Grouse Lake Says Goodbye as “Acting Good” Begins Its Final Run

Rose had finally had it. After four seasons of watching Paul coast on charm and bad decisions, she gathered his friends and family at Yeah Man and staged an intervention. He laughed it off—big mistake.

So began the fifth and final season of Acting Good, the CTV and APTN Original comedy set in the fictional fly-in community of Grouse Lake. The season premiered Monday, Oct. 19, with two episodes on CTV Comedy Channel and now streams on Crave. New episodes air Mondays at 10:30 p.m. ET/PT. APTN viewers can catch the premiere tonight at 10 p.m. ET, with next-day streaming on APTN+. The ten new half-hours will bring the series to 50 episodes.

Co-creator and comedian Paul Rabliauskas based the show on his own upbringing in a fly-in First Nation and plays a version of himself. In the final season, his character has to change to keep the people he loves. He does it his way, through a support group of divorced dads, an unlikely counselor, and a run on the reality survival show The Deadliest Native. Then he overshoots. Reformed Paul turns smug and preachy, and he’ll have to find a balance between who he was and who he wants to be.

The premiere, “KooKoo for Kookum,” saw Agnes (Tina Keeper) meet her online granddaughter, Irma (Leenah Robinson), while Paul’s suspicions sent things sideways. With Chief Deedee (Rosanna Deerchild) on a slack year, Rose stepped in and had to evict some uninvited guests. In “Love Eyes,” Paul tried to protect his relationship from the notorious charmer Johnny Love’eyes (Herbie Barnes); Cousin Leon (Michael Greyeyes) reunited with his estranged daughter, Leona (Victoria Sawal); and Roger (Billy Merasty) fell for a hydro worker.

Glen Michael Grant, Crystle Lightning, Chris Locke, Vance Banzo, and Glen Gould are among the season’s guest stars, with return visits from Ashley Callingbull, Joel D. Montgrand, and Roseanne Supernault.

Rabliauskas, also the show’s executive producer and showrunner, is proud to have made the first Indigenous sitcom on a major Canadian network. “The show may be over but we’re hopeful that the characters and the fictional community of Grouse Lake will live on forever,” he said.

Since its 2022 debut, Acting Good has been CTV Comedy’s top Canadian scripted series among adults 25 to 54. It earned a 2024 Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Ensemble Performance in a Comedy Series, along with nominations from the Writers Guild of Canada, ACTRA, and the Canadian Sync Awards. Behind the scenes, it trained dozens of Indigenous crew members.

Seasons one through four are streaming on Crave and APTN+.