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Due South



         


Due South was a Canadian television series which originally aired on CBS in the United States and CTV in Canada, as a made for television movie. The series ran from 1994 to 1996, when it was cancelled by CBS. After a one-year hiatus, the series was resurrected in 1997 on CTV alone, and ran until 1999.

The series was produced by Atlantis Films (now part of Alliance Atlantis), and was the first Canadian-produced series to air in prime time on American network television. (Several Canadian-produced series, including SCTV and Night Heat, aired in late-night slots on American networks in the 1980s.)

Although Due South was never a hit in the United States, it was much more popular in Canada, remaining one of the highest-rated regular drama series ever aired on a Canadian network.

The basic premise of the series is an Royal Canadian Mounted Police constable named Benton Fraser who, accompanied by his deaf half-wolf, Diefenbaker, goes to Chicago to solve the murder of his father. After the murder is solved, Fraser decides to stay in Chicago, working for the Canadian consulate. In most episodes of the third season, Fraser finds the opportunity to explain:

I first came to Chicago on the trail of the killers of my father and for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture I have remained, attached as liaison to the Canadian consulate

Some location shots were done in Chicago but otherwise primarily shot in Toronto, Ontario.

The show falls somewhere between a cop show and a comedy show. Although superficially following the police drama format, the comedy derives from the outrageous plots, the self-mocking Canadian and American stereotypes, and the occasional fantasy elements, all played with absolute deadpan by the actors.

When the show returned to the Canadian airwaves in 1997, David Marciano, as Fraser's American police partner Ray Vecchio, had left the series. The writers got around this by casting a new actor, Callum Keith Rennie, to play Stanley Kowalski, a detective who had been ordered to impersonate Ray Vecchio while the real Vecchio was undercover.

The series was also known for its extensive use of in-jokes for character names. The characters who appeared over the course of the series included Dawn Charest, a police inspector named Margaret Thatcher, a doctor named Esther Pearson, a newspaper reporter named Mackenzie King, and a trio of police agents named Huey, Dewey and Louis. (As well, Stanley Kowalski's wife was, rather inevitably, named Stella.)

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