CALGARY -- It's like marking an anniversary at a funeral.

On the phone to discuss the latest North of 60 movie, which coincides with the CBC drama's 10th year, the fate of executive producer Andrew Wreggitt's other series, the Calgary-based gumshoe drama Tom Stone, is impossible to ignore.

While at the time of our interview earlier this week, Stone hadn't officially been axed -- word of the cancellation came later that day -- its future looked grim enough for Wreggitt to consider why North of 60's characters continue to endure as his new project falters.

"North of 60 started at a time before there were 75 stations on everybody's television set," he says.

"Because the audience for the show was so much bigger, the numbers were much much higher than they are now. It wasn't unusual to have one million viewers for an episode.

"And what that did was build a fan base for the series who invested emotionally in the characters, and that has not gone away. The audience is still out there. The movies have all performed very, very well. The audience just doesn't seem to want to let go either."

Evidence of that is presented Monday night when Mothercorp airs Another Country, the fourth North of 60 film. This time out, Dakota House's Teevee, now chief, becomes entangled in a murder mystery while on business in Calgary.

A decade after first originating the role, House admits both he and his character have come a long way.

For a time, House's own much-publicized run-ins with the law mirrored Teevee's own personal woes.

"It was ironic, some of the similarities. Sometimes I felt like looking over my shoulder to see if the writers were following me," laughs House, 28, who lives in Edmonton and is the father of three girls, ages 10, seven and five.

"Time passes very quickly when you're having fun. I remember my first production meeting and laughing at Teevee and now he's the chief."

"Dakota started as a teenager and he's a grown man now. And in the show he's gone from a juvenile delinquent to chief of the band," says Wreggitt.

"And Dakota's own maturity as an actor has developed, absolutely. Another Country is a natural place for us to go with this character ... We wanted to put one of our family members into the white justice system in a foreign land."

Given North of 60's popularity, it should come as no surprise that a fifth movie-of-the-week is currently being scripted and will film this summer.

Wreggitt remains hopeful the demise of Tom Stone doesn't mean the age of television drama has ended.

"Canadian television is in a very volatile state ... You're looking at a lot of reality-based shows taking up space, but before that, there were game shows.

"There's a lot of stuff driving drama off television screens, but that's not going to last. There are ebbs and flows, peaks and valleys, like the oil business."