Is seems as if one man will be able to do what an entire network couldn't; "Due South" will finally leave the airways after this season, according to the star of the show.
Is seems as if one man will be able to do what an entire network couldn't; "Due South" will finally leave the airways after this season, according to the star of the show.
"We actually are leaving on our own terms, as opposed to being booted out of a network," said Paul Gross, who plays Canadian Mountie Benton Fraser on the quirky comedy-adventure series.
"Due South," which Gross said as come back from the dead "more times than Lazarus," kicks off its third season, its first in syndication, at 7 p. . Tuesday [September 16] on WCIU-Ch. 26.
"Due South" started life on CBS in 1994. Constable Fraser was a straight-arrow, impossibly efficient and insufferably polite Mountie who solved crimes while living in Chicago. The show enjoyed modest ratings and a healthy fan base, but was canceled by CBS after one season.
The series, which was produced and made in Toronto by Alliance Communications, was also an international hit, and a consortium of interests in several countries pooled money together to keep the series going for anotehr season.
"This thing has a very particular life, and it owes most of it to a sort of core group of fans that are very vocal," said Gross, 38, nursing a cold while talking over the telephone from his native Canada.
Meanwhile, CBS found holes in its schedule during the 1995-6 season and picked up "Due South" again to plug them. But the network decided against renewing the show for anotehr year in 1996, and without the money that CBS chipped in, it looked as if the good constable would ride off into the sunset.
"Due South's" third incarnation was the result of foreign broadcasters, inclduign the BBC in Britain, CTV in Canada, and Pro Sieben Media AG in Germany. Twenty-six episodes will be filmed between now and March (22 of them will be seen in the States, while 13 will air in each of the next two seasons in Canada).
"That would be, I think, the last that I'd want to do," Gross said. "I've been doing it for a long time, and although it's not that many actual seasons, the length of time that I've been involved in it has been pretty long."
The process just to bring the series back probably seemed as long. Sets had been destroyed or were dismantled, including the apartment where Fraser lived. That's one reason why in Tuesday's premiere, Fraser comes home from a vacation to find his building has burned to the ground. And the cast and crew had scattered.
"We were very lucky," said Gross. "It sort of timed out that people were coming off certain shows and they were free. And so we were pretty much able to put back together the team we had had for the first couple of seasons, with some changes here and there."
Not all of the components that made "Due South" such an enjoyable, whimsical series could be reassembled. Creator Paul Haggis is currently working on the CBS series "Michael Hayes." Even Lincoln, the dog who played Fraser's deaf, lip-reading wolf Difenbaker, has moved on, replaced by a dog named Draco. (Gross joked that Lincoln wanted "different hours.")
But the biggest loss to "Due South" is David Marciano, who played Ray Vecchio, the Chicago detective who became Fraser's friend and "partner" in crome-solving. Gross said that Marciano and Alliance couldn't come to an agreement for him to return.
To compensate for his absence, Gross, who is now executive producer of the show, has Vecchio under deep cover within the mob. He shows up briefly in the premiere, and Gross hopes to have him return as a guest star.
"The trick is to try adn figure out where and how to bring him back," Gross said. "The intention is to have him return, but I need to, first of all, get a new actor, Callum Keith Rennie, established before I think it would be wise to have David return."
Canadian Rennie now co-stars as detective Stanley Kowalski, a loner who, to cover Vecchio's assignment, takes over the man's identity, a plot point that Gross said will eventually be smoothed out as the relationship between the two cops develops.
Gross said that although "it would have been a lot easier for all concerned if David had been able to come to some kind of agreement," he's having fun working with Rennie.
"tehre are a lot of improvisational skills that we use," Gross said. "I write the scenes out, but we are constantly fiddling with them while we're doing them. And it's a really good exchange of ideas. And I think the comedic turns in the relationship are really strong."
Gross apparently felt a strong tie to Fraser to want to put on that red uniform again.
"It is a fun part to play," Gross said. "It's nice to go to work and be heroic and truthful and honest and loyal and capable and efficient. They are nice qualities to kind of step into every day. And we have a lot of fun making it."
And count Gross as No. 1 in the lien of people who would be sad to see Fraser go.
"It's very difficult to hang out with a character like this for four or five years--however long I've been acquainted with him--and not miss him, you know?"