The Canadian drama series Cold Squad – a conventional police drama about unconventional police detectives tackling unsolved murders from Vancouver’s past – revolved around sergeant Ali McCormick (Julie Stewart), an ambitious detective parachuted into a homicide unit to revitalise the investigative team that examined old, unsolved cases, known in the trade as “cold files”.
Veteran Canadian character actor Michael Hogan played Detective Tony Logozzo, a world-weary street cop written off by his colleagues as a has-been. He longed for the good old days when a cop could beat a confession out of a suspect – and sometimes pretended those days were still here.
Joy Tanner played civilian researcher and behavioural profiler Jill Stone, who had a knack for picking up on vital clues.
Paul Boretski played Ali’s former partner, Nick Gallagher, a charismatic homicide detective often at loggerheads with his bosses over how to conduct investigations.
The team used current scientific, medical and technological aids to reinvestigate cases that had never been solved because these modern tools were unavailable when the crimes had initially been committed, sometimes several decades ago.
The cast was overhauled for the third season (the first to be syndicated in the US), keeping only Ali McCormick from the previous two seasons. Ali returned from vacation to find that almost everybody she had been working with, except Logozzo (who retired the following week), was gone, and Inspector Simon Ross (Peter Wingfield) – with whom she had an affair – was preparing to leave for a job working security at the UN in New York.
When the sixth season ended, everyone assumed it was all over. Characters were killed off, Ali quit her job, and the production company got rid of the studio, the set and the wardrobe. But CTV decided to order one more season – and so the seventh and final season made it to air almost a year later, with new sets, new cast and new people behind the cameras.
Julie Stewart returned as McCormick and new additions were Tahmoh Penikett as corporal Ray Chase and Sonja Bennett as homicide detective Samatha Walters.
Cold Squad was the brainchild of executive producer Julia Keatley and former undercover RCMP detective Matt MacLeod. It was the first entirely homegrown hour-long drama series to originate in the Lower Mainland of Canada.
The production company sought legal advice when CBS began airing their own show, Cold Case, in 2003. The American show was incredibly similar – the lead character, Lily Rush (Kathryn Morris) even looked like Ali McCormick.
Sgt. Ali McCormick
Julie Stewart Det. Tony Logozzo
Michael Hogan Jill Stone
Joy Tanner Det. Nick Gallagher
Paul Boretski Insp. Vince Schneider
Jerry Wasserman Sam Fisher
Jay Brazeau Det. Eddie Carson
Bob Frazer Det. Christine Liu
Linda Ko Det. Larry Iredell
Eli Gabay Det. James Kai
Hiro Kanagawa Det. Jackie Cortez
Lori Ann Triolo Sgt. Lloyd Mastrowski
Paul Coeur Insp. Simon Ross
Peter Wingfield Manny Needlebaum
Richard Ian Cox Bernice Boyle
Sharon Alexander Det. Bill Overmeyer
Allan Lysell Sgt. Frank Coscarella
Stephen McHattie Det. Nicco Sevallis
Gregory Calpakis Det. Mickey Kollander
Tamara Marie Watson Insp. Andrew Pawlachuk
Garry Chalk Christine Wren
Joely Collins Det. Len Harper
Matthew Bennett Dr Ben Wilson
Adrian Holmes Cpl. Ray Chase
Tahmoh Penikett Det. Samatha Walters
Sonja Bennett
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Joy Tanner played civilian researcher and behavioural profiler Jill Stone, who had a knack for picking up on vital clues.
