The Beachcombers was an iconic Canadian television dramedy that featured a multicultural cast in the real-life town of Gibsons, B.C. The cast centered around Greek immigrant Nick Adonidas and his log salvage company with his partner, Jesse Jim. His rival and source of much aggravation in the community was scruffy curmudgeon Relic.
The show was one of the longest running dramatic series on Canadian television, with 387 episodes and 19 seasons spanning from 1972 to 1990, followed by a couple of reunion TV movies in the early 2000s. The series title was shortened to simply Beachcombers for its final year and for two seasons the capitalization was altered to be The Beach Combers.
The show aired in the United States on Famliy Net on weekday afternoons starting September 1, 2011, but was removed from the line-up after September 28, 2012 due to the network falling into new ownership that felt the show did not fit in with the new rural-themed direction they wanted the station to go and replaced it with Highway to Heaven reruns.
This show provides examples of:
- Cool Boat: While Nick has the Persephone, a reasonably reliable tugboat, Relic uses a much faster jet boat, Hi-Baller I & II that he frequently uses to jump around with.
- Ensemble Cast: The show isn't just about Nick, Jesse, and Relic, as their recurring friends, family members and acquaintances in Gibsons get their share of focus episodes.
- Instant Drama, Just Add Tracheotomy: In one episode, Nick had to perform a tracheotomy on someone who had collapsed due to an allergic reaction to seafood, causing his throat to swell.
- Later-Installment Weirdness: With emphasis on "weird". The final season has a few episodes that dip into the supernatural, a topic that was not present in the rest of the show.
- Long-Runners
- Reasonable Authority Figure: As a local constable operating in Gibsons, John is generally willing to help the town's residents, at least whenever laws don't force him to work against them or he isn't rendered impotent due to circumstances outside of his control.
- Save the Villain: It may be too harsh to consider Relic the villain, but for all his unsavory nature, when Relic found himself in deadly danger, Nick and company did not hesitate to help him.
- Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Nick and Relic. They spent the entire series childishly bickering over logs
- Truth in Television: The character, John Constable, is a Royal Canadian Mounted Police constable who only wears the famous Red Serge uniform on special occasions. He otherwise wears the actual regular duty uniform of the force on duty.
