Some shows leave you gripping the armrest. You finish an episode and need a minute before you can start the next one.
Heartland was never that show. Amber Marshall says that’s the whole point.
Sitting down with the Alberta magazine team behind the Trailblazher podcast, Marshall was asked to describe Heartland to someone who had never seen it. She didn’t talk about plot or rodeo or romance. She talked about how it makes people feel.
“I do believe it’s because of the wholesome values that Heartland portrays, as well as it’s kind of just a breath of fresh air,” she said.
The opposite of edge-of-your-seat TV
Marshall isn’t knocking thrillers. She just knows what they do to a body at the end of a long day.
“There’s a lot of scripted television shows out there that keep you on the edge of your seat, but sometimes in a way that gives you anxiety,” she said. “You’re watching it and you’re like, what’s going to happen next? Okay, now I have to take a relax before I go to the next episode because my heart’s racing.”
Then she painted the picture fans have been sending her for years.
“It’s comfortable. It’s sitting down on a nice couch with your best friend, sharing a cup of tea or whatever it might be,” she said. “You don’t feel that anxiety. You feel in fact the opposite. You feel a release of everything.”
That’s a strange thing to say about a show that opened with Amy losing her mother, later buried her husband, and just put Jack Bartlett through a stroke. Heartland has plenty of heartbreak. What it doesn’t do is leave you hanging off a cliff with your pulse at 140.
The fans who watch it to get well
The most moving part of the conversation came when Marshall talked about the people who write to her.
Some of them are coming out of an illness. Some are just worn down. And a lot of them tell her the same thing: they don’t want to watch anything else.
“I just want to sit there and watch Heartland, because it makes me feel good,” is how she relays it. “And it makes me feel inspired and positive, that I can get through anything. And I think that that’s really, really what the show is about.”
She thinks the horses are a big part of it. Not the stunts. The quiet.
“There is something about horses that we all know kind of grounds us and brings us back to our true roots and that simplicity of life,” she said. “I believe that watching Heartland, seeing those connections, seeing the influence of a horse really helps ground you just watching the show.”
“That’s something that you don’t feel a lot when you’re watching television.”
A show families can sit through together
Ask parents why Heartland stays on in their living rooms and you hear a version of the same answer. Nobody has to grab the remote.
Marshall heard it so often she told TV Insider it’s the feedback she gets most.
“I think fans are really looking for a nice, wholesome, family show that they can sit down together and watch and not be worried about the content. Not have to explain things to their kids,” she said.
She described kids watching an episode and then calling their grandparents to talk about it.
“In such a fast-paced world, where so many people are separated by devices and technology. Everybody is very disconnected, but they can still get together to sit and watch our show together.”
Three generations. One episode. Phones down.
She lives the calm she’s describing
The comfort isn’t just a vibe Marshall puts on for the camera. She moved her whole life toward it.
She grew up in Ontario and spent her high school years working in a vet clinic. “I thought I was going to be a veterinarian,” she said on the podcast. She was 18 when she landed Heartland, and she had already been accepted to film school when the audition came. (The full story of those early years is in this look at the Ontario teen who became Amy.)
When the show was renewed, she made her move.
“In season two, I relocated full time to Alberta. And I rented an acreage and it just felt, it felt right,” she said. “And I had some chickens and a dog.”
Talking about the province, she used the same kind of words she uses for the show. She described “this neighbourly sense of community and family and friendship that’s out here,” and a relaxed pace that felt “sort of like Heartland.”
“After being here, I’m like, I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”
She didn’t. On her own site, Marshall writes that she “purchased a small farm outside of Calgary, Alberta and a year later I met my husband, Shawn.” The two were married on that farm in 2013, “surrounded by friends, family and the many animals who we opened our home to.” You can read more about her life with Shawn Turner and how her real days mirror Amy’s.
Twenty seasons of exhaling
When Marshall gave that interview, Heartland was finishing its 17th season. It has kept going ever since.
Season 20 is airing now on CBC in Canada, and U.S. fans get it when Heartland Season 20 premieres November 19 on UP Faith & Family.
Twenty seasons is a long time for any show to last. For one that never relied on cliffhangers, it says a lot about what viewers actually want at the end of the day.
Not another racing heart.
A couch, a cup of tea, and the Heartland theme coming on.
