The series starred Hugh Dillon, Amy Jo Johnson, David Paetkau, Sergio Di Zio, and Enrico Colantoni.

The show then aired on Ion Television starting on October 18, 2011, with the eighth episode of the fourth season.

On January 25, 2011, it was announced that Ion Television had acquired all rights to the show held by CBS, including the option to continue production.

The majority of the cast of Flashpoint are Canadian, including Enrico Colantoni, David Paetkau, Hugh Dillon, Sergio Di Zio, Michael Cram, Mark Taylor, and Ruth Marshall.

[5] Flashpoint was conceived in 2005 as part of a CTV project that encouraged actors to submit scripts to the network.

[6] The original Flashpoint script (known earlier as Sniper and Critical Incident)[7][8] was for a two-hour television film.

[10] Writers living in the United States with dual WGA/WGC membership were required to get a waiver from the WGA to work on Canadian productions during the strike.

The pilot episode, titled "Scorpio" was based on an actual event that occurred in Toronto in 2004, in which a gun-wielding hostage-taker was shot and killed by an Emergency Task Force sniper.

[17] Producer Anne Marie La Traverse said the show would take people to their "own personal flash point.

"[18] David Paetkau, one of the show's regular cast members, said Flashpoint "tries to capture the human element involved in policing, and discusses how some officers end up with emotional baggage and suffer with mental illnesses like post traumatic stress disorder.

[20] On August 25, 2008, CTV announced it had renewed the show for a second season of 13 episodes to begin production in Toronto in early 2009.

CTV officially began to refer to the episodes as the second half of season 2 (and altered its Flashpoint website accordingly).

Due to the cancellation of CHAOS, the remaining episodes from season 3 of Flashpoint were shown on CBS starting May 6, 2011.

[33] On June 1, 2011, Bell Media announced that the network ordered a fifth season of Flashpoint, containing 18 new episodes,[34][35] starting to air in Canada in September 2012.

[39] Bill Mustos, founder of co-production company Avamar Entertainment, stated this was intentional, commenting, "you're not going to see a show that is screaming 'Canada'.

[42] The music of Hugh Dillon, Matthew Good, Amy Jo Johnson and Kim Taylor have also been used in the show's soundtrack.

"Goodbye," a song written and performed by Amy Jo Johnson, features in season 3 episode 10, "Terror.

After CBS delayed broadcasting the episodes from summer 2009 to mid-season 2010, CTV initially backed off its commitment to fall 2009.

[64] It marked the first time CTV broadcast new Flashpoint episodes out of simulcast with CBS in the United States.

Flashpoint was distributed by Alchemy Television and Tele München Group to all international markets outside of North America.

[93] In July 2008, it was announced that the two distributors had sold the series to TV networks in 50 countries outside Canada and the United States, including New Zealand (TV2), the United Kingdom (ITV3 and Universal Channel), France, Austria (ORF), Germany, Switzerland, Italy (RAI), Spain, Finland, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Croatia, Australia (Nine Network), and several countries in Latin America.

The Australian premiere occurred on January 11, 2009, when Nine Network took the unusual step of airing the second episode in isolation ahead of the season.

[96] Nine aired the show on Wednesday nights, its regular time slot, where episodes were erratically shown out of their intended order.

[citation needed] Starting with the third season, the series later premiered on 13th Street in Australia in 2011 to 2012, but was then moved over to Universal Channel after that.