By Scott Campbell

Mark Critch, Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, Claire Rankin and Malcolm McDowell are reflective as CBC’s Son of a Critch wraps after five seasons.

“Bittersweet is the word everyone’s using,” Critch says during a Zoom interview. “I thought I would be crying more, but I did cry, but there are more tears of joy for the beautiful experience we’ve had … I still say it was my allergy.”

The TV show is based on Critch’s best-selling memoir about growing up in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Critch plays his own father, Mike Critch Sr., while Ainsworth is Mark. Rankin is mom, Mary, and McDowell is Patrick, a.k.a. Pops. This final season is set in 1992, and returns Tuesday, September 8, at 8:30 p.m. Eastern on CBC and CBC Gem.

“Each season is like a year of my life,” Critch says. He looks at the year and thinks about what was special to him.

“I’ll write out maybe 12 or 13 main memories or things that stand out. Then, you link them together, put them in an order, and write little things around them that aren’t necessarily true, but are on a theme.”

For Ainsworth, the journey to Newfoundland to be the son of a Critch did not even start in Canada. It was an email highlighting an untitled CBC project, Newfoundland and Mark Critch.

“So, 12-year-old me from good old Yorkshire was sort of like, ‘What’s Newfoundland?’” he recalls. “Figuring out what this amazing place was through research, and then getting to go there… and how beautifully written [the show] was, all of those things posed this kind of great adventure of discovery.”

The COVID pandemic provided a positive spin for Rankin. She was doing a national tour of Dear Evan Hansen, the Broadway musical, in the United States, and the production got shut down.

“I came back to Canada,” she says. “And during the time period that we were shut down, this audition came onto my plate. Had I still been doing Dear Evan Hansen and been contracted to them, I would never have been able to audition for the show. The best job of my life came out of a very strange situation.”

McDowell jokes, “They begged me,” to join Son of a Critch. He also teased a scene which happened on the last day of filming as one of his favourites of all time.

“The same casting director, who is Irish, said, ‘You know, Malcolm may do it.’ I’d done a show in England that they had cast [Truth Seekers]. I read the scripts, and I loved the scripts. I called my manager, and I said, ‘Make it work.’”

The filming experience on the show had Critch wondering what makes a moment a memory.

“Why are there certain little moments from my life that I’ll remember for the rest of my life, and the majority I’ll never remember?”

That led him to want to enjoy those moments a little more, because he knew it was something he’d be longing for years from now.

“You have to lose something to gain something,” Critch says. “And I think the great tax on this wonderful experience has been that one day it will end, and that’s the price you pay for it.”

For Rankin, the word family comes to mind for her because that is the theme of the show.

“That is what I gained in the five seasons,” she says. “That we got to spend this time together. People that I consider family.”

“Malcolm has been saying it’s fun to start a job,” she continues. “Wonderful to finish it. But not true on this one because as much as there’s some wonderful thing about the completion of the story, the unwonderful part of it is that we won’t be spending our summers together.”

Rankin joked the plan will be a Son of a Critch cruise someday for a Christmas special.

Ainsworth turns 18 this month; Mark Critch also turns 18 during this final season.

“An awesome character that I’ve been fortunate enough to grow up with,” he says. “I feel honoured to kind of have that journey with the character and to get those five seasons that other shows might not be fortunate enough to have.”

For Critch, the surprise was being able to pull off the whole television show experience.

“I’m surprised that we were able to get Benjamin,” he says. “Surprised Malcolm did it. I remember Claire’s audition was before she even really spoke a line. We knew that it would be her because she was so engaging right off the top. I’m surprised we got some wonderful guest stars,”

“And I was very surprised, actually, the very last scene, Benjamin’s performance, I thought it was going to go a certain way. And he brought a certain quality to the scene that I hadn’t really envisioned, but was actually perfect.”

Son of a Critch airs Tuesdays at 8:30 p.m. on CBC and CBC Gem.

Images courtesy of CBC.