Vancouver-based adult animated TV series launching Sunday

The first original Canadian animated series on Adult Swim Canada launches this weekend.

Psi Cops features two top detectives at a paranormal agency where they solve mysteries and supernatural crimes.

Bart Batchelor, and Chris Nelson are the co-creators and producers. They describe the series as “X Files if you replace Mulder and Scully with two morons. It’s a paranormal investigation show led up by two guys who think really far outside the box while researching things like vampires and ghosts and aliens and undead soldiers. So it’s a lot of fun.”

Batchelor is quick to point out that The X-Files, which helped inspire the series, was also originally shot in Vancouver.

The two Vancouver-based animators behind the new 24-episode adult animated series say they’re excited to launch their new series this Sunday and are proud that it’s a production based in Vancouver with mostly local talent.

“Vancouver never plays itself. It’s shot here to represent everything else in the world, and even though it’s an animated series, it is based out of Vancouver and if you pay attention to the show, the backgrounds, the mountains, the different parts of the city, everything it’s all actually in Vancouver, which we’re really proud of,” said Batchelor.

“We think there’s an amazing comedy and animation scene here and we don’t think it gets celebrated enough. It was an awesome opportunity for us to kind of get excited about it, and celebrate the work here. Most of the voice-over, writing, and editing was completed in Vancouver.”

The co-creators and lead actors on the project say they’ve been working together for a long time, and met when they went to school together at Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver.

Nelson says they were approached a few years ago by David Alpert, the producer of The Walking Dead to help inspire the idea behind the show.

“He’s like, love what you guys do – Is there a way we can come up with something that maybe lives in the Skybound (entertainment) world and Skybound is a little bit more fantasy and sci-fi genre-based, and we thought what better than paranormal investigators.”

“We’re lucky that Canada started running an Adult Swim network on stack TV, so a lot of the shows that are really big down there, Rick and Morty and Archer are now available in Canada — and to that point, we’re the first Canadian original animated show for Adult Swim, which feels pretty amazing,” Batchelor said.

Batchelor and Nelson say they are both very excited that their new animated series Psi Cops is about to premiere after three years of hard work to create the series.

Psi Cops premieres Sunday, June 4 at 12:30 a.m. ET/PT on Adult Swim and available to stream live and on demand with STACKTV.