It's a teenage rite of passage, on par with getting your driver's licence or losing your virginity: Hosting your first unsupervised shaker while Mom and Dad are away for the weekend.

So it's a little ironic that the lead actor in the new Canadian comedy House Party -- a six-part TV series about all the hilarity that ensues when a well-meaning university student has "a few friends over" -- has zero real-world experience with soirees of the no-parents variety.

"I never threw parties growing up -- I was too afraid of the repercussions," says Michal Grajewski, the Polish-born, Winnipeg-raised actor who plays Adam, host of the titular house-wrecker. "I was always the decoy. I'd go camping one weekend with my parents, and that's when my older brother would have all his friends over."

Grajewski, 27, has plenty of party experience now, having survived not only the TV get-together -- which quickly spirals out of control when Adam's best friend Eric (Dylan Taylor) goes a little overboard on the invite list -- but also the shoot itself, which required a huge ensemble cast to whoop it up for five weeks straight.

House Party debuts tonight on the Comedy Network.

Though the plot points of the first episode are presented through Adam's perspective, subsequent episodes will focus on a different character each week, allowing for certain events to be revisited and fleshed out, and for seemingly throwaway lines and flash-forward teasers to be explained in greater detail.

The conceit was the brainchild of writers Sarah Constible and Matt Kippen, both Winnipeg theatre scene veterans and film actors who were encouraged to pitch their script by a TV producer friend.

"We found it interesting that you can talk to different people who went to the same party, and they have a totally different experience," Kippen says.

"I've been to so many parties where the next day someone's like, 'Oh and then Gord had Dawn over his shoulders and he was swinging her around,'" Constible adds. "And I don't remember it because I was in another room."

Though the duo's house party has some pretty universal hallmarks -- Adam's futile pleas that people smoke outside and leave his dad's scotch alone, for instance -- there's also a fair share of Canada-specific scenes (such as the one where Eric tries to balance a case of beer while navigating an icy sidewalk).

Both Constible and Kippen (who appear at the party as a pair of black-clad killjoys) say they were excited by the prospect of setting a TV show in their hometown, and by the fact that many of the hired actors hailed from the Heart of the Continent.

Staging all the action over a 24-hour span, however, posed some unique challenges for both cast and crew.

"I think our continuity lady might have had a stroke -- she may have died a little inside," quips Constible, who recently logged screen time in the flicks The Stone Angel and Walk All Over Me.

"At one point, we had to trash the house for the ending, then reset it to shoot some other stuff," says Kippen, who added that other booze-fueled rituals -- bush parties and wedding socials (a Manitoba tradition) come to mind -- could be explored if the series is well-received.

As for Grajewski, who's currently working as a Rick Mercer Report staffer, he welcomed the demands of living in the same character's kin for five weeks.

"Coming from a background in improv, it was a real challenge to now be the straight man," Grajewski says. "And at the end of the five weeks, they asked if I wanted to buy the clothing I'd worn. I just said, 'No way.' "