Wojeck

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Canadian television series

title: "Wojeck" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1960s-canadian-drama-television-series", "cbc-television-original-programming", "canadian-legal-television-series", "1966-canadian-television-series-debuts", "1968-canadian-television-series-endings", "forensic-science-in-popular-culture", "television-shows-about-death"] description: "Canadian television series" topic_path: "geography/canada" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wojeck" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Canadian television series ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox television"]

Field	Value
runtime	60 minutes
producer	David Peddie
Paul Almond
Ron Weyman
starring	John Vernon
country	Canada
network	CBC
first_aired
last_aired
num_episodes	20 (+ 1992 TV Movie)
::

Wojeck is a Canadian dramatic television series, which aired on CBC Television from 1966 to 1968. It was arguably the first successful drama series on English Canadian television, and was the first TV series anywhere to regularly feature and focus on forensic pathology in the investigation of crime. Consequently, Wojeck has been hailed as an early forerunner of several successful shows that later explored the same genre, including The Expert (1968–76), Quincy, M.E. (1976–83), CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000–15), and Bones (2005–2017), among many others.

The de facto pilot for the show, produced in Canada by the CBC and featuring the entire cast of the series, aired as an episode of Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre titled "Tell Them the Streets Are Dancing" (broadcast March 17, 1966).

Characters and plot

Similar to Route 66 or Naked City, Wojeck followed the "semi-anthology" format of often building the stories around the guest actors, rather than the regular cast. Still, the main four characters are at the centre of the show overall, and Wojeck's investigations generally drive the stories forward.

Dr. Stefan "Steve" Wojeck is a crusading Toronto coroner who regularly fights moral injustices raised by the deaths he investigates. He often tackles tough and controversial issues. The character is Catholic, with Polish heritage.
Steve's wife Marty Wojeck is frequently his sounding board at home. A former nurse, Marty looks after their two school-age children (who are often discussed, but very seldom seen on-camera).
Crown Attorney Arnie Bateman is often, though not always, a force for trying to find a compromise between Wojeck's sometimes nearly-obsessive desire for justice and the practical realities of the justice system. This frequently puts Wojeck and Bateman at odds professionally, with Bateman finding Wojeck's "tilting at windmills" approach unhelpful and unsustainable, and a frustrated Wojeck finding Bateman cowardly or hypocritical. Nevertheless, they are (usually) able to put their differences aside in their personal lives and are shown to be good friends outside of work.
Police Sergeant Byron James is also a work colleague and friend of Wojeck's, who is assigned specifically to the Coroner's Office as an investigator. Their relationship is noticeably less fraught than that of Wojeck and Bateman, with the quietly determined police sergeantlike Wojeckintent on seeing criminal activity punished appropriately.

Wojeck was noted for its issue-driven stories, exploring topics that had rarely been directly confronted in television drama to that time, whether in Canada or elsewhere. Episodes of Wojeck deal frankly with abortion, homosexuality, drug addiction, systemic corporate and government corruption, negligence of the elderly, and other issues that were otherwise almost completely absent from TV programming of the era.

Main cast

John Vernon as Steve Wojeck
Patricia Collins as Marty Wojeck
Ted Follows as Crown Attorney Arnold (Arnie) Bateman
Carl Banas as Sgt. Bryon James

Production

The show was inspired by the career of Dr. Morton Shulman. Unusually for the time, episodes were shot almost entirely on location using hand-held cameras, giving the show a semi-documentary feel. The first season (1966) was filmed in black and white, while season two (1968) was shot in colour.

Wojeck also notably took a "rep company" approach to guest casting, with some guest stars appearing multiple times in different roles over the brief 20-episode run. Cec Linder starred in four episodes as four different characters, Robert Goodier played three characters over four episodes, and many, many actors appeared in three episodes playing three different characters. Margot Kidder (then billed as Margaret Kidder) appeared in only one episode (season 2's "After All, Who's Art Morrison?"), but it was her on-screen acting debut.

Although it was one of the highest-rated shows on Canadian television in its time, only 20 episodes of Wojeck were made, because series star Vernon was lured to Hollywood by the promise of more money and more consistent work than the CBC could offer. (Even after *Wojeck'''s success, the CBC could not promise Vernon the show would return in 1969, as they had to wait for a year-end budget allocation.) Vernon only returned to the role once, for a TV movie *Wojeck: Out of the Fire'' (1992).

Episodes

''Bob Hope Presents The Chrysler Theatre'' (1966)

|EpisodeNumber = 1 |Title = Tell Them the Streets Are Dancing |DirectedBy = Ronald Weyman |WrittenBy = Phillip Hersch |OriginalAirDate = |ShortSummary = Wojeck deals with the case of a construction worker (Bruno Gerussi) whose crew was forced to work in tunnels where some of them contracted caisson disease. |LineColor = A80F11

Seen in advance of the series. Though not conceived as such, it was a de facto "pilot" for the subsequent TV series.

Series 1 (1966)

All series 1 episodes are in black & white.

Series 2 (1968)

All series 2 episodes are in colour.

Special (1992)

|EpisodeNumber = 21 |Title = Wojeck: Out of the Fire |DirectedBy = George Bloomfield |WrittenBy = Malcolm MacRury based on a story by Ian Sutherland |OriginalAirDate = |ShortSummary = Wojeck returns to Toronto after working in a medical clinic in Sudan for 21 years, and catches up with old friends and family members. Arnie Bateman is now the Deputy Attorney General for the province of Ontario. Wojeck's now ex-wife Marti, who had initially accompanied him to Africa but left in 1978, works at a clinic for disabled children and is about to be remarried. Wojeck's daughter Anna, who was raised back in Toronto by her mother, works at a medical clinic; Wojeck's son died of meningitis in Africa in 1977. (In the original series, Wojeck's children were already in grade school by 1966; in this TV movie, son and daughter are born in 1965 and 1967, respectively.) Turned down for a job with the coroner's office due to a hiring freeze, Wojeck works at Anna's clinic and becomes involved in the plight of a family of refugees from Guatemala. |LineColor = 00FFFF

This production was created as a stand-alone, feature-length special. Originally shot in 1990 (and directed by original series director Daryl Duke), the production initially fell apart before completion due to a number of factors including weather-related shooting problems, and network dissatisfaction with the completed scenes. The script was extensively rewritten and reshot two years later by a different writer and director, though some footage from 1990 was retained. John Vernon, Patricia Collins and Ted Follows returned from the original series; Carl Banas did not. Duration: approximately 89 minutes.

Forensic pathology theme

Wojeck was the first TV series to feature forensic pathology in the investigation of crime. This became the central theme of several other TV mystery-suspense dramas, beginning with the BBC's The Expert in 1968. Other programs include:

Quincy, M.E., USA, 1976
Silent Witness, UK (BBC), 1996
Da Vinci's Inquest, Canada (CBC), 1998
Waking The Dead, UK (BBC), 2000
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, U.S. (CBS), 2000; and two spinoffs + a revival, including:
- CSI: Miami, U.S. (CBS), 2002
- CSI: NY, U.S. (CBS), 2004
- CSI: Vegas, U.S. (CBS), 2021
Crossing Jordan, U.S. (NBC), 2001
Bones, U.S. (Fox), 2005
RIS Delitti Imperfetti, Italy (Canale 5), 2005
R.I.S, police scientifique, France (TF1), 2006
Post Mortem, Germany (RTL), 2007
R. I. S. – Die Sprache der Toten, Germany (Sat.1), 2007
Rizzoli & Isles, U.S. (TNT), 2010
Body of Proof, U.S. (ABC), 2011
The Coroner UK, (BBC), 2015
Coroner, Canada, (CBC), 2019

Awards

At the 19th Canadian Film Awards in 1967, Episode 1, "The Last Man in the World", tied for Best Film for TV. Cinematographer Grahame Woods won the award for Best Black-and-White Cinematography and Ron Kelly won for Best Director.
In 2002, Wojeck became a MasterWorks honouree by the Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada.

References

"IMDb".
"Wojeck to Wrestling".
"Historicist: Introducing Dr. Morton Shulman". torontoist.com/.
"WOJECK Drama series about a Canadian coroner.". Television Heaven.
"Wojeck: Out of the Fire (TV Movie 1992) ⭐ 6.9 | Drama".
"Film Archives".
Preston-Ellis, Rom. (9 November 2015). "BBC drama filmed in South Devon set to air next week". Local World.
(3 February 2021). "Jenny Cooper returns to solve more cases in Season 3 of Coroner, with a COVID-19 twist". [[Vancouver Sun]].

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