ayami Sato also makes a guest appearance, fresh off her historic turn as the first woman to play in a Canadian men’s professional baseball league.
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Created by J Stevens, Knox, and Cumyn, Slo Pitch expands on their earlier short-form web series of the same name, which originally aired on OutTV and IFC. The television version brings that concept to a broader audience while keeping its scrappy, character-driven energy intact.
While Slo Pitch uses the familiar structure of a sports mockumentary, it’s less about winning games and more about the unpredictable community that forms in the dugout. Between strikeouts and spilled beer, the dugout turns into a crash course in queer camaraderie.
Slo Pitch will stream on Crave later this year and will be distributed internationally by Shaftesbury.
