When the then-new series was screened at the Banff World Television Festival, Nielsen described the audience as polite and stiff, until "suddenly people were sitting forward in their seats and laughing, and by the end of the screening they were full of questions and full of enthusiasm." Sounds a lot like my own experience, minus the other people in the room and the gorgeous mountain setting.

"I think it's in the writing, it's in the acting, it's in the directing," she continued. "And all these people, as funny as they are and as flawed as they are, they're all very human and I think we can relate to that. That was always something that was very important to all of us about the show was making sure we always showed the humanity of these people."

The blend of comedy and drama has also been a challenge for viewers and critics trying to pigeonhole the half-hour as a comedy. "We're trying not to write for jokes, but it has to certainly be funny and capture the humanity of the characters, too," Harvey pointed out. "It's not like a sitcom format where there's a joke every five seconds."

"I think it is a show that sneaks up, and I think it is a show that's a bit hard to define," Nielsen said. "That's been one of the things we've struggled against, because you can't really put us into a neat little niche."

CTV has already aired two episodes of season three as "sneak previews," so one shocking turn of events fans already know about is the departure of building caretaker Yuri, played by John Cassini (Intelligence).

"In the first episode, which is going to re-air, Yuri does by the end of it decide to leave and off he goes," Harvey explained. "He can't reconcile a big issue he has between the new owners and one of the tenants and he decides to move on."

But is he really gone? Yuri, the connective tissue of the show? Yuri, whose humanity we suddenly saw surprisingly exposed?

"The honest truth is there was a big scheduling conflict with season three because of John's prior commitment to the second season of Intelligence," Nielsen confirmed. "So the story department had to get very creative, but we feel ultimately like it really works for the season. All we will say is that you have not seen the last of Yuri."