Starting Wednesday, Jan. 7 on CBC platforms, Season 3 of the Surrey-set police drama Allegiance promises more ripped-from-the-headlines stories involving gangs and informants, hostage situations and a domestic assault case that hits close to home.
Familiar locations continue to show up on the small screen, too, such as when the body of a blueberry farmer is discovered in Surrey’s Serpentine River. That’s where detective Sabrina Sohal (played by Supinder Wraich) and the Canadian Federal Police Corps team meet Mohinder Das, a Punjabi berry farmer who’s shocked that one of his workers has been found murdered.
Filming of Season 3 began mid-July and wrapped Nov. 7, Wraich told the Now-Leader in a pre-Christmas phone call from her home in Toronto.
“I think it gives us and the crew longer shooting days outside in the summer, just for the sun,” the Allegiance star said of the shooting schedule. “I feel like some of our stories, particularly this season, had us outdoors a little bit more, and so it allowed us a little bit more shooting time outside to get our days in before it got dark.”
Season 3 of @CBC's Surrey-set police drama ALLEGIANCE starts Jan. 7. Had a phone call with star Supinder Wraich (who plays Surrey-raised cop Sabrina Sohal) to talk about the season ahead & how they film in Surrey. Story to come. For now, here's the trailer. @SurreyNowLeader pic.twitter.com/LhYoJggbIZ
— Tom Zillich (@TomZillich) December 29, 2025
After a couple years of filming Allegiance, Wraich is now familiar with Surrey and nearby cities — although not as much as some might expect.
“By the time I show up to our location, sometimes I really don’t know what’s what, what’s real, you know, so I kind of live in, like, a Sabrina version of Surrey,” Wraich said with a laugh.
Every so often she gets recognized on Surrey streets as a familiar face in Allegiance, which debuted in February 2024 and now airs in countries around the world including the U.K., Australia, Europe and Asia, in a rare television show that focuses on a Sikh Punjabi-Canadian lead character.
“With our shooting schedule, I’m not out on the streets a lot because Monday to Friday, you know, we’re either shooting at the studio or on location and then usually on the weekends I’m sleeping or learning my lines for the next week or flying home to see my baby,” explained Wraich, born in India and raised in the Rexdale area of Toronto.
“It’s a pretty jam-packed schedule,” she added. “And it’s interesting because somebody just ask me, ‘Name your six favourite restaurants in Vancouver.’ And I was like, ‘You think I had time to go to six restaurants while I was there?’ I can name two. I love Uli’s in White Rock, that’s one. And I did love Anh and Chi in Vancouver.”
Wraich is a two-time Canadian Screen Award winner, having nabbed Best Lead Performer in a Drama series earlier this year.
She’d also love to direct Allegiance if given a chance. To that end, she shadowed director David Frazee for the first two episodes of Season 3, allowing her to see the magic of the production team and how “they show up at a location and then transform it into into something else completely,” Wraich said.
“I think it also gave me was perspective. Sometimes as as an actor I’ll show up or I’ll look at the call sheet or I’ll look at the schedule and think, ‘God, why are we doing it this way? It makes no sense to me.’ You know, ‘Why are we starting here?’ And so I learned so much.
“For example,” the actor added, “it never occurred to me, but often we’ll start our mornings outside and do, like, the majority of our days indoors and then go back outside for the evening. And what I didn’t realize was that so much of that was for the director of photography, because the show looks much better when the sun is lower in the sky. Part of why the show looks so beautiful is because we’re not shooting at 12 p.m. when the sun’s above our heads, with horrible shadows.”
Season 3 of Allegiance, which debuts Jan. 7 on both CBC Gem and CBC-TV, starts with Sabrina’s career up in the air.
The season-opener, called “Borderline Blue,” involves a violent case of road rage and Sabrina’s entry into the secret world of witness protection. Lori, a defense lawyer on the run from the drug cartel she betrayed when she dropped their case for ethical reasons, risks her protection when her daughter is abducted.
Slowly, Sabrina begins to learn the value of connecting with her family, friends and fellow officers instead of working in isolation.
“I think this season Sabrina is a lot more vulnerable,” Wraich said. “She’s learning what it is to trust — trust the parts of herself she doesn’t know, trust her partners in different ways than she has before and to, you know, be open with them and to be vulnerable about her needing help in a way that she hasn’t done in the previous two seasons.”