43 minSeason 2 • Episode 10
LatestSet in contemporary Montreal, “This Life” is a family saga focusing on Natalie Lawson, an accomplished columnist and single mother in her early forties whose terminal cancer diagnosis sends her on a quest to prepare her teenage children for life without her. Her tight-knit family – sister, two brothers and parents – do the best they can to help her, while coping with their own responses to this revelation.
Acting
Torri Higginson makes dying look annoyingly graceful.
Writing
Cancer patients who still get to be difficult people.
Production
Montreal as character — bilingual, beautiful, brutal.
Creators
Richard Blaimert, Joseph Kay, Virginia Rankin
Torri Higginson
Natalie Lawson
Lauren Lee Smith
Maggie Lawson
Rick Roberts
Matthew Lawson
Kristopher Turner
Oliver Lawson
Stephanie Janusauskas
Emma Lawson-Crowley
Julia Scarlett Dan
Romy Lawson-Crowley
Rachael Crawford
Danielle Berg
Janet-Laine Green
Janine Lawson
Peter MacNeill
Gerald Lawson
Shawn Doyle
Andrew Wallace
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The show quietly revolutionized Canadian TV by centering a forty-something woman's bodily autonomy and mortality, topics usually reserved for prestige US imports.
Torri Higginson and Lauren Lee Smith had worked together years earlier on a single episode of 'The L Word' — their sister chemistry here convinced producers to expand Maggie's role significantly in season 2.
CA
