Coming Up Rosie

*Coming Up Rosie*
Coming Up Rosie
Genre	Children's sitcom
Written by	Barbara Evans (1975-1977); David Mayerovitch; Stuart Northey; Hedley Read (1977-1978)
Country of origin	Canada
Original language	English
No. of seasons	3
No. of episodes	32
Production
Running time	30 minutes
Original release
Network	CBC Television
Release	15 September 1975 –; 1978

Coming Up Rosie is a Canadian children's television sitcom on CBC Television that aired for three seasons from 1975–1978.

Premise

The show focuses on a group of tenants in an office building located at 99 Sumach Street, Toronto. Rosemary Radcliffe played the title character, aspiring Canadian documentary film-maker Rosie Tucker.^[2]

The initial cast also includes Fiona Reid as Mona Swicker, an operator for the Ringading Telephone Answering Service; John Stocker as elevator operator Dwayne Kramer; Dan Hennessey as Ralph Oberding, salesman for the Neva-Rust Storm Door Company; Barrie Baldaro as Rosie's production assistant Dudley Nightshade; and Dan Aykroyd as building janitor/superintendent Purvis Bickle.

Aykroyd appeared as a regular in this series concurrently with his star-making turn on Saturday Night Live, which debuted less than a month after Coming Up Rosie.

Cast member Fiona Reid was cast on King of Kensington almost simultaneously with the start of Coming Up Rosie, and citing her lack of improvisational skills ("I wasn't comfortable....Rosie demands a great improvisational head. I need set lines."^[3]), left Coming Up Rosie only a few months after its debut. Aykroyd also left the show after its first season.

Later cast members—replacing Aykroyd and Reid—included John Candy as Wally Wypyzypychwk, the Ukrainian owner of Sleep-Tite Burglar Alarms, and Catherine O'Hara as answering service operator Myrna Wallbacker. Both Candy and O'Hara concurrently starred in Second City Television, actually appearing on Rosie concurrently with their early episodes of SCTV, which began in September 1976. Candy was also a regular on the sitcom The David Steinberg Show (1976–77) during this period, thereby simultaneously appearing as a regular on three separate series for three different Canadian networks.

Many of the actors in this series also appeared in the less successful 1974–1975 CBC series Dr. Zonk and the Zunkins.^[2]

Broadcast

For the first season, the series aired at 4:30pm on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. The series frequency was reduced to once per week for the remaining seasons, Mondays in 1976-77 and Tuesdays in 1977–78.^[4]