CBC delivers more drama with Black Harbour
December 3, 1996
By Claire Bickley, Toronto Sun
Here's the irony. Just when CBC's future looks more tenuous than ever, the broadcaster is having its best TV season in recent memory.
The Newsroom is a building hit in both ratings and buzz, family-friendly Wind At My Back seems an inevitable success, and tomorrow night at 9, CBC delivers the highly polished Canadian drama Black Harbour.
The series, from North Of 60 creators Wayne Grigsby and Barbara Samuels, is set and shot in the small towns of Nova Scotia's South shore.
Life there is portrayed as at once so picturesque you can't imagine anyone would ever leave, and so claustrophic you can't imagine anyone would ever stay.
Katherine Hubbard (Rebecca Jenkins, all California sleek casual) is one who thought she got away. Gone since her teens, she's had a family and found success as a glam L.A. restaurateur, and is none too pleased when the illness of her mother calls her home. Among her emotional baggage, besides lingering antagonism towards her birthplace, are husband Nick (Geraint Wyn Davies), a failed Hollywood director, and daughters Tasha (Melanie Foley) and Anonda (Barrett Porter).
With the family's emergency fly-in stretching towards a long-term stay, Katherine has to deal with what she left behind - residual feelings for her high school sweetheart Paul (Alex Carter) and resentment towards her late father and her brother Len (Joseph Ziegler), who's taken on too many of his ways and is immediately at odds with Katherine and Nick's gung-ho business approach. Her marriage to Nick is aflounder in his crisis of confidence and incipient alcoholism, and 14-year-old Tasha is teetering on the verge of serious teen crisis. And by the by, native Nova Scotian or not, Katherine loathes boats and the sea.
So, pretty, yes. Particularly happy, no.
Unlike its affectingly melancholy bagpiped opening credits, Black Harbour's residents just seem overwhelmingly cranky in episode one. Nobody much likes anyone else.
(It's instructive to know that when I asked Grigsby whether Black Harbour will be as dark as North Of 60, he said that he doesn't think North Of 60 is dark. O-kay then.)
It'd be a shame if the daunting first episode disuaded viewers from sampling a second time. Next week's episode caused me to cancel my two major complaints, that the show was squandering its gorgeous setting by not spending enough time outside, and that the plot needed to lighten up a little bit.
There's rich material to be mined here about culture clash - Katherine's emotional wrestling with her real and adopted homes, how the townsfolk view the family of Come From Aways, and the collision of Nick and Katherine's can-do approach with Canadian business conservatism.
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December 3, 1996
By Claire Bickley, Toronto Sun
Here's the irony. Just when CBC's future looks more tenuous than ever, the broadcaster is having its best TV season in recent memory.
The Newsroom is a building hit in both ratings and buzz, family-friendly Wind At My Back seems an inevitable success, and tomorrow night at 9, CBC delivers the highly polished Canadian drama Black Harbour.
The series, from North Of 60 creators Wayne Grigsby and Barbara Samuels, is set and shot in the small towns of Nova Scotia's South shore.
Life there is portrayed as at once so picturesque you can't imagine anyone would ever leave, and so claustrophic you can't imagine anyone would ever stay.
Katherine Hubbard (Rebecca Jenkins, all California sleek casual) is one who thought she got away. Gone since her teens, she's had a family and found success as a glam L.A. restaurateur, and is none too pleased when the illness of her mother calls her home. Among her emotional baggage, besides lingering antagonism towards her birthplace, are husband Nick (Geraint Wyn Davies), a failed Hollywood director, and daughters Tasha (Melanie Foley) and Anonda (Barrett Porter).
With the family's emergency fly-in stretching towards a long-term stay, Katherine has to deal with what she left behind - residual feelings for her high school sweetheart Paul (Alex Carter) and resentment towards her late father and her brother Len (Joseph Ziegler), who's taken on too many of his ways and is immediately at odds with Katherine and Nick's gung-ho business approach. Her marriage to Nick is aflounder in his crisis of confidence and incipient alcoholism, and 14-year-old Tasha is teetering on the verge of serious teen crisis. And by the by, native Nova Scotian or not, Katherine loathes boats and the sea.
So, pretty, yes. Particularly happy, no.
Unlike its affectingly melancholy bagpiped opening credits, Black Harbour's residents just seem overwhelmingly cranky in episode one. Nobody much likes anyone else.
(It's instructive to know that when I asked Grigsby whether Black Harbour will be as dark as North Of 60, he said that he doesn't think North Of 60 is dark. O-kay then.)
It'd be a shame if the daunting first episode disuaded viewers from sampling a second time. Next week's episode caused me to cancel my two major complaints, that the show was squandering its gorgeous setting by not spending enough time outside, and that the plot needed to lighten up a little bit.
There's rich material to be mined here about culture clash - Katherine's emotional wrestling with her real and adopted homes, how the townsfolk view the family of Come From Aways, and the collision of Nick and Katherine's can-do approach with Canadian business conservatism.
Back to articles