The King of Kensington
I’m too young to have ever watched the CBC television series King of Kensington, which aired from 1975 to 1980, but if I had been alive at that time I think I would have enjoyed it. Set in Toronto’s Kensington Market, it revolved around the life of the charismastic Larry King, played by Al Waxman, and his multicultural group of friends. The show’s opening sequence shows a kind of happy urbanism that reminds me a lot of the music video for the Shuffle Demons’ “Spadina Bus.”
Twenty years later, another CBC comedy, Twitch City, was set in Kensington Market. With a housebound television addict as its main character (played by Don McKellar, no less), this show portrayed the neighbourhood in a much stranger, darker and more ironic fashion. In the first episode, one of the main character’s friends ends up killing a homeless man in the street — not just any homeless man, though, but a homeless man played by Al Waxman, the King of Kensington himself.
Tags: Television, Toronto
