The Line

The Line is a Canadian television drama series, which debuted on Movie Central and The Movie Network on March 16, 2009. It centred on two morally ambiguous police officers in the Scarborough district of Toronto. The series, an expansion of George F. Walker's theatrical play Adult Entertainment, was originally announced under the working title The Weight. It was created Walker and Dani Romain, produced by The Nightingale Company, and shot by Richmond Street Films. It was originally shot as two distinct seasons of seven and eight episodes respectively, but aired as one continuous 15-episode run. The show was commonly compared by Canadian television critics to the American crime drama series Brotherhood and The Wire. Characters Max (Ron White) and Donny (Daniel Kash) are police officers dealing with the drug network in their precinct. Frustrated by the limitations and regulations of conventional police work, Max regularly steps outside the bounds of legality by pursuing his own tactics, while Donny has been so torn apart by the job that he spends most of his time drunk and lounging around a seedy motel, only occasionally going out on — and usually messing up — the actual police duties given to him by Max. Carlos (Clé Bennett) is a drug dealer recently paroled from prison, struggling to rebuild his life but caught in a turf war between rival drug kingpins Andre (Wes Williams) and Eddie (Von Flores). He suffers from stress-induced migraines and stomach pains. Lucie (Sarah Manninen) is Carlos' ex-girlfriend. A former addict who's gone clean and intends to stay that way, she and her daughter Jamie (Laytrel McMullen) want nothing to do with Carlos after he's released from prison, but they eventually attempt to reconcile. Giles (Dwain Murphy) is Carlos' brother, who works as a security guard at the store where Lucie works as a cashier. Although uninvolved in Carlos' criminal activity, he is gunned down and killed by Eddie's crime network as a warning to Carlos — but Carlos continues to see and have conversations with him after his death. Karen (Yanna McIntosh) is Max's wife, whom he married after investigating the murder of her first husband. They have a tense relationship marked by Karen's belief that Max only married her as a "social work" project to save her and her children from Being Black.