‘Ride’: Where Is the Hallmark Series Filmed?
The McMurray family has taken over Hallmark Channel. The network’s new series Ride follows the members of a ranching and rodeo dynasty and they fight to keep control of their land and move forward after a devastating loss. The show is set in rural Colorado, but it’s actually filmed in Canada.
‘Ride’ is filmed in Alberta, Canada
In Ride, the McMurray’s Colorado ranch is located in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. But the show isn’t actually filmed in the Centennial State. Like many Hallmark Channel shows and movies, production takes place in Canada.
Ride episodes are filmed in and around Calgary, Alberta. The stunning landscapes around the provincial capital made filming there “so fun,” co-showrunner Rebecca Boss told the Calgary Herald.
“The elements are part of the story,” she said. “It’s this primal man-versus-nature and you embrace it. You can’t really fight against it, especially since we shot all in practical locations. We didn’t have a set.”
Tiera Skovbye, who plays widowed rodeo queen Missy McMurray, said the setting was an integral part of the show.
“We’ve always said that the setting, the land where we filmed, plays its part and is almost like another character,” she told UPI. “It adds such an authentic element to everything we were doing — and these people.”
The new Hallmark Channel show was filmed on a working ranch
On Ride, city scenes are filmed in Calgary. Meanwhile, the Bar-N Ranch stands in for the McMurray ranch.
“It’s a real working ranch about an hour south of Calgary outside of Turner Valley,” Skoybye told Wide Open Country. “There are beautiful rolling hills, and the ranch has thousands of acres. They do hay, they have cattle, all sorts of things. They have horses and breed horses. It’s amazing. There’s a river running through it.
“There are big, beautiful big skies,” the Riverdale actor added. “You’ve got the Rocky Mountains behind you with snow-capped peaks. It’s fantastic.”
Nancy Travis plays McMurray family matriarch Isabel McMurray. She told Wide Open Country that filming in Alberta helped her better understand her character and the world of rodeo.
“We filmed in Calgary, which is very much an epicenter of rodeo,” the Last Man Standing star said. “The Stampede happens there every year. It’s one of the biggest rodeos in the world. And so being in the area and filming on a working cattle ranch with people that live this life, like wranglers and rodeo people, that really was a learning experience for me. I came to understand how it is so much a fabric of life there, and it all ties in because rodeo is also just a demonstration of the skills that you use on a ranch, like roping and riding. So it’s just fascinating. I love that world. I love it.”
Many other movies and shows have been filmed in Alberta
Alberta has a thriving film industry, and Ride is hardly the first time the prairie province has stood in for the American West.
Westerns such as Unforgiven (1992), Brokeback Mountain (2005), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), and The Revenant (2015) were all filmed in Alberta, according to the Calgary International Film Festival. More recently, production on the FX series Under the Banner of Heaven and Fargo and HBO’s The Last of Us took place in Alberta,
New episodes of Ride air Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on Hallmark Channel.
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