Network: CTV Television Network
Broadcast Run: 1970
Broadcast Medium: Television
Although this series has made it into more than one list of the worst Canadian television shows ever, 20-20 hindsight may have done it some injustice. When CTV was under fire for doing no Canadian drama production at all, suddenly in 1970 there in the schedule was not just a weekly program, but a five half-hours a week strip. It starred an all-Canadian cast, though with a New York setting in the hope of helping U.S. sales. Originally piloted under the title The Married Youngs, the show was renamed when it went to series by producer Seymour Berns, who named it after his daughter Tracy.
The scripts were originally written by Goodman Ace under the title Easy Aces, a US radio comedy soap of two decades earlier, and were adapted to make them more topical, though unfortunately no funnier. The Trouble with Tracy starred Steve Weston as a young advertising exec, and Diane Nyland as his scatterbrained wife. Others in the cast included Sylvia and Ben Lennick, Franz Russell, Bonnie Brooks, Arch McDonnell and Sandra Scott.
Tracy ran in the afternoons on CTV, Monday to Friday at 3:30pm, starting in the fall of 1970. It lasted only one season in this slot, but the Network gave it another daytime airing in repeats in the 1972-73 season at 9:30 – 10:00am. A co-production with a U.S. company, Tracy was produced in the studios of CFTO-TV Toronto. It was seen in daytime repeats on CITY-TV Toronto in the 1981-82 season.
Written by Pip Wedge – July, 2002