Mississauga has landed an unusual starring role in a new Canadian television comedy as the home of a struggling queer softball team that may care more about beer, hookups and personal drama than winning games.

Slo Pitch, a new 10-episode Crave Original, follows The Public Lass Brovaries, a ragtag LGBTQ+ softball team trying to escape its losing ways in the fictional Mississauga Slo-Pitch League.

The show premiered Sept. 25 and released another two episodes on Oct. 2, with new episodes arriving Fridays. The series stars Jess Salgueiro as coach Joanne Pico, with Schitt’s Creek star Emily Hampshire playing her ex-girlfriend and rival, Leanne.

But while the show was born in Toronto, its creators deliberately moved the story to Mississauga when turning the original web series into a full-length television production.

And their reason for doing so may raise a few eyebrows among Mississauga residents.

“We wanted to set the larger series in Mississauga because we wanted the characters to seem a little bit less cool,” co-creator and star Karen Knox told Toronto Today.

Knox was quick to clarify that the comment was not meant as a knock against Mississauga. Instead, the creators wanted to move the characters away from what they viewed as the intimidating, trendy queer scene of downtown Toronto and put them in a more suburban setting.

The result is a team that feels deliberately out of place as a group of queer women and non-binary players trying to find their place in a recreational softball league while dealing with the kinds of relationship drama and petty rivalries that can make a beer-league season feel much more important than it really is.

Mississauga is not simply mentioned in passing, either.

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In the pilot, Joanne introduces the Brovaries as “the only mostly queer team in the Mississauga Slo-Pitch League,” making the city an important part of the show’s premise.

The central conflict begins when Joanne is dumped by Leanne, her longtime girlfriend and co-founder of the team. Leanne then joins a rival team in the same league, turning a breakup into a very personal softball rivalry.

That suburban setting helps amplify the drama. The Brovaries are not one of many teams in a sprawling professional sports environment. They are a group of friends and misfits playing recreational ball, where the people they encounter on the field can also be their exes, friends, drinking buddies or romantic interests.

And there is a certain amount of authenticity to the setting.

Mississauga is home to several recreational slo-pitch organizations, including Mississauga Slo-Pitch, a co-ed league that was established in 1995. The league says it had 27 teams in 2025 and describes itself as a recreational league for social and company teams. Another organization, RSPA Recreational Slo-Pitch, operates across the Mississauga-Etobicoke area and had more than 100 teams in multiple divisions in 2025.

There is no indication that either real-world league is the one depicted in the television series, but their existence makes the show’s premise particularly familiar to anyone who has spent a summer evening around a Mississauga softball diamond.

There is, however, one slightly ironic detail about all that Mississauga authenticity.

While the fictional story is set in Mississauga, much of the series was actually filmed in Hamilton and surrounding areas, with Mississauga streets and sights appearing through secondary film footage. The production was originally shot in Toronto, Hamilton and nearby locations.

That hasn’t stopped the cast from embracing Mississauga’s role in the series.

Hampshire recently pointed specifically to the decision to identify the show’s location rather than leave it as a generic Canadian suburb.

“Like our show set in Mississauga, you see Mississauga, and I just think that’s really cool,” Hampshire said in an interview reported by Yahoo Canada.

That decision reflects a broader choice by the creators to make the series distinctly Canadian rather than create a fictionalized North American setting that could have been anywhere.

The original Slo Pitch began as a low-budget web series in 2019, inspired in part by creator J Stevens’ experience playing in a queer Toronto softball league. It developed a following before being revived for Crave with support from Elliot Page’s PAGEBOY Productions.

The new version has also arrived at an interesting time for television in Canada.

Following the enormous international success of Crave’s Heated Rivalry, Slo Pitch is inevitably being discussed as another Canadian LGBTQ-focused series. But it takes a very different approach. Rather than focusing on a dramatic romance between elite athletes, it is a deliberately goofy mockumentary about recreational softball players who are considerably less concerned with athletic excellence.

That distinction is part of the appeal.

The creators describe the show as an opportunity to portray queer life through friendship, stupidity, awkwardness and ordinary suburban chaos rather than making every LGBTQ story revolve around trauma or a dramatic coming-out narrative.

And that brings the show back to Mississauga.

The city is being used as a contrast to Toronto but also as a place where these characters can simply be themselves.

For Mississauga viewers, that may be the most interesting part of Slo Pitch. The city isn’t just a location appearing in the background of a Canadian television show.

It is part of the joke, part of the identity of the characters and, increasingly, part of the story itself.

 


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