Hatching, Matching and Dispatching (2005)

Hatching, Matching and Dispatching was a Canadian television sitcom series. The CBC Television show starred Mary Walsh as Mamie Lou Furey, the matriarch of a family in Newfoundland and Labrador who owns a combination ambulance, wedding and funeral business. The remaining cast included Shaun Majumder, Mark McKinney, Rick Boland, Joel Thomas Hynes, Jonny Harris and Susan Kent. Hynes and Walsh were also writers for the series, along with Sherry White, Ed Macdonald and Adriana Maggs. The series pilot aired January 17, 2005 as one of three CBC sitcom prototypes which included Getting Along Famously and Walter Ego. The CBC employed a viewer response poll to gauge interest in these pilots, a technique previously employed with the shows Rideau Hall and An American in Canada. Hatching, Matching and Dispatching began shooting its first season of six episodes on July 18, 2005 and began airing as a regular series on January 6, 2006 with six episodes, following a rebroadcast of the original pilot on December 30, 2005. The episodes were repeated from July 18 to August 22, 2006. The CBC subsequently announced the cancellation of the series after its sole season. The show's title — and a basic summary of its premise — had previously appeared as a one-time gag in a "Wake of the Week" sketch on CODCO.