The story of Ron Weyman is the story of the beginning of film  drama  on  Canadian  national  television  in  the 1960s and early 1970s, a time when there were no full­ length dramatic features being made on a regular basis in Canada. In Weyman's own words, “ I was in the business of getting home-town  (i.e., Canadian)  writers to write films, which would in fact be feature pictures. They could then break through the artificial  relationship (as I saw it) between television and the screen."

     Weyman, an executive producer of film drama. took on this mission in the midst of a varied career. In the 1950s, he spent a number of years with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) as producer, director, writer, and editor of more than 20 films. He traveled extensively and learned the craft of shooting film on location. a skill that he eventually brought back to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), where he was responsible for moving the CBC into the production of filmed series and encouraging a corporate com­mitment to dramatic film production.

     Several years earlier, when technologies had improved and business had changed to  the point that the U.S. model of the filmed series obliterated the live­ television anthology genre, Weyman had begun to explore the possibilities offered by film in a form new to Canada-the serial. Serials were still studio-bound in Canada, but Weyman put film crews out on locations across the land to film sequences for insertion into the stories. The response was remarkable. Viewers loved to  see  where  they   lived-and   other  places   in their sprawling country-on television. At the same time, with Weyman's support, Philip Keately was producing four or five stories in his limited series Cariboo Country-on film, on location in the Chilcotin.

     The relationship between the National Film Board and the CBC was characterized at this time by uneasy and intermittent cooperation. Opinions on the relationship are divided. It is clear that as far as the medium of film-as opposed to kinescope copies of "live" or "live to tape"-productions were concerned, the two agencies were rivals in some areas. As in many other countries, film was considered to be the paramount medium in a hierarchy of entertainment that excluded theater but included radio and television. When the question of television drama on film was raised, the perceived wisdom was that this was the NFB's job. When both agencies were urged to coproduce fictional films for Canada's centennial year (1967), the premise was that CBC director-producers understood actors and NFB producers and directors (their roles were separate in film but not in television) understood film. Inevitably, this led to internal conflicts and overspent budgets. The result was three rather ordinary dramas on film, broadcast on the CBC flagship Sunday-night anthology Festival. The one remarkable color film from that period, The Paper People, did not involve the NFB. Physically removed from the working headquarters of the CBC (English) language division, Weyman and his crews and editors were free from middle manage­ment's interference-and were seen as a drama production unit of their own.

     The result of this freedom was the hit series Wojeck (a concept that was run through the Hollywood blender to emerge as the bland Quincy) and Corwin, a medical series. Meanwhile, with David Gardner, Weyman also produced another hit series, Quentin Durgens, M.P., about an idealistic member of Parliament. This program was shot on tape but still went on location for part of each episode and made a star of actor Gordon Pinsent. Weyman also produced a half-hour comedy program set in an 1837 pioneer settlement, Hatch's Mill, and McQueen: The Actioneer; a series about a newspaper columnist.

     The common thread in all of these works, even Hatch's Mill, was engagement with topical social is­ sues, an examination of the uses and abuses of power, and questions of individual and communal responsibil­ity. Most episodes raised uncomfortable questions for the audience and often chose not to present the easy answers supplied by most television drama at that time. Within the series form, Weyman fused the docu­ mentary style and spirit of inquiry with the personal­ ized focus of continuing characters, who were supplied with literate dialogue, and the subtext, nuance, and structural freedoms of fiction.

     Weyman's influence continues to be felt in the work of producer Maryke McEwan, who began with the docudramas of For the Record, shaped the series Street Legal, and then returned to documentary and docudrama specials. Many successful series in Canada still reflect the blend of documentary and drama that Wey­man and Keately created more than 30 years ago.