The Beachcombers
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The Beachcombers was a popular Canadian television program broadcast on CBC.
The series ran from 1972 to 1989 and is the longest-running dramatic series ever made for Canadian television.
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Filming locations
Set in Gibsons, British Columbia, northwest of Vancouver.
The café featured in the show, "Molly's Reach", still survives today (although the original was destroyed in a later episode of the series) and is a local attraction in Gibsons.
Cast
The comedy-drama starred Bruno Gerussi as a log salvager, and Robert Clothier as his clumsy rival.
The show was an active window into Canada's multicultural heritage. Gerussi's character, Nick Adonidas, was a Greek, and Clothier's character, "Relic", had a Welsh ancestry. Other characters included Gerussi's Native partner, played by Pat Johns, and an RCMP constable, played by Jackson Davies.
The series' title was shortened to Beachcombers for its final season.
Davies was the only original cast member who starred in the show's follow-up TV movie The New Beachcombers, produced in 2002, which was an unsuccessful pilot for a revived series.
By this time Gerrusi and Clothier had both died. A sequel, A Beachcomber's Christmas, was also produced, though this, too, failed to spark a new series.
Countries that ran Beachcolmbers
By which time the program had been syndicated around the world and was particularly popular in the United Kingdom and on PBS in the United States.
Funding cutbacks at the CBC, however, led to Beachcombers being cancelled despite the fact that it was still popular in its homeland.
GDR TV ran the series because it had so little contraversey, as in one episode the whole episode was based on people arguing over who owned a wayward log. This in a region covered by forest.