Words Kelly Finerty, Writer, Editor & Director, Life With Dotty
Photos Nikki Moir, Kaliandra Capri, Dustin Finerty
As a writer, all I want is for someone to pick up my work and say “There’s something here.”
In September 2024, that “someone” was Telus Storyhive, and that “something” was a Pilot screenplay written in the dead of night, splattering my grief on the page in the form of a TV comedy. Storyhive and Creative BC would give me $25,000 to make the Pilot Episode of Life with Dotty, a comedy fantasy TV series illuminating the darkest time of my life, and becoming my directorial debut.
I’ve tried to be anything but what called my name for the first time at 10 years old. That year, I saw Jurassic Park at Kamloops’ Paramount Theatre, and fell in love with film. I wanted to be the woman orchestrating the vision, bringing make-believe to life. What better way to spend my time than entertaining humanity? I wanted to be a Director, and by golly I was going to do it.
At 13, University College of the Cariboo allowed me to take a night course in screenwriting and directing for film. I remember the audible groan from the adults in class when the professor removed the love scene from the feature film script assigned for analysis because the content was too mature for 13-year-old eyes. My plan after high school was to attend Vancouver Film School for Directing, but unfortunately life had other plans, and I did what any impressionable teenager would do: moved to the Island to attend university in the sciences. Be a doctor. Get a real job, dreamer.
Over eight years, I limped through a Bachelor of Science and Master of Arts Degree, gaining employment in the public sector and eventually landing in healthcare administration in 2016. In 2021 the world threw a curve ball: healthcare everywhere was on its knees in the thick of the pandemic, I was homeschooling my two young kids, working more than full time for the hospitals, and my 78-year-old mother began her harrowing journey with dementia shortly after moving into my home. Something had to give, and it was my mental health. Instead of ending it all, I left my job, stayed home, and focused on caring for myself and my family.
Anyone who has watched someone they love slowly lose themselves to the darkness of dementia knows grieving for the living. The person you know is gone, and they are similar to who you remember, only now you are the stranger in their world. Grief had a sneaky way of consuming me at the time, though I found some solace in writing fictional characters experiencing the same slice of life I was free-falling through. Maybe someone would see themselves in my story. Maybe if they watched it as a TV show in the dead of night escaping the horrors of reality, maybe they wouldn’t feel as lonely as I did. Maybe they might even find it a bit funny. Uplifting even.
Life with Dotty follows Annie King (played by Nanaimo’s own Kaliandra Capri), an early-40s government worker, mother, wife and daughter promoted to supervisor of a healthcare complaints department pre-pandemic. Annie moves her family to Victoria and spirals away from reality caring for her mother Dotty in the throes of dementia, leading Annie to unknowingly summon her teen soul from the 1990s to save her from an untimely death.
The show’s script to screen process took three years from 2022 to 2025, including nine months of pre-production with star Director of Photography, Mathew Gladman, matching each story beat with the perfect shot. After months of storyboarding, revising shot lists, casting and prepping 19 actors, sourcing seven locations and gathering 16 talented crew, the 27-minute Pilot Episode shot in Colwood, B.C. over four days in June 2025, and completed post-production in December 2025. The Pilot is now in consideration for several film festivals worldwide.
Turns out, in the darkest time of my life, it was my 1990s teenage self who returned to save me after all. I was going to be a Director, and by golly she did it.
Watch the Life with Dotty Trailer at www.typewriterrebellion.com or on YouTube @typewriterrebellion.
