Mary Walsh re-hatching CBC series for Christmas movie

Actor and producer Mary Walsh is working on a Christmas movie that will reunite characters from a Gemini Award-winning CBC series — Hatching, Matching and Dispatching.

"It's the classic Christmas story," she told CBC Radio's The Candy Palmater Show. "To say that these characters, who are dysfunctional to say the least, would be redeemed."

Walsh said she is working with co-writer Sherry White on the final script, which involves a foster child who has been in the "system" for years. "You know she gives them a run for their money." 

Walsh said she is still in meetings with the CBC about airing the movie.

"We're keeping our fingers crossed," she said. "It wouldn't hurt to call the CBC and say how much you're looking forward to it." 

Hatching, Matching and Dispatching was a television series based on the premise of a family with businesses that look after people from the cradle to the grave.

The Furey family operated a wedding parlour, ambulance service and funeral home, with Walsh in the lead role of the family matriarch, Mamie Lou Furey.

The six-episode series ran for one season in 2006, featuring a cast that included Shaun Majumder, Joel Thomas Hynes, Jonny Harris and Susan Kent.

Walsh, Hynes and Kent were also writers on the series.

"This movie opens with [Mamie] leaving," said Walsh, who described herself as "a sentimentalist at heart. I guess what people say is that cynics are broken-hearted romantics, really."