18 to Life
Encyclopedia
18 to Life is a Canadian
television sitcom that debuted on January 4, 2010 on CBC Television
. The series is shown in Quebec on Vrak.TV
with the title Majeurs et mariés.
and Michael Seater
as Jessie Hill and Tom Bellow, a young couple who decides, on a dare, to get married right out of high school
. The cast also includes Peter Keleghan
and Ellen David
as Tom's parents Ben and Judith Bellow, and Alain Goulem and Angela Asher as Jessie's parents Phil and Tara Hill. The two families live next door to each other and ascribe to the adage
that "good fences make good neighbors". Jessie's parents are free-spirited and do not believe in societal constructs of marriage or organized religion. They have a refugee from Iraq living in their basement. Tom's parents are traditional white-collar
sticklers for rules. Tom's father is a judge who converted to Judaism
when he married and Tom's mother is a homemaker. Jessie and Tom eventually settle into the attic suite of Tom's parents' house as their first marital home and try to balance college, work, and the trials of being young newlyweds. The show is set in Montreal
, Quebec
.
television network ABC
, although ABC later dropped out of the production. The pilot was filmed in 2008 and the rest of the first season was filmed in the summer of 2009. The CW, another U.S. network, had interest in the series and announced on July 15, 2010 that it would pick up the show.
Season 2 was filmed in the summer of 2010 and returned to CBC
on January 3, 2011, with 13 new episodes.
CBC has officially canceled the show and there will be no season three. The final episode, the 25th, was telecast on 28th March 2011.
. The first six episodes were shown in August 2010. On August 19, 2010, The CW announced that it had removed the series from its schedule. On August 24, 2010 it was reported that Arnie Gelbart, executive producer of the series and CEO of the production company Galafilm Productions, said The CW would show the remaining six episodes of the first season in December 2010.
In India
, Zee Café
began broadcasting the first season on 9 February 2011.
of The Globe and Mail
said that 18 to Life "crackles with wit" and that "Peter Keleghan is in fine fettle as Tom's uptight dad." Quebecor Medias Bill Harris called the premise "kind of refreshing" and described it as a "Canadian combination of Meet the Parents
and Modern Family
." Rob Owen
of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
described the series as a "gentle, intermittently entertaining Canadian import." He also compared 18 to Life to the sitcom Dharma & Greg
. Roger Catlin of The Hartford Courant
found 18 to Life to be "kind of sweet in a Disney/ABC Family
kind of way."
Brad Oswald of the Winnipeg Free Press
said there is "plenty of next-door comedy" however he found the premise "simply isn't believable". Glenn Garvin of The Miami Herald
does not like the series. "The CW, a network aimed a teenage girls, apparently couldn't find an American network stupid or venal enough to make a sitcom about the amusing foibles of teen marriage. Thanks for stepping in, Canada. What would we do without you?" Megan Angelo of The Wall Street Journal
leads off her review by mistakenly claiming this is "adapted from a Canadian hit" when there is no American adaptation of the show. She then mentioned the general critical decrying of the glamourisation of out-of-wedlock pregnancy in the films Juno
and Knocked Up
and then says that out-of-pregnancy wedlock is not any better for teenagers. Angelo goes on to say that "what makes it really hard to watch is Tom and Jessie’s casual discourse on sex." She further explains that what makes 18 to Life so difficult to watch compared to shows such as Gossip Girl
and 90210
is that creating a believable world and "trying to legitimize the whole thing only makes it worse — and usually, the CW doesn’t try." Mary McNamara, television critic for The Los Angeles Times, opens her review by saying, "The setup for this CW show isn't anything new. Except, possibly, in its old-fashioned commitment to marriage." McNamara later makes the bold and somewhat contradictory statement that "It is much more shocking to see these young people leap into matrimony than it would be if they were just having sex or even moving in together." As to the writing, McNamara said it "plays like an improv exercise in a high school drama class".
Jaime Weinman of Maclean's
reviewed the negative American reviews, in particular those from The LA Times and The Wall Street Journal, and had concern about their "criticizing the show because it’s about two over-18 teenagers who get married." In writing of The Wall Street Journal review Weinman said it is an "odd presumption" that "a relatively realistic portrayal of teenage sex, of somewhat normal and (comparatively) de-glamourized teens who have been sexually active, is worse than the glossy version we get on the CW’s own shows." In response to McNamara's comment in The LA Times about the marriage of the two main characters being shocking Weinman said, "That’s part of the point of the show: the characters make a decision that has more impact, legally and culturally, than any other, and one that their parents fear will ruin their lives."
The U.S. premiere on The CW on August 3, 2010 garnered 1.01 million viewers and a 0.4 rating with adults 18-49 and even lost viewers from an encore of the low rated summer reality series Plain Jane
which preceded the premiere. The next two episodes aired on The CW on August 10 and fell in the ratings even further with only 0.76 million viewers and a 0.3 rating in the adults 18-49 demographic.
. In December 2010 the CBC Shop listed the first season DVD available for pre-order with a scheduled release date of January 18, 2011.
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
television sitcom that debuted on January 4, 2010 on CBC Television
CBC Television
CBC Television is a Canadian television network owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcaster.Although the CBC is supported by public funding, the television network supplements this funding with commercial advertising revenue, in contrast to CBC Radio which are...
. The series is shown in Quebec on Vrak.TV
VRAK.TV
VRAK.TV is a Canadian French language Category A specialty channel aimed at youth audiences. VRAK.TV is currently owned by Astral Media.-History:...
with the title Majeurs et mariés.
Synopsis
The show stars Stacey FarberStacey Farber
Stacey Anne Farber is a Canadian actress who is best known for playing Eleanor "Ellie" Nash in seasons 2 through 7 of the television series Degrassi: The Next Generation....
and Michael Seater
Michael Seater
Michael Bruce Patrick Seater is a Canadian actor. He is known for his role as Derek Venturi on Life with Derek and for his role as Tom Bellow in 18 to Life.-Biography:Seater was born in Toronto, Ontario...
as Jessie Hill and Tom Bellow, a young couple who decides, on a dare, to get married right out of high school
High school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
. The cast also includes Peter Keleghan
Peter Keleghan
Peter Keleghan is a Canadian television actor, who has played roles in several popular Canadian comedy series.Keleghan's best-known roles have been film industry CEO Alan Roy on Made in Canada, low-IQ news anchor Jim Walcott on The Newsroom, and Ranger Gord on The Red Green Show...
and Ellen David
Ellen David
Ellen David is a Canadian actress. She was co-nominated for a 2007 Gemini Award for Best Ensemble Performance in a Comedy Program or Series in The Business episode Check Please and nominated for a 2005 Prix Gemeaux for Meilleur rôle de soutien féminin : comédie...
as Tom's parents Ben and Judith Bellow, and Alain Goulem and Angela Asher as Jessie's parents Phil and Tara Hill. The two families live next door to each other and ascribe to the adage
Adage
An adage is a short but memorable saying which holds some important fact of experience that is considered true by many people, or that has gained some credibility through its long use....
that "good fences make good neighbors". Jessie's parents are free-spirited and do not believe in societal constructs of marriage or organized religion. They have a refugee from Iraq living in their basement. Tom's parents are traditional white-collar
White-collar worker
The term white-collar worker refers to a person who performs professional, managerial, or administrative work, in contrast with a blue-collar worker, whose job requires manual labor...
sticklers for rules. Tom's father is a judge who converted to Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
when he married and Tom's mother is a homemaker. Jessie and Tom eventually settle into the attic suite of Tom's parents' house as their first marital home and try to balance college, work, and the trials of being young newlyweds. The show is set in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
.
Production
The series was originally announced in 2008 as a co-production between CBC and the AmericanUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
television network ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
, although ABC later dropped out of the production. The pilot was filmed in 2008 and the rest of the first season was filmed in the summer of 2009. The CW, another U.S. network, had interest in the series and announced on July 15, 2010 that it would pick up the show.
Season 2 was filmed in the summer of 2010 and returned to CBC
CBC Television
CBC Television is a Canadian television network owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcaster.Although the CBC is supported by public funding, the television network supplements this funding with commercial advertising revenue, in contrast to CBC Radio which are...
on January 3, 2011, with 13 new episodes.
CBC has officially canceled the show and there will be no season three. The final episode, the 25th, was telecast on 28th March 2011.
International distribution
18 to Life was broadcast in the United States on The CWThe CW Television Network
The CW Television Network is a television network in the United States launched at the beginning of the 2006–2007 television season. It is a joint venture between CBS Corporation, the former owners of United Paramount Network , and Time Warner's Warner Bros., former majority owner of The WB...
. The first six episodes were shown in August 2010. On August 19, 2010, The CW announced that it had removed the series from its schedule. On August 24, 2010 it was reported that Arnie Gelbart, executive producer of the series and CEO of the production company Galafilm Productions, said The CW would show the remaining six episodes of the first season in December 2010.
In India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, Zee Café
Zee Cafe
Zee Café is an Indian cable and satellite television channel owned by Zee Entertainment Enterprises. It was launched on 15 March 2000 as Zee English and known for general entertainment channel...
began broadcasting the first season on 9 February 2011.
Critical reception
John DoyleJohn Doyle (critic)
John Doyle is one of the two television critics with Canada's The Globe and Mail newspaper. Doyle also covers major football events for the paper....
of The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail is a nationally distributed Canadian newspaper, based in Toronto and printed in six cities across the country. With a weekly readership of approximately 1 million, it is Canada's largest-circulation national newspaper and second-largest daily newspaper after the Toronto Star...
said that 18 to Life "crackles with wit" and that "Peter Keleghan is in fine fettle as Tom's uptight dad." Quebecor Medias Bill Harris called the premise "kind of refreshing" and described it as a "Canadian combination of Meet the Parents
Meet the Parents
Meet the Parents is a 2000 American comedy film written by Jim Herzfeld and John Hamburg and directed by Jay Roach. Starring Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller, the film chronicles a series of unfortunate events that befall a good-hearted but hapless male nurse while visiting his girlfriend's parents...
and Modern Family
Modern Family
Modern Family is an American television comedy series created by Christopher Lloyd and Steven Levitan, which debuted on ABC on September 23, 2009. Lloyd and Levitan serve as showrunner and executive producers, under their Levitan-Lloyd Productions label...
." Rob Owen
Rob Owen (journalist)
Rob Owen is an American journalist and newspaper editor.- Columnist and editor :Owen's career included stints as a radio and television columnist at the Albany Times Union in Albany, New York. He was also a features writer at the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Richmond, Virginia...
of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, also known simply as the "PG," is the largest daily newspaper serving metropolitan Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.-Early history:...
described the series as a "gentle, intermittently entertaining Canadian import." He also compared 18 to Life to the sitcom Dharma & Greg
Dharma & Greg
Dharma & Greg is an American television sitcom that aired from September 24, 1997, to April 30, 2002.It starred Jenna Elfman and Thomas Gibson as Dharma and Greg Montgomery, a couple who married instantly on their first date despite being complete opposites...
. Roger Catlin of The Hartford Courant
The Hartford Courant
The Hartford Courant is the largest daily newspaper in the U.S. state of Connecticut, and is a morning newspaper for most of the state north of New Haven and east of Waterbury...
found 18 to Life to be "kind of sweet in a Disney/ABC Family
ABC Family
ABC Family, stylized as abc family, is an American television network, owned by ABC Family Worldwide Inc., a subsidiary of the Disney-ABC Television Group division of The Walt Disney Company...
kind of way."
Brad Oswald of the Winnipeg Free Press
Winnipeg Free Press
The Winnipeg Free Press is a daily broadsheet newspaper in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Founded in 1872, as the Manitoba Free Press, it is the oldest newspaper in western Canada. It is the newspaper with the largest readership in the province....
said there is "plenty of next-door comedy" however he found the premise "simply isn't believable". Glenn Garvin of The Miami Herald
The Miami Herald
The Miami Herald is a daily newspaper owned by The McClatchy Company headquartered on Biscayne Bay in the Omni district of Downtown Miami, Florida, United States...
does not like the series. "The CW, a network aimed a teenage girls, apparently couldn't find an American network stupid or venal enough to make a sitcom about the amusing foibles of teen marriage. Thanks for stepping in, Canada. What would we do without you?" Megan Angelo of The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
leads off her review by mistakenly claiming this is "adapted from a Canadian hit" when there is no American adaptation of the show. She then mentioned the general critical decrying of the glamourisation of out-of-wedlock pregnancy in the films Juno
Juno (film)
Juno is a 2007 comedy-drama film directed by Jason Reitman and written by Diablo Cody. Ellen Page stars as the title character, an independent-minded teenager confronting an unplanned pregnancy and the subsequent events that put pressures of adult life onto her. Michael Cera, Olivia Thirlby, J. K....
and Knocked Up
Knocked Up
Knocked Up is a 2007 American romantic comedy drama film co-produced, written, and directed by Judd Apatow. Starring Seth Rogen, Katherine Heigl, Paul Rudd, and Leslie Mann, the film follows the repercussions of a drunken one-night stand between Rogen's slacker character and Heigl's just-promoted...
and then says that out-of-pregnancy wedlock is not any better for teenagers. Angelo goes on to say that "what makes it really hard to watch is Tom and Jessie’s casual discourse on sex." She further explains that what makes 18 to Life so difficult to watch compared to shows such as Gossip Girl
Gossip Girl (TV series)
Gossip Girl is an American teen drama television series based on the book series of the same name written by Cecily von Ziegesar. The series was created by Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, and premiered on The CW on September 19, 2007...
and 90210
90210 (TV series)
90210 is an American teen drama television series developed by Rob Thomas, Jeff Judah and Gabe Sachs, and the fourth series in the Beverly Hills, 90210 franchise created by Darren Star. 90210 is the first series produced by CBS Productions under the company's re-launch, but is now produced by CBS...
is that creating a believable world and "trying to legitimize the whole thing only makes it worse — and usually, the CW doesn’t try." Mary McNamara, television critic for The Los Angeles Times, opens her review by saying, "The setup for this CW show isn't anything new. Except, possibly, in its old-fashioned commitment to marriage." McNamara later makes the bold and somewhat contradictory statement that "It is much more shocking to see these young people leap into matrimony than it would be if they were just having sex or even moving in together." As to the writing, McNamara said it "plays like an improv exercise in a high school drama class".
Jaime Weinman of Maclean's
Maclean's
Maclean's is a Canadian weekly news magazine, reporting on Canadian issues such as politics, pop culture, and current events.-History:Founded in 1905 by Toronto journalist/entrepreneur Lt.-Col. John Bayne Maclean, a 43-year-old trade magazine publisher who purchased an advertising agency's in-house...
reviewed the negative American reviews, in particular those from The LA Times and The Wall Street Journal, and had concern about their "criticizing the show because it’s about two over-18 teenagers who get married." In writing of The Wall Street Journal review Weinman said it is an "odd presumption" that "a relatively realistic portrayal of teenage sex, of somewhat normal and (comparatively) de-glamourized teens who have been sexually active, is worse than the glossy version we get on the CW’s own shows." In response to McNamara's comment in The LA Times about the marriage of the two main characters being shocking Weinman said, "That’s part of the point of the show: the characters make a decision that has more impact, legally and culturally, than any other, and one that their parents fear will ruin their lives."
Ratings
The show premiered on January 4, 2010 on CBC. Only the weekly top 30 ratings are available to the public in Canada and 18 to Life never ranked in the top 30 during its first season.The U.S. premiere on The CW on August 3, 2010 garnered 1.01 million viewers and a 0.4 rating with adults 18-49 and even lost viewers from an encore of the low rated summer reality series Plain Jane
Plain Jane (TV series)
Plain Jane is an American reality television makeover summer series that transforms one woman each week. The show premiered on The CW on Wednesday July 28, 2010 at 9 pm...
which preceded the premiere. The next two episodes aired on The CW on August 10 and fell in the ratings even further with only 0.76 million viewers and a 0.3 rating in the adults 18-49 demographic.
| Order | Episode | U.S. air date | Rating | Share | Rating/Share Nielsen Ratings Nielsen ratings are the audience measurement systems developed by Nielsen Media Research, in an effort to determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the United States... (18-49) |
Viewers (millions) |
Rank (timeslot) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "A Modest Proposal" | August 3, 2010 | 0.7 | 1 | 0.4/1 | 1.010 | 5 |
| 2 | "No Strings Attached" | August 3, 2010 | 0.6 | 1 | 0.3/1 | 0.862 | 5 |
| 3 | "It's My Party" | August 10, 2010 | 0.6 | 1 | 0.3/1 | 0.747 | 5 |
| 4 | "Detour" | August 10, 2010 | 0.5 | 1 | 0.3/1 | 0.776 | 5 |
| 5 | "Baby Got Bank" | August 17, 2010 | 0.5 | 1 | 0.3/1 | 0.802 | 5 |
| 6 | "Goy Story" | August 17, 2010 | 0.5 | 1 | 0.3/1 | 0.746 | 5 |
Home video
The first season is available for purchase from the Canadian iTunes StoreITunes Store
The iTunes Store is a software-based online digital media store operated by Apple. Opening as the iTunes Music Store on April 28, 2003, with over 200,000 items to purchase, it is, as of April 2008, the number-one music vendor in the United States...
. In December 2010 the CBC Shop listed the first season DVD available for pre-order with a scheduled release date of January 18, 2011.