The Associates

The Associates is a Canadian television drama series that aired on CTV in 2001 and 2002. The show centred on the professional and personal lives of five junior associate lawyers at the Toronto office of the multinational law firm of Young, Barnsworth & King. The show's cast included Demore Barnes as Benjamin Hardaway, Shaun Benson as Jonah Gleason, Tamara Hickey as Robyn Parsons, Gabriel Hogan as Mitch Barnsworth and Jennie Raymond as Amy Kassan, as well as R.H. Thomson as Angus MacGregor, the firm's senior partner, and Sean Sullivan as Dale Friesen, the associates' supervising partner. The show also sometimes made differences between Canadian and American law into plot points, notably by writing both Robyn Parsons and Benjamin Hardaway as American transplants who sometimes ran into trouble because of their greater familiarity with U.S. courtroom procedure. The series was co-created by Greg Ball and Steve Blackman, themselves former associates at a law firm in Edmonton who based it on some of their own experiences. The show was successful in its first two years of ratings, but due to tax cutbacks from the government, the show could not continue into a third season.