Due South - History

History

Due South originally debuted as a television movie on CTV in Canada and CBS in the United States. After higher-than-anticipated ratings, Due South was turned into a continuing drama series in 1994. It was the first Canadian-made series to have a prime time slot on a major US network. However, CBS moved its time slot continuously after its first season and often preempted it with other programs, so maintaining an audience was a challenge.

After the 24-episode first season, CBS cancelled the series, but the show's success in Canada and the United Kingdom enabled the production company to raise enough money to mount a second 18-episode season, which ran from 1995 to 1996. The show was once again shown on CBS in late 1995 after many fall shows had failed (CBS ordered an additional five episodes but broadcast only four of them), but CBS did not renew the series.

After a one-year hiatus, CTV revived the series in 1997 with international investment (from the BBC, ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG, and TF1), and it ran for two further seasons, until 1999. In the United States, seasons three and four were packaged together as a single 26-episode season for syndication. The post-1997 episodes have been labelled a spin-off from the original series. Despite critical acclaim and a consistently warm reception by American audiences, Due South never became a huge hit in the United States; however, it was one of the most highly rated regular series ever broadcast by a Canadian network. The show remains popular in the United Kingdom, and became one of the few non-British shows to have a prime-time weeknight slot on BBC One. In the UK, Due South was broadcast on Tuesdays from 9 May 1995, earning critical acclaim with comparisons to Northern Exposure and ratings of over eight million, until a switch in June to Fridays, being pulled from the schedule in July, and returned to Tuesdays in September. Season two was broadcast on Saturday nights from 27 July 1996 and fared similarly well, but was pulled from the schedules in October with five episodes of the season remaining. These were shown in January 1997. The BBC co-financed the third season but struggled to find a suitable slot on Saturday nights for it, and only five episodes of the series were shown in May and June 1998 with the remainder in daytime slots over Christmas 1998. The final season, broadcast from May to November 1999, was moved to BBC Two and consistently performed well, with ratings of over two million viewers, regularly appearing in the top-ten weekly shows for the channel. Upon the end of the series in 1999, BBC Two immediately began to screen repeats, and the series was also rescreened on ITV3 in 2006, and again on BBC Two from 18 October 2010.