Jann is a single-camera Sitcom starring Canadian singer-songwriter Jann Arden as a fictionalized version of herself.
At the start of the series, Jann has recently broken up with her girlfriend Cynthia, her career is in the middle of a years-long slump, her younger sister Max is unexpectedly pregnant again in her early forties, and her mother Nora is beginning to show signs of dementia. Jann's emotional instability, selfishness, and incompetent manager Todd are frequently at risk of tearing her personal life (and what's left of her career) asunder. One day, a girlboss talent manager named Cale shows up at the door of her mansion outside Calgary to view the property on behalf of her client Feist, and sees an opportunity to worm her way into Jann's career.
The series debuted on CTV in early 2019 and quickly became the most-watched new Canadian series so far that year. It has been nominated for several Canadian Screen Awards and in 2020 was awarded "Best TV Comedy" by the Writers Guild of Canada. The series can be streamed in Canada on the CTV app and on Bell Media's platform Crave. In the United States, all three seasons currently stream on The Roku Channel.
While the series has not been cancelled, a fourth season has also not been announced. A Christmas special taking place in the same continuity as the series, Jann: Alone for the Holidays, was released in late 2022, just over a year after the season 3 finale.
Tropes present in the series:
- Age Lift: Jann seems to be portrayed as being about a decade younger than she really is; her sister Max is in her early forties at the oldest and is said to have been conceived when Jann was about seven years old. In reality, the series debuted a week before Jann turned 57.
- Fan of Underdog: Todd is this to Jann; in addition to being her manager, he's also her biggest fan and would do anything to help her career, even though he's almost completely incompetent.
- Fictional Counterpart:
- Charley attends the fictional Springbank University in Calgary, the campus of which seems to have the exact same appearance and location as that of the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology. The real-life campus bar The Gateway is cast as the fictional Beaver Den.
- Averted with scenes taking place at the National Music Centre, CKUA Radio and the King Eddy bar; all of them are in the Studio Bell complex, the naming rights to which are owned by the show's network's parent company Bell Media.
- Hilarious Outtakes: Each episode ends with a gag reel of outtakes and alternate takes from scenes earlier in the episode, often showcasing Jann's talent at Improv.
- In Medias Res: The first scene of the first episode shows Jann sobbing while swerving on the highway and about to crash her SUV into a shed. The next several minutes of the episode serves as a How We Got Here.
- Loser Protagonist: The fictionalized Jann is emotionally unstable, impulsive, chronically inconsiderate, in a years-long career slump, and constantly sabotaging her personal life with her selfishness.
- Mad Love: In the season 3 finale, guest star Michael Bublé falls madly in love with Jann, who makes it abundantly clear she does not reciprocate, during a recording session. He then shows up at her house during Thanksgiving dinner and proceeds to act like an absolute lunatic.
- Master of All: After failing only twice at anything in her entire life, Cale spends a whole episode trying to overcome her fear of failure by attempting a bunch of things she's never done and doesn't expect to be good at, only to discover that she can bake and decorate an elaborate cake, win a half-marathon by a wide margin, and sing her heart out with no practice or prior experience whatsoever. Frustrated, she eventually realizes that she has failed at failure itself.
- Queer Establishing Moment: It's mentioned very casually just under four minutes into the first episode that Jann's most recent ex is named Cynthia and is a woman.
- In real life, the series and the promotion of it was the first time Jann publicly acknowledged she wasn't straight, though she had never purposefully hid it and has been out to her family and friends since her late teens.
- Riches to Rags: Happens to Cale between seasons 2 and 3; Jann’s firing of her sends her on an off-screen downward spiral that culminates in her showing up unannounced at Jann's cottage one day, apparently homeless and with leaves and twigs in her hair.
- Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Sarah McLachlan is portrayed as this throughout the series. Jann is extremely envious of her, and a dispute over Jann's theft of Sarah's "lucky scrunchie" descends into a Cat Fight on Max's front lawn.
- Time-Shifted Actor: Humorously averted with scenes depicting Jann and Todd in the 1980s and 90s; apart from clothes and hairstyles, no effort is made to hide the fact that the same middle-aged actors are playing their characters in their twenties and thirties.
- White-Dwarf Starlet: Jann's fictional self is a less-extreme version: though she still has a fanbase, is relatively well-off and hasn't been completely forgotten, she's portrayed as a perpetual underdog compared to contemporaries like Sarah McLachlan and k.d. lang. The first episode shows her playing a "corporate gig" that turns out to just be her busking at a farmer's market for an audience of mostly passers-by.
