OLTL in Canada

[EricMontreal22]

Hrmm found this dated article that mentions Liberty Street and Riverdale (I think they're mis informed that Liberty Street was an actual Degrassi spin off but could be wrong)

Canadian Television

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The portrayal of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and queer people in English Canadian television programming has been sporadic. There have been several significant appearances of glbtq characters on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Canada's national public broadcasting system.

The recent advent of PrideVision, a digital cable television network with a mandate to air glbtq Canadian content, will certainly lead to an increase not only in the presence of gays and lesbians on television, but also in the number of shows developed for a glbtq audience.

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Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Perhaps because it is a public broadcaster with a mandate to inform and enlighten as well as entertain, CBC has aired more television programs with glbtq content than Canada's other national network, CTV.

CBC's Degrassi Jr. High (1987-1989), part of the youth-centered Degrassi series, dealt with abortion, single parenthood, sex, death, racism, AIDS, feminism, and gay issues as situations that the characters had to work through within the serialized narrative structures, while avoiding the "topic of the week" feel that is endemic to the genre. One episode, for example, featured the pre-adolescent character Caitlin discussing lesbianism with her English teacher, Miss Avery.

A spin-off of the Degrassi series, Liberty Street (CBC, 1995-1996), featured Billy Merasty as Nathan Jones, a gay native ex-bicycle courier. The producers of Liberty Street went on to create Riverdale (CBC, 1997-2000), with gay character George Patillo.

In early 2003, CBC announced that gay playwright Michel Tremblay will write Quebec's first television show to feature an on-going gay relationship, Le Coeur Découvert

[EricMontreal22]

Oh and imdb had ONE amusing comment--that actually jives well with my memories:

When this show started it was meant to fill a specific void - unlike other countries, Canada didn't have a prime-time "national" soap opera (at least not since the Meech Lake era). Rather than make an American-type soap with rich and glamorous characters, or a British-type soap with colourful working-class ones, executive producers Linda Schulyer (of "Degrassi" fame) and Stephen Stohn decided to set this in a middle-class suburb of Toronto. Amazingly, it's less interesting than it sounds.

The producers assembled a large cast of B- through Z- list Canadian actors, with an extremely wide range of talent. Some, like Jayne Eastwood (Gloria) are actually legitimate actors, and are very good. Others are bad, even by Canadian television standards, which is saying something. Stewart Arnott's (Charles) performance is particularly appalling, and he's probably the central character. The series starts with a questionable police shooting, looking at its direct and indirect effects on the people in the neighbourhood, and rapidly deteriorates from there. None of the characters are extremely likeable, and some of the storylines, like the MacKenzie - Wilkes family feud, are simply too silly. Still, the series is definitely addictive (the whole point of soap operas) and there are some genuinely funny moments (let's be charitable and call them intentional).

At the beginning of the second season a couple of new characters were added (with Ben getting a miraculous face-and-body-lift), and it seemed as though the mood music suddenly got a lot louder and more intrusive, which only served to make the bad performances seem even worse. I should probably come clean and admit that I didn't watch more than a few episodes after that point so I don't know how the series was by the end of its run.

[beebs]

My mother had (probably still has) a TV Guide from 1977 that I would kill to get ahold of. We lived in Thunder Bay, ON, and we're isolated beyond belief, thus there isn't the population base to support more than one media company to run CBC and CTV. I know that they kept CBC's lineup pretty much untouched, likely at CBC's demand. I do know that GH's addition was fairly recent, as in the Early 90s that same affiliate would air Wheel of Fortune reruns at 3pm instead.

I do know that my family was one of the first to get cable, thus we had access to CBS and NBC signals from Minnesota going back to the Mid-60s, but ABC was next to impossible to get until the Mid-80s, i'd say. I am not sure about nationally, but from what my mum tells me, AW was on CTV from at least the mid-70s onward, if not earlier than that. And Y&R was her lunchtime staple from the very first episode onward, though I'm not sure if she had access to it because of cable or not.

It's always bothered me how little info there is about TV in Canada, in a historical sense. Considering how obviously different our tastes are compared to the US, you'd think there'd be a bit more info out there.

[beebs]

Somehow that doesn't surprise me. And the whole idea of placing it in Riverdale so as to make it middle class is in and of itself laughable. BMWs are about as common in Riverdale as a Chevrolet is in any REAL middle-class neighbourhood

Reading about this show seems incresingly like the typical Canadian problem: how to make it new, different, and "distinctly Canadian". Unfortunately we always run into the problem where our national identity starts with a beaver and ends with duct tape, and the writers seem completely clueless as to how to write anything else. Was there anything remotely...boundary-pushing om Riverdale? I find that despite CBC's relatively relaxed censorship criteria (compared to CTV anyway), they tend to be extremely non-confrontational with their subject matter on the whole. Maybe they're just not being as exploitative and "shocking people for the sake of ratings" like the US stations? I don't know.

[SFK]

First of all, wow, did you ever go by the Degrassi grocery store on the corner before it closed down? But no, Degrassi Junior High/High wasn't serialized, it was just like the current Degrassi, complete with two-parters here and there and the original School's Out summer telefilm.

[EricMontreal22]

I dunno, I still classify that as semi-serialized.

[SFK]

Yeah, "continuing story", sure, a serial, but not the same way a daytime soap is a serial, it's never "later that day..." on a subsequent episode unless it's a two-parter. But if The Wire is a serial, Degrassi is one too.

[SFK]

I'm gonna hafta disagree with that earlier article saying Degrassi managed to avoid the "issue of the week" thing. I think Degrassi: TNG did a much better job of that. Because I can sit here and rattle off: the alcoholism one, the drug abuse one, the anorexia one, the abortion one, the gay one, the lesbian non-sexual crush one, et cetera.

[beebs]

Hahah, well the thing is, I only lived there last year, so chances are it's been converted into a Chinese grocery whose name I can't pronounce properly. But chances are I've passed it by many many times. haha. My mom even went to college in the building they used for filming the original series, that's been converted since the early 90s, obv. I figured as much re: serialization. I think that may be Linda Schuyler's achilles heel as far as the writing for Riverdale was concerned. There's definitely a certain art to soap storytelling that as an industry we just don't do in Canada.

ALSO, Re: Family Passions, never seen it. Again, we've never had Global so their daytime programming we never picked up. If we did, my grandmother never watched it. She was nicely addicted to the American soaps. We had a lineup of about 6 that we watched in one day between the different channels, depending on the year. haha.

+1 to that, Degrassi as a franchise is somewhat synonymous with that.

[EricMontreal22]

The Wire to me is definitely a serial. So I guess we agree But yeah there are different types (remember back when Degrassi was big shows where the story continued at all were still a bit of a novelty--primetime soaps aside).

And 8totally* agreed--in fact those key issue storylines were the ones they'd pull out for us to watch in sex ed class

[EricMontreal22]

It was truly dire. Just boring. It DID look like an American soap though...

I wish I could remember more of Linda Schuyler's Liberty Street. I don't remember it being awful though I think ti was an attempt to sorta do a Reality Bites/Singles type 20something show at that time. I even forgot about the very recent (was it just canceled?) Instant Star which CTV would air when Degrassi wasn't on. I never gave it much of a chance, I gotta say, though it ran 4 or 5 years...

And yeah, anyone remember the early 90s Degrassi Talks series of specials (which were prob made for those school sex ed showings, but CBC aired them too...)

[beebs]

vaaaaguely remember Degrassi Talks. I wasn't yet in the target age range yet, so I never watched those, though my mom's reasoning for not letting me watch them wasn't that they were "too grown up" for me but that they were "extremely lame". My mom never was one for the "...and they all learned something" type of show.

Instant Star was a show that COULD have been interesting, but I never gave it a chance because it always struck me as what the Canadian record industry WANTED to have happen but would never actually occur because there's no real star system in English Canada. Thus I rolled my eyes and waited for Idol to come on so I could laugh at Krusty The Klown Kalan Porter's hair. I think Instant Star just ended though, I remember seeing new episodes promoted very recently so...