The Story Behind Netflix’s North of North

One of the hottest shows coming to Netflix this month is set in the coldest of places.

North of North, out April 10, is about the fictional Arctic community of Ice Cove and specifically, a young Inuk mother, Siaja (Anna Lambe), who leaves her husband, Ting (Kelly William), and is seeking to reinvent herself. As an events planner for the local community center, she organizes everything from elder nights to “walrus dick baseball” (which is exactly what it sounds like). Throughout the eight-episode show, she’s preparing to pitch why the town should be home to a new research center. One of the young visiting researchers, Kuuk (Braeden Clarke), becomes her chess buddy and, of course, sparks fly.

The show was filmed in the Arctic, where Inuit co-creators Stacey Aglok-MacDonald and Alethea Arnaquq-Baril live. It’s the latest in a trend of comedy shows following the lives of Indigenous characters in present-day settings, like Reservation Dogs and Rutherford Falls.

TIME talked to the showrunners about some of the most memorable moments in North of North, what it’s like to live so far North, and how the series differs from past TV shows and movies about Indigenous peoples.

How would you complete this sentence? You know you’re filming in the Arctic when…

Arnaquq-Baril: …when you get shut down by a blizzard for two days!

Aglok-MacDonald: …when you’re in the middle of a meeting and the power goes out for two hours!

Wow! And yet, in the show, it seems like there’s a lot of partying outdoors. Isn’t it freezing? Why aren’t people socializing inside?

Aglok-MacDonald: From either April or May—depending on which community you’re from and how north you actually live—until like, September, that’s the season where everybody is just trying to spend as much time outside as they possibly can. You can see kids outside at two in the morning in the summer. 

Arnaquq-Baril: A lot of small towns don’t have bars, so it’s fun to hang out outside around a bonfire. 

Aglok-MacDonald: These bonfires take a lot of effort because we don’t have driftwood. We don’t have trees to cut down and burn. People are going around scavenging from construction sites and breaking apart wood pallets from ships that deliver food. 

The characters in the show memorably go to the airport to find someone to hook up with. Does that storyline come from personal experience?

Aglok-MacDonald: We would go to the airport with a bunch of friends to see who’s cute that’s coming to town—whenever there was a high school sports or a big conference where a bunch of people were going to be coming to town. Everybody’s there looking for who they’re going to spend this weekend with. Friends emerge from the weekend with a lot of hickeys. For me, because I was a nerd, it was just looking and flirting.

Arnaquq-Baril: One of our writers on the show, Moriah Sallaffie is an Alaskan Inuk, and she met her wife at a Inuit circumpolar conference. International love affairs definitely come out of these.

Have you personally met anyone who tried to be a musher in bed, like the foreign musher in the show who tries to get Siaja to act like a dog in bed?

Arnaquq-Baril: Not I! But it’s a real thing that people come up, fall in love with the Arctic, romanticize it, and kind of want to out-Inuk the Inuit. This particular musher is a fictional character who came from Stacey’s twisted mind.

Aglok-MacDonald: No comment! For some reason, a lot of the mushers that come and live in our communities are generally Quebecois or from France, and they tend to be with Inuit women, whether it’s to marry or just for a little fun.

What is the significance of walrus dick baseball played in the show?

Arnaquq-Baril: It’s our form of baseball, it’s something we grew up playing. Different versions are played in different communities, and the rules are a little different wherever you go. The version you see in the show is a version that’s played in Alaska.

Aglok-MacDonald: And again, because we don’t have wood, you need something to hit those balls with. The walrus dick is a phenomenon, and Inuit took full advantage of that. Like, we know what to do with this.

Arnaquq-Baril: Walrus is food for us, and it’s traditional in our culture that any animal you hunt, you’re using it fully, and nothing goes to waste. So we’re not going to waste a good walrus dick.

Why doesn’t the show have a happy romantic ending?

Aglok-MacDonald: We wanted it to feel a little bittersweet. With Siaja, it’s only been three months since her and Ting have ended their relationship. She’s such a young woman, and we really want to give her space to figure out who she is, what she wants.