Canadian canine cop makes comfy TV

If you want a pleasantly adequate TV show, here are good elements — cops, canines and Canadians.
All of which point to “Hudson & Rex” (shown here), which starts its season at 8 p.m. ET Thursday (Aug. 6) on UPtv.
No, this isn’t one of the most famous TV shows (or one of the 200 most-famous) and it’s not on a famous network. UP reaches a little over half of U.S. TV homes, via cable, digital, Philo, Frndly and DirecTV. It likes shows that are upbeat (hence the name) and family-friendly.
UP has tons of reruns — currently overloading on “The Rookie” — but also makes new movies (especially at Christmas time) and has occasional drama series. It has just renewed “Sugarcreek Amish Mysteries” for a second season, next year; and it’s the American outlet for long-running shows — the eight seasons of “Hudson & Rex” and the 19 of “Heartland.” Both are Canadian, which makes them fit so neatly.
As everyone knows — well, every non-president — Canadians are nice people. (They don’t start wildfires, incidentally; lightning starts them and Canadians do their gosh-darnedest to stop them.) That comes across in their shows.
We’re not talking about American-produced shows that are simply filmed up North; we’re talking about ones that are Canadian through-and-through.
Consider NBC’s former “Transplant,” Fox’s excellent “Murder in a Small Town” (returning at mid-season), ABC’s former “Rookie Blue,” Pop’s Emmy-winning “Schitt’s Creek.” Consider any number of CW shows, current (“Sullivan’s Creek.,” “Wild Cards”) or past, including “Coroner,” “Family Law,” “Moonshine,” “Son of a Critch” and “The Spencer Sisters.”
And consider “Murdoch Mysteries,” which has sprawled its 20 seasons across Acorn and Ovation. I once saw an episode so benign that I called it “almost too Canadian, if that’s possible.”
The good-hearted “Hudson & Rex” neatly fits UP. Its 108 previous episodes rerun weekdays from 6-8 p.m. and 1-3 a.m. ET, plus pretty much all day Sundays. Now the 14 new episodes begin, at 8 p.m. Thursdays — and even bring a tad of controversy, which we’ll get to in a minute.
Viewers like cops (at least when they solve crimes) and canine stars. We’ve rooted for Rin Tin Tin, Lassie and Benji.
Then came the Austrian-Italian show, “Kommisar Rex,” focusing on a German shepherd who’s part of the police force.
That was adapted into “Hudson & Rex,” set in St. John’s, a modest-sized city of 110,000 that’s the provincial capital of Newfoundland. John Reardon and Diesel vom Burgimwald starred as Charlie Hudson and Rex, with several of Diesel’s kin sometimes working as stand-ins.
Two tragedies came after filming two episodes of the seventh season; Rex died and Reardon had to leave to be treated for tonsil cancer.
The show adjusted. Former stand-ins took over the Rex role. Charlie Hudson was shipped overseas, with Reardon only heard as a telephone voice. The season was trimmed to just eight episodes and a new actor — Luke Roberts, playing Mark Hudson (no relation) — arrived.
That’s when the controversy came. (Well, a controversy by Canadian standards; by ours, it might have been a mere kerfuffle.)
Reardon sent a note online, telling fans that he was fully recovered, but that the producers had decided not to bring him back.
He said it politely (did I mention that he’s Canadian?), but viewers still protested … and the producers relented. Roberts did the eighth season, which arrives now, but Reardon will be back for the ninth.
Reardon, 51, was already familiar to Canadian viewers; his wife, Meghan Ory, is familiar to Americans: She starred in Hallmark’s “Chesapeake Shores” and was Red Riding Hood in ABC’s “Once Upon a Time.”
Roberts, 49, is a solid-enough actor and his episodes work fairly well. We saw the first four and they delivered adequate entertainment, as expected:
— Aug. 6 and 13. Both involve witnesses. First, a young man hides in the woods (where Rex is adept). Then an autistic girl relaxes with Rex nearby.
— Aug. 20: It’s a shipboard murder, with Captain Sandy Yawn (of the “Below Deck” reality show) playing, logically, the captain.
— Aug. 27: A gin mogul is discovered face down in a barrel of his product. Foul play is suspected.