King of Kensington
Encyclopedia
King of Kensington was a Canadian
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 which aired 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...

 from 1975 to 1980.

The show starred Al Waxman
Al Waxman
Albert Samuel Waxman, CM, O.Ont was a Canadian actor and director of over 1000 productions on radio, television, film, and stage...

 as Larry King, a convenience store owner in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

's Kensington Market
Kensington Market
Kensington Market is a distinctive multicultural neighbourhood in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The Market is an older neighbourhood and one of the city's most well-known. In November 2006, it was designated a National Historic Site of Canada. Robert Fulford wrote in 1999 that "Kensington...

 who was known for helping friends and neighbours solve problems. His multicultural group of friends consisted of Nestor Best (Ardon Bess
Ardon Bess
Ardon Bess is a Canadian actor best known for appearing in a Heritage Moment television commercial about the 1958 Springhill mining disaster portraying survivor Maurice Ruddick...

), Max (John J. Dee), and Tony "Duke" Zarro (Bob Vinci), who hung around regularly to the perennial disapproval of King's mother Gladys (Helene Winston).

The show was popular with viewers; prior to the start of the fourth season one of the producers noted that show drew 1.5 to 1.8 million viewers weekly.

For the first three seasons, Fiona Reid
Fiona Reid
Fiona Reid, CM is a Canadian television, film and stage actress. She is best known for her role as Cathy on the TV series King of Kensington....

 played his wife Cathy. At the end of the third season, Reid decided to leave the series, so Larry and Cathy divorced. The show never fully recovered its stride or chemistry as Larry pursued other relationships, most notably with Gwen Twining (Jayne Eastwood
Jayne Eastwood
Jayne Eastwood , also credited as Jane Easton or Jane Eastwood, is a Canadian actress most famous for appearing in the 2002 film Chicago. She was one of the original cast members of the Toronto branch of The Second City, and was a semi-regular on SCTV...

) in the final season.

The show's gentle but politically conscious humour is seen by some critics as a Canadian version of the topical Norman Lear
Norman Lear
Norman Milton Lear is an American television writer and producer who produced such 1970s sitcoms as All in the Family, Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time, The Jeffersons, Good Times and Maude...

 sitcoms of the 1970s, such as All in the Family
All in the Family
All in the Family is an American sitcom that was originally broadcast on the CBS television network from January 12, 1971, to April 8, 1979. In September 1979, a new show, Archie Bunker's Place, picked up where All in the Family had ended...

and Maude
Maude (TV series)
Maude was an American television sitcom that was originally broadcast on the CBS network from September 12, 1972 until April 22, 1978.Maude starred Beatrice Arthur as Maude Findlay, an outspoken, middle-aged, politically liberal woman living in suburban Tuckahoe, Westchester County, New York with...

. The series was syndicated
Television syndication
In broadcasting, syndication is the sale of the right to broadcast radio shows and television shows by multiple radio stations and television stations, without going through a broadcast network, though the process of syndication may conjure up structures like those of a network itself, by its very...

 to some American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 stations during the height of its popularity, including WTTG
WTTG
WTTG, channel 5, is an owned-and-operated television station of the Fox Broadcasting Company, located in the American capital city of Washington, D.C...

 in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....



The show was created by Perry Rosemond
Perry Rosemond
Perry Rosemond, CM is a Canadian television writer, producer and director.-Life and career:Rosemond was born in Winnipeg where during his youth he performed on stage and on radio and was among those who established the Manitoba Theatre Centre...

, who also produced the first season. Other producers included Jack Humphrey
Jack Humphrey (producer)
Jack Humphrey was a Canadian television producer and writer.Born John R. Humphrey in St. Boniface, Manitoba, and grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia. He was introduced to the entertainment industry by his sister, J.J. McColl, a writer and CBC Radio personality...

 (1976–1980) and Joe Partington (1978–1980).

The series featured many Canadian actors as guest stars, including Mike Myers
Mike Myers (actor)
Michael John "Mike" Myers is a Canadian actor, comedian, screenwriter, and film producer of British parentage...

, John Candy
John Candy
John Franklin Candy was a Canadian actor and comedian. He rose to fame as a member of the Toronto branch of The Second City and its related Second City Television series, and through his appearances in comedy films such as Stripes, Splash, Cool Runnings, The Great Outdoors, Spaceballs, and Uncle...

, Eugene Levy
Eugene Levy
Eugene Levy, CM is a Canadian actor, comedian, television director, producer, musician, and writer. He is known for his work in Canadian television series, American movies, and television movies. He is the only actor to have appeared in all eight of the American Pie films, as Noah Levenstein...

, Dave Thomas
Dave Thomas (actor)
David "Dave" Thomas is a Canadian comedian and actor. He was born in St. Catharines, Ontario, but moved to Durham, North Carolina where his father, John E. Thomas, attended Duke University and earned a PhD in Philosophy. Thomas attended George Watts and Moorehead elementary schools...

, and Mark Humphrey
Mark Humphrey
Mark Adrian Humphrey is a Canadian actor best known for the role of Jake Antonelli in the Canadian television series E.N.G. In 1988 he made his feature film debut in the film Iron Eagle II as Captain Matt Cooper, Doug Masters' surviving best friend...

.

After King of Kensington ended in 1980, head writer Louis Del Grande
Louis Del Grande
Louis Del Grande is a Canadian television writer and actor. He is best known for starring in the Canadian mystery/comedy series Seeing Things....

 went on to create and star in Seeing Things, and Waxman was cast in the American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 series Cagney & Lacey
Cagney & Lacey
Cagney & Lacey is an American television series that originally aired on the CBS television network for seven seasons from October 8, 1981 to May 16, 1988...

.

Tributes

In the first episode of the 1990s television series Twitch City
Twitch City
Twitch City is a Canadian sitcom produced by CBC Television. The series aired as two short runs in 1998 and 2000. The series also aired in the United States on Bravo, and in Australia....

, also set in Kensington, the character Nathan (played by Daniel MacIvor
Daniel MacIvor
Daniel MacIvor is a Canadian actor, playwright, theatre director and film director. He was born in Sydney, Nova Scotia and educated at Dalhousie University in Halifax, and then at George Brown College in Toronto, Ontario....

) was sent to prison for killing a homeless man with a can of cat food. The producers of Twitch City cast Al Waxman in the role of the murder victim, as a symbolic wink to King of Kensington, although they claimed that they did not intend for the character to be seen as Larry King himself.

Following Waxman's death on January 18, 2001, a memorial to him was erected in Kensington Market.

In one episode of the Canadian comedy program Puppets Who Kill
Puppets Who Kill
Puppets Who Kill is a Canadian television comedy programme co-produced by The Comedy Network. It premiered in Canada on the Comedy Network in 2002, and in Australia on The Comedy Channel in 2004....

, the character Bill steals Al Waxman's preserved brain from the CBC headquarters.

DVD release

On November 13, 2007, Morningstar Entertainment released Season 1 on DVD in Region 1.

External links

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