Homegrown show has 'Heart'
By BILL HARRIS -- Sun Media

Actress Michelle Morgan says the new CBC series Heartland is a family drama -- but that doesn't mean it's boring.

Ranch people, good. City people, bad.

Ranch people, wise and selfless. City people, shallow and selfish.

At first it seems as if the new CBC series Heartland is parroting those simplistic stereotypes.

"What's cool about Heartland is, they kind of show it's more complicated than that," actress Michelle Morgan said. "But totally, that's how Amy (the character played by Amber Marshall) is reacting to it at first."

Morgan plays Lou, the older sister of Amy. In the debut episode of Heartland, which airs tonight, Lou is forced to leave her big-city lifestyle to return home to rural Alberta, because the mother of Lou and Amy has been killed in an accident.

Lou quickly deduces that the ranch, which caters to horses that have been the victims of abuse, is in serious financial trouble and changes need to be made. But horse-whisperer-in-training Amy, predictably, believes that the evil city has rotted Lou's mind.


Canada is full of unique urban-rural and Eastern-Western prejudices, of course. Morgan, who was born in Calgary and grew up in Toronto and Vancouver, has experienced a lot of them, from all sorts of different angles.

"It's interesting, because now that I'm established in Toronto and coming out to Alberta (to shoot Heartland), sometimes you feel some animosity," Morgan said. "One time I was paying for something and they wanted to see my I.D., so I put my I.D. on the counter and they were like, 'Oh, you're from Ontario -- where exactly?' And maybe they were hoping I was going to say Fort Frances or something. But I said 'Toronto,' and they were like, 'Ooh ... that's too bad.'

"But at the same time, I'll go back to Toronto and my friends are like, 'How are you liking Alberta?' And I'll say, 'I'm loving it.' And they go, 'Really?' They're kind of surprised by that."

Ultimately, Canada is like a big family. We love to pick on each other, but heaven help anyone from another country who picks on us.

And there are some things that truly unify us -- like the beauty of the Canadian Rockies, which is on full panoramic display in Heartland.

"The Rockies in Alberta, they kill me every time we drive up to the set," Morgan said. "We're all in the car going, 'Wow.' And it never gets old, even for people who were born and raised in Alberta."

As for Heartland itself, the TV show is based on a series of books by Lauren Brooke. Besides Morgan and Marshall, Heartland also stars Shaun Johnston, Chris Potter, Graham Wardle and Nathaniel Arcand.

Sometimes "family drama" is a dirty term in TV or film, because it is considered to be a synonym for "boring." But according to Morgan, not only is Heartland not boring, but it also fills an oft-neglected void.

"All I know is, I'm from a big family, six kids," Morgan said. "When I was growing up, on Sunday night, which is when this show is airing, we all would be hanging out and we'd turn on the TV. But every other channel my mom would be saying, 'We can't watch that because Peter's here, we can't watch that because Grace is here.' And we'd kind of end up watching nothing, or crap, or a game show.

"Everyone can watch Heartland. But the writing is intelligent enough and intriguing enough to satisfy the older generation as well. So absolutely, this genre is super-important."

Whatever the genre, we hope the other characters in Heartland eventually have a heart and take it a little easy on Lou.

She's just trying to save the ranch, eh?