TORONTO – There’s simply no other way to describe CTV’s Corner Gas than a runaway, smash hit.
It’s season finale Monday night drew a season-high two million viewers as CTV raised the buzz bar by including Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the program and allowing rumors to circulate that series creator Brent Butt might be leaving the show (since his on-screen persona was selling the gas station).
Corner Gas, the country’s top-rated company, charted an eye-catching 67% audience growth since its season premiere in September. The series finished its 19-episode run with an average audience of 1.52 million viewers, reaching as high as #16 on Canada’s Top 20 list of most watched programs, heights almost unheard of for a Canadian scripted show.
The finale will encore Saturday at 8 p.m. on The Comedy Network and is available on demand on The CTV Broadband Network at CTV.ca.
Of course, with sales in the U.S. market to satisfy, Butt isn’t going anywhere and CTV today confirmed a full 19-episode production order for a fifth season of Corner Gas. Production crews are now gearing up for a May 2007 return to their Saskatchewan-based sets and soundstages. With their return, Corner Gas remains the only network comedy series to be entirely based and shot in Saskatchewan (although CBC’s successful Little Mosque on the Prairie is set in the province and Gas lost a pair of writers to Mosque just this month).
However, armed with the new order, Corner Gas executive producers Butt, David Storey and Virginia Thompson today unveiled their new story department, a six-person team with some serious credentials.
They are:
Brent Butt – star/creator/writer/director/executive producer
Kevin White – supervising producer/writer (showrunner)
Mark Farrell – producer/writer
Norm Hiscock – consulting producer/writer
Gary Pearson – story editor/writer
Andrew Carr – story editor/writer
In addition to signing on the Emmy Award winning Norm Hiscock (Saturday Night Live, King Of The Hill, Kids In The Hall) and the highly acclaimed Gary Pearson (MadTV, This Hour Has 22 Minutes), the executive producing team today appointed Corner Gas veteran Kevin White as series show-runner. Together with star/creator/director/co-executive producer Brent Butt, producer/writer Mark Farrell (The Newsroom, This Hour Has 22 Minutes) and story editor/writer Andrew Carr (Comics), "it’s a virtual all-star collection of Canada’s most prolific comedy writers," says the press release.
"I haven’t been this excited about starting a season since we went into development on season one," said Butt in the release. "We had our first writers meeting in Toronto and we just sat around laughing ourselves sick. As immature and obnoxious as that may sound, it really bodes well for scripts."
