At the Hotel

At the Hotel is a Canadian drama-comedy-musical mini-series concerning the goings-on at an illustrious Montreal hotel, known for its favourable treatment of struggling artists. Created by Ken Finkleman and produced by One Hundred Percent Television, the series aired on CBC Television in 2006. The music is composed by Robert Carli. This is the only Ken Finkleman production in which he did not cast himself as a character. He does however make a very brief on-screen appearance as a member of the crew shooting a music video in the hotel.

Background

At The Hotel is a six-episode miniseries created, co-written, and produced by Ken Finkleman, which aired on CBC Television in 2006. Like Finkleman's The Newsroom, the miniseries was notable for its use of surreal plot devices and unique use of music.

At first glance, the story appears to be a series of unconnected vignettes, woven against a mystery in the past which may be the reason behind a murder in the present day. Each episode opens with a short flashback to that critical night during a party back in 1961, during which a nameless chambermaid died. In the fifth episode, the audience discovers that everything they have just been told may lie solely in the imagination of a writer who is also a character in the miniseries. The end of the miniseries winds up the end of the novel, which pays for the writer's bar tab at the hotel; but the hotel hallways still have closed doors and the audience is left knowing nothing more about the hotel than when the miniseries began.