It's safe to return to Black Harbour
November 26, 1997
By Sid Adilman The Toronto Star
WHEN PRODUCERS abruptly kill off a sweet character who’s nice to every other character in their TV series, you know their show’s in ratings trouble.
The death on Black Harbour two weeks ago of the mother/grandmother - pacifically played by Joan Gregson - in an off-camera car accident did signal an about-face in the series’ plotlines.
Airing on CBC Wednesdays at 9 p.m., Black Harbour began last season dour and drab, filled with family angst:
A married couple (Rebecca Jenkins and Geraint Wyn Davies) moved to the tiny Nova Scotia fishing village (her character’s birthplace) from careers in Los Angeles.
Their teenage daughter (TV newcomer Melanie Foley) was rebellious and desperate to run away; their other daughter was also lonely. And their widowed grandmother (Gregson) was having an affair with her doctor that her astonished daughter forced her to abandon.
Critics were not impressed and ratings hovered at the 750,000 mark.
This season, without notice, Black Harbour has become high-gloss soap opera. Wyn Davies’ movie director character split from his wife, went back to L.A., talked to his kids by phone but not to his wife, who was a skilled restaurateur in Los Angeles and now runs a village restaurant.
He returned at his mother-in-law’s death to comfort the family and stays on at a rented house. But will he discover that the wife he still loves is sexually involved with her former boyfriend (Alex Carter)?
He is the chief builder at the family-owned shipyard and split from his troubled wife. It’s hard to find any married couple on Black Harbour this season that’s not split or without rancour.
The parents of Wyn Davies’ character turned up last week and his interfering mother accused him of being a no-talent all his life. He broke down - though allegedly because of a back problem - when his estranged wife happened to visit. Fully clothed, she soothed him in bed through the night.
If all that’s not enough, their 16-year-old daughter becomes romantically involved with a 20-year old (Graeme Millington, the son of Jim Millington who played the puffed-up TV news anchor on E.N.G.).
On tonight’s episode, they have sex for the first time exactly when her father’s house is trashed. That’s because of his cleaning lady (the mother of his daughter’s lover), whose family has been in a murderous feud with another village clan.
Wyn Davies resolves that conflict by meeting the head of the clan, who has recently been let out of jail after serving a term for murdering the cleaning lady’s husband. Seeing them together, his impetuous daughter, not waiting for an explanation, yells at him and storms off at the episode’s end.
Saltier winds blow in the weeks to come.
Wayne Grigsby and Barbara Samuels, who created and produce Black Harbour, also write some of the most emotionally tight scenes in current Canadian TV drama. With more scripts by the pair this season, and so much heart-stopping turmoil, viewers will find Black Harbour a turn on.
It deserves more than its average of 700,000 viewers a week.
Back to articles
November 26, 1997
By Sid Adilman The Toronto Star
WHEN PRODUCERS abruptly kill off a sweet character who’s nice to every other character in their TV series, you know their show’s in ratings trouble.
The death on Black Harbour two weeks ago of the mother/grandmother - pacifically played by Joan Gregson - in an off-camera car accident did signal an about-face in the series’ plotlines.
Airing on CBC Wednesdays at 9 p.m., Black Harbour began last season dour and drab, filled with family angst:
A married couple (Rebecca Jenkins and Geraint Wyn Davies) moved to the tiny Nova Scotia fishing village (her character’s birthplace) from careers in Los Angeles.
Their teenage daughter (TV newcomer Melanie Foley) was rebellious and desperate to run away; their other daughter was also lonely. And their widowed grandmother (Gregson) was having an affair with her doctor that her astonished daughter forced her to abandon.
Critics were not impressed and ratings hovered at the 750,000 mark.
This season, without notice, Black Harbour has become high-gloss soap opera. Wyn Davies’ movie director character split from his wife, went back to L.A., talked to his kids by phone but not to his wife, who was a skilled restaurateur in Los Angeles and now runs a village restaurant.
He returned at his mother-in-law’s death to comfort the family and stays on at a rented house. But will he discover that the wife he still loves is sexually involved with her former boyfriend (Alex Carter)?
He is the chief builder at the family-owned shipyard and split from his troubled wife. It’s hard to find any married couple on Black Harbour this season that’s not split or without rancour.
The parents of Wyn Davies’ character turned up last week and his interfering mother accused him of being a no-talent all his life. He broke down - though allegedly because of a back problem - when his estranged wife happened to visit. Fully clothed, she soothed him in bed through the night.
If all that’s not enough, their 16-year-old daughter becomes romantically involved with a 20-year old (Graeme Millington, the son of Jim Millington who played the puffed-up TV news anchor on E.N.G.).
On tonight’s episode, they have sex for the first time exactly when her father’s house is trashed. That’s because of his cleaning lady (the mother of his daughter’s lover), whose family has been in a murderous feud with another village clan.
Wyn Davies resolves that conflict by meeting the head of the clan, who has recently been let out of jail after serving a term for murdering the cleaning lady’s husband. Seeing them together, his impetuous daughter, not waiting for an explanation, yells at him and storms off at the episode’s end.
Saltier winds blow in the weeks to come.
Wayne Grigsby and Barbara Samuels, who created and produce Black Harbour, also write some of the most emotionally tight scenes in current Canadian TV drama. With more scripts by the pair this season, and so much heart-stopping turmoil, viewers will find Black Harbour a turn on.
It deserves more than its average of 700,000 viewers a week.
Back to articles