CaribbeanTales Media Group (CTMG) has announced its new comedy web series, Garvey’s Ghost, the creation of showrunner and award-winning Director, Frances-Anne Solomon.
The series features Canadian icon and national treasure, Mary Walsh, as the evil, but loveable white woman, Mrs. Murphy.
Actor, writer, comedian, director, activist, and mother, Walsh is best known for creating the role of Marg Delahunty, a housewife who became famous for buttonholing politicians and submitting them to satirical interviews intended to humiliate them by providing criticism and grandmotherly advice. Sometimes Marg appeared as Marg, Princess Warrior.
“I am excited to represent the whole of white supremacy and colonialism in this show,” said Walsh. “It’s a huge responsibility, but I’ll try my hardest to do it justice.”
Degrassi’s Richard Walters will play Young Denham Jolly and The Wire’s Melanie Nicholls-King as Miss Violet Williams.
The star-studded cast also includes Peter Williams as famed Black activist Harry Gairey; actor and critically acclaimed filmmaker, Valerie Buhagiar as the troublesome neighbor Maria; and Jamaican King of Comedy, Owen “Blakka” Ellis, as Marcus Garvey.
The multi-talented artist known as “Blakka” is a writer, educator, director, and comedian whose legendary career has taken him around the world. He is well known as half of the Bello and Blakka comedy duo. One of his best-known works is The Gateman.
In Garvey’s Ghost, young Denham Jolly arrives in Toronto in 1955 and rents a room in Miss Violet Williams’ boarding house. As the “Lady President” of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, Violet struggles to keep the organization afloat, ably assisted by the ghost of her mentor, the famed Black leader, Hon. Marcus Mosiah Garvey.
The six-part series is supported by the Bell Fund, Ontario Creates, and the Canada Media Fund.
It is one of two CTMG projects going to camera this year that are inspired by the 2017 Toronto Book Award-winning memoir of Denham Jolly, one of Canada’s most respected entrepreneurs, activists, and philanthropists.
The second is the feature film IN THE BLACK, which tells the story of Jolly’s incredible twelve-year struggle to create Canada’s first Black radio station, Flow 93.5 FM.
CTMG Productions has made its name in Canada and abroad as a producer of high-quality and entertaining film and television content for, by and about, Blacks and People of Colour. These include the sitcom Lord Have Mercy (2004), feature films A Winter Tale (2008), Kingston Paradise (2013), HERO: The Extraordinary Life of Mr. Ulric Cross (2019), and the documentary series Heartbeat and Literature Alive (2006-2012).













