Liberty Street is a Canadian drama television series, which aired on CBC Television in 1995. An ensemble cast drama, it centred on the tenants of an apartment building in Toronto, Ontario.
Produced by Kit Hood and Linda Schuyler, the team behind the long-running "Degrassi" series of television shows, "Liberty Street" was an attempt to create a similar series depicting the lives of a group of young adults living on their own for the first time.
Background.
The pilot film, X-Rated, aired on February 27, 1994. Although it was picked up to series, it was retitled as "Liberty Street" and some of the roles were rewritten and recast.
The series premiered on January 11, 1995, with 13 episodes in its first season. It was renewed for a second season, which premiered on September 16, 1995. After the second season completed its run in late fall 1995, the CBC announced in February 1996 that it would not renew the series for a third season.
Characters.
The show's characters included Mack Fischer (Joel Bissonnette), the superintendent of the building and a recovering drug addict; Frank Pagnozzi (Pat Mastroianni), the nephew of the building's owner; Janet Beecher (Kimberly Huie), a single mother and law student; Marsha Velasquez (Marcia Laskowski) and Nathan Jones (Billy Merasty), roommates who are also coworkers at a bike courier company where Nathan is having problems with their supervisor because he's gay; and Annie Hamer (Henriette Ivanans), Frank's ex-girlfriend. The cast also included Katherine Ashby, Richard Zeppieri, Dean Paras, L. Dean Ifill and Jhene Erwin.
The apartment building was known as the "Epitome" — an insider reference to Epitome Pictures, the company which produced the series — but was nicknamed by the characters as "the Pit".
The original pilot's cast had also included Gordon Michael Woolvett as Tony Foster, the owner of the building, and Stacie Mistysyn as River, who was renamed Annie in the series.
In the second season, four new characters were added: Ben (Hamish McEwan), a civil servant; Cynthia (Nahanni Johnstone), a style-conscious woman with designs on marrying Frank; Lionel (Jim Codrington), Janet's ex-boyfriend; and James (Keith Knight), Nathan's new partner.
Production.
Most of the show was shot in and around the Liberty Village area of Toronto.
The series received a $250,000 grant from the federal Ministry of Health to include health promotion messaging in the scripts, including Mack's addiction recovery, Marsha's struggle to quit smoking cigarettes, and an anti-homophobia episode in which Nathan was gay-bashed.
After writer Russell Smith criticized the show's dialogue in a panel discussion on CBC Radio's media analysis show "Now the Details", head writer Barry Stevens hired Smith as a dialogue consultant.
"Liberty Street" was also one of the first Canadian television series ever to have its own dedicated website.
References.
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