Up at Ours (1979)

This half-hour comedy/drama that centred on a St. John's boarding house. Verna Ball, played by Mary Walsh, owned the house, and Jack Howse, played by Ray Guy, was her long-standing lodger. Janis Spence played Mrs. O'Mara, who lived next door, and Kevin Noble was Dolph, the myopic driver of the Outport Taxi. Mrs. Ball's boarding house attracted a number of troubled and eccentric characters in a series that trod between humane relationships and comic treatment. Gordon Pinsent (The Shipping News) was featured in one episode as a parish priest who came to St. John's and found his faith tested and reconfirmed in his encounter with two young women, one a boarder at the house and the other another runaway from an outport community. The series was produced in St. John's by Kevin O'Connell, with episodes directed by Walter Learning, Wayne Guzzwell, and O'Connell, and scripts by writers from the Atlantic provinces-- Pinsent, Learning, Gerry Rubia, Michael Cook, and famed Canadian poet Alden Nowlan. A twelve week series, Up At Ours was a rare example of continuing drama produced in a regional CBC centre and that employed a distinctive local milieu.