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/ARTS WEEKLY/CULTURE: Caribbean Comedy Celebrated on Canadian TV

Howard Campbell

KINGSTON, Oct 21 2003 (IPS) - A television sitcom centred on Canada’s Caribbean community that started very small has grown so large that it recently picked up two nominations for Gemini Awards, Canada’s version of the Emmys.

‘Lord Have Mercy’ received nods in the categories of Best Individual Performance in a Comedy Programme or Series (by veteran Jamaican actress Leonie Forbes) and Best Comedy Programme or Series, for the awards handed out Oct. 20.

The results were unavailable as this story was published.

The recognition by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television (ACCT) is vindication of sorts for producers Frances-Anne Solomon, Vanz Chapman and Claire Printo.

‘Lord Have Mercy’ went to air in February on Vision TV, one of Canada’s smaller cable channels, which aired all 13 episodes of the comedy. As its audience grew, the show was also picked up by the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) and the Showcase channel.

For Forbes, who plays Sister Hope, perseverance paid off for the producers and cast of the comedy. "Usually people are sceptical when it comes to shows like these and it goes no further, but this one we really pressed on," she said recently from Toronto.

"When we were doing the pilot we crossed our fingers and bruised our knees wondering if someone would pick it up and it worked."

‘Lord Have Mercy’ is based on the Mount Zion Church in the heart of Toronto’s Caribbean community. Though it stars Canadian actors such as Arnold Pinnock (in the lead role as Pastor Gooding), Gary Farmer and Shawn "Singlefoot" Singleton, the cast has a strong Caribbean flavour.

Rachel Price, who plays Pinnock’s wife, is Trinidadian, as is Dennis "Sprangalang" Hall, who has the role of Pastor Cuthbert Stevens. Debbie Young, who plays Forbes’ granddaughter, was born and raised in Toronto.

Solomon was born in Trinidad and Tobago but grew up in London where she worked with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and produced the award-winning television comedy, ‘Peggy Su!’.

Solomon is also strongly influenced by shows like ‘The Desmonds’, a popular Caribbean sitcom that had a long run on British TV during the 1980s.

Solomon relocated her Lady Serene Films company from London to Toronto three years ago and one of her first moves was to assemble a team to produce a sitcom projecting life in Canada’s Caribbean communities.

Bermudan Vanz Chapman, who had worked on a 22-part series titled ‘Hip Hop’, was one of the original crew and eventually became the main writer of ‘Lord Have Mercy’. Forbes, with whom Solomon first worked in the 1980s, was called in from Kingston to start shooting the pilot in the summer of 2001.

In an interview with Toronto’s ‘Caribbean Camera’, Solomon stressed the need for more diversity on Canadian television. "Until now there has never been anything like this attempted in Canada, where every character comes from the Caribbean community."

"We wanted to showcase the wide spectrum of what the Caribbean is all about," she said.

When ‘Lord Have Mercy’ was first aired in February, writers like John McKay hoped it would mark a new day in Canadian media.

"Hopefully, it will set a trend and these small broadcasters will be willing to produce Canadian stuff rather than just simply be a viaduct for syndicated programming from the (United) States," McKay wrote in the Canadian Press. With a production budget of 1.5 million dollars (1.1 million U.S. dollars), the programme was filmed before a live audience, a nerve-wracking experience for some cast members, including the seasoned Forbes who has acted in numerous theatre productions in Jamaica since the late 1950s.

"There was a lot of butterflies but through a lot of research by the writers and improvisation from the cast, we got through," she said.

Solomon and her team are still in the dark about the future of ‘Lord Have Mercy’. Though it has been a relative success, they are still unsure if the show will be picked up for a second season.

Even if it does not return, there is a sense that ‘Lord Have Mercy’ has broken new ground in Canadian television.