Death Comes to Town stars Kids in the Hall comedians, from left, Mark McKinney, Dave Foley, Scott Thompson, Bruce McCulloch and Kevin McDonald. (CBC) A comedy series starring the Kids in the Hall comedy team is among three new prime-time shows coming to CBC Television in January.

The winter lineup unveiled Tuesday also includes the return of the return of the Steven & Chris Show to daytime programming, along with a new cooking show, Best Recipes Ever, being produced in conjunction with Canadian Living magazine.

The new prime-time shows are:

• Kids in the Hall: Death Comes to Town: The Kids in the Hall comedy troupe create multiple characters in an eight-part quirky murder mystery filmed in North Bay, Ont.
• 18 to Life: A comedy starring Stacey Farber of Degrassi: The Next Generation and Michael Seater of Life with Derek as 18-year-olds who fall in love and decide to marry, over the objections of their parents.
• Republic of Doyle: A one-hour drama about a private investigator, played by Allan Hawco, and his father who investigate cases in contemporary St. John's, N.L.

Jared Keeso plays Don Cherry in Keep Your Head Up, Kid: The Don Cherry Story airing March 28 and March 29 on CBC Television. (CBC) The winter season will also see the made-for-TV miniseries, Keep Your Head Up Kid: The Don Cherry Story. Jared Keeso of I Love You Beth Cooper plays Cherry in the film about a young hockey nut who goes from obscurity as a minor league player to fame as the most opinionated commentator on Hockey Night in Canada. It is scheduled to air in March.

Love Letters, a one-hour special hosted by Gordon Pinsent, is an exploration of love and relationships based on the play by A.R. Gurney.

The Kids in the Hall — Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney and Scott Thompson — have gone their separate ways since their sketch comedy show Kids in the Hall last played on CBC.

But Death Comes to Town has reunited them in a narrative series about a murder in a small town and the efforts to catch the killer.

McKinney plays Death, a minor Grim Reaper stuck doing his work in a less-than-desirable neighbourhood populated with small-town nobodies.

All the Kids pitched in to write the script and each of them plays four or five characters. McDonald is a pizza delivery woman, a defence lawyer, a grief counselor and a chiropractor, while Thompson plays the mayor's widow, a hotel manager, the town abortionist and a juror in the trial scenes.

The series was shot in North Bay, Ont., which netted them tax breaks for production outside of Toronto, Thompson said.

Allan Hawco is executive producer, showrunner and star of Republic of Doyle. (CBC) Republic of Doyle, the new series about a private detective, makes the most of its St. John's setting.

Star Allan Hawco plays Jake Doyle, a private investigator who operates an agency out of his home in partnership with his father Malachy Doyle, played by Sean McGinley.

Their investigations range from infidelity to arson investigations and sometimes turn out to be bigger or smaller than expected.

"We wanted the story lines to flow naturally out of the city. We wanted it to be believable and no one could say 'that would never happen in St. John's,'" said Hawco, who is the show's executive producer as well as its star.

"It's a fun show, without making a charicature out of the city. It has a sense of humour about itself," Hawco told CBC News.

The father-son relationship is particularly fraught. "They're very hard on each other and pretty cutting," he said. "But it's always clear that Malachy is looking out for his son and Jake would do anything for his father."

18 to Life is also a character comedy, about a new form of generation gap in which the 18-year-olds are often more mature than their parents.

Farber plays Jessie, the young university student who agrees to marry Tom Bellow, played by Seater. Their parents are appalled that they're marrying so young, but have to accept that their children are in love and must make their own decisions.

Jessie is fun, but more directed than Tom, who is more likely to get into trouble, Farber said.

"She's 18, she's in design school, they just graduated high school …She's a very supportive wife, she's in love. She's young, but she's smart and she's pretty tough," Farber said of her character.

"She has a great relationship with her parents — her parents are the hippie parents on the show and she has issues with her mother-in-law because the young couple moves into Tom's parents' attic and we live with them," she said.

Seater calls the series "a comedy with heart" and says most of the humour arises out of the strained situation with two sets of parents trying to influence the lives of the young couple.

"I get into a lot of trouble because Tom doesn't really think things through — he just gets excited about an idea and goes for it," Seater said.

"He wants to have his wife and have his independence although they live in the attic but he still wants his Mom to baby him and still wants to be a teenager, so I think he's slowly trying to figure out how to navigate the world as a young adult."

Steven & Chris, the daytime lifestyles show that was put on hiatus last April because of CBC's budget issues, returns to the air in January.

The new daytime cooking series Best Recipes Ever features Kary Osmond working with easy, affordable recipes from the Canadian Living test kitchen. Each episode will feature three recipes as well as tips and cost-saving ideas.

The winter season also includes the return of shows such as Dragons' Den, Marketplace, Little Mosque on the Prairie, Rick Mercer Report and This Hour Has 22 Minutes.