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Canadian series in the United States

S

skippercollector

In the past 15 years I have enjoyed watching the following Canadian series on US television:
Frankie Drake Mysteries
Heartland (one of my all-time favorite series)
Leverage
Saving Hope
Siren
I also watched Avonlea in the 1990s. And I know I am showing my age here, but I liked The Friendly Giant as a little girl way more than I ever did Bozo, Captain Kangaroo and Sesame Street.
Are there any others you can recommend?
 


I am a fan of The Listener. Craig Olejnik is a Toronto EMS worker who can hear the inner thoughts of others and can predict when a crime is about to occur. CTV produced it from 2009 to 2014. It still runs on several U.S. channels including Ion and WWOR-TV NYC. It briefly ran on the NBC Network for seven episodes.

Rookie Blue ran on ABC for a couple of seasons in the summertime, about a female rookie cop in Vancouver.

There was Danger Bay, a youthful action drama, with a veterinarian at the Vancouver Aquarium raising two teenagers and encountering bad guys.

And let me say how much as a kid I also enjoyed The Friendly Giant, from the CBC, running on many U.S. NET (forerunner to PBS) stations. Bob Homme was friends with Fred Rogers and helped him with the concept for Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.

"Here's one chair for one of you, a bigger chair for two more to curl up in, and for someone who likes to rock, a rocking chair in the middle. Now look up. Waaaaaaaay up. And I'll call Rusty."



 
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''Fifteen,'' which was kind of like a lower budget, but still good, version of ''Beverly Hills 90210,'' was on Nickelodeon in the '90s. A young Ryan Reynolds was one of the cast members.

I remember several Canadian shows aired late night on CBS in the '80s way before David Letterman occupied the 11:30 p.m. slot:

''Night Heat,'' a buddy cop show which has been likened to ''Miami Vice.'' Clark Johnson of ''The Shield'' was in this.
''Diamonds'' with Nicholas Campbell of ''DaVinci's Inquest''
''Adderly''

More recently, ''Motive'' aired on ABC.

And, does anyone remember that ''Crime Time After Prime Time'' line-up CBS had in the early '90s in the years before Letterman's debut? Shows like ''Sweating Bullets,'' ''Forever Knight,'' and ''Silk Stalkings'' were filmed in Canada IIRC.

Oh yeah, one more...''ENG'' was a drama about the staff of a newsroom that used Electronic News Gathering. It starred Art Hindle and aired on Lifetime before it became known as Lifetime Television for Women.

Sorry for the long list, but I watched and enjoyed several of these shows.
 
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Diamonds would later move to USA Network in reruns. I have multiple episodes on VHS, found years ago on a random home-recorded tape.
 
There's also Degrassi Junior High on PBS in the 80s and 90s, which led to various off-shoots, which were also shown in the US.
 
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Barkskins

The National Geographic channel has started airing the Canadian series Barkskins. It is a historical drama about the settling by the French in eastern Canada in the 1600s. I enjoyed the pilot episode immensely but had a little trouble following the second episode, since many of the characters look alike (most of the white men are kind of ugly and have long messy hair--really bad hair!) and most of the episode took place at night. The ads compare it to Game of Thrones, but no magic or dragons or crossbows, just humans and horses and guns. The only person in the series I recognize is Marcia Gay Harden.
 
anotherguy said:
My favorites:
The Red Green Show - His son has a feed Sunday nights on Twitch that I'm watching right now: https://www.twitch.tv/redgreenjr
Corner Gas - Now on IMDB TV, both the live and animated versions.
SCTV
Click to expand...

The Red Green Jr. feed on Twitch is ending on Father's day with a bang: Steve Smith (Red Green) will be on it with his son Dave, who runs the feed. And then on June 28 The Red Green Show will return as a podcast: http://www.possumlodgeonline.com/
 
Nobody said anything about "the other Degrassi" aka Edgemont, which I was the first time I got to see Kristin Kreuk in anything. I know some digital subchannels that weren't tied to a diginet aired Edgemont to fill E/I requirements.
 
There's Pitfall, the infamous early 80s game show that not only stiffed contestants of their prizes but also host Alex Trebek of his pay when the production company went under.
 
anotherguy said:
The Red Green Jr. feed on Twitch is ending on Father's day with a bang: Steve Smith (Red Green) will be on it with his son Dave, who runs the feed. And then on June 28 The Red Green Show will return as a podcast: http://www.possumlodgeonline.com/
Click to expand...

Dave Smith posted yesterday on discord that the final show on twitch has been rescheduled to next Saturday June 28th, what is also the day that the first episode of the new podcast premiers.
 
Ccook55 said:
There's Pitfall, the infamous early 80s game show that not only stiffed contestants of their prizes but also host Alex Trebek of his pay when the production company went under.
Click to expand...

There is also the 80s version Split Second with Monty Hall that ran on USA and is now in repeats on Buzzr that was produced in Canada.
 
How about "you can't do that on television?"

How about "You Can't Do That On Television?" That Nickelodeon TV show was taped in Canada's Capital of Ottawa.
 
JRH said:
There's also Degrassi Junior High on PBS in the 80s and 90s, which led to various off-shoots, which were also shown in the US.
Click to expand...
One of them, "Degrassi: The Next Generation", introduced the world to Nina Dobrev and singer Drake.

And the first two seasons of "Fifteen" originated in Vancouver before moving production to Orlando which, at the time, was a hotbed for film and TV production in the South until Atlanta took over.
 
One of the first Canadian-produced shows syndicated to the US was perhaps "Dr. Simon Locke," which became "Police Surgeon" after a year. This was in the '70s when US networks gave a half hour of primetime back to their affiliates.

In the mid-80s, CBN/Family Channel ran "Bordertown," about a literal frontier town on the US-Canada border, jointly policed by a US marshal and a Mountie.

I recall when NBC ran "The Listener" - around that time (late '00s), that network was running other foreign-produced shows, like the South African-made "Crusoe" (which turned Defoe's castaway into a 17th-century MacGyver) and "The Philanthropist."
 
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