Hudson & Rex is a fun Canadian television oddity: a crime-by-the-week series unabashedly set in St. John’s, Newfoundland that features the city’s landmarks and an array of gorgeous provincial settings as key elements. Mary Walsh has a recurring role as a former police archivist who ends up in prison, and then briefly manages a prison break to marry her ailing lover.
When I was teaching Canadian Studies a couple of years ago and trying to persuade class members that it matters if Canadians have access to television programs created in Canada and featuring recognizable landscapes, I had class members do reviews of some popular series.
Rex, the dog in this detective duo, got out a shout-out from student presenters, but I also learned from them that it was less of a Canadian original, in the mode of The Littlest Hobo, than I had imagined. The series is a Canadian and English-language adaptation of an Austrian-Italian co-production, Kommissar Rex, with the same premise.
But the Canadian version is now an international export, so yay, globalization?
In the news today: actor John Reardon will return to the role of police detective Charlie Hudson after a successful fan campaign. He was replaced by Luke Roberts, an English actor, as a different lead character for the last episodes of Season 7 and all of Season 8 after Reardon became ill.
From the CBC website:
“Reardon said in a social media post last year that he didn’t leave by choice, explaining he was diagnosed with tonsil cancer partway through Season 7 and underwent treatment. Doctors cleared him to return, he said, but ‘the team chose to go in a different direction.’”
I’m glad he has his job back. And it’s impressive that fans rallied so effectively on his behalf.
But I’m dismayed that getting sick can apparently cost people their jobs in Canada.
The Landscape of Canadian Women's Crime Fiction 
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