As Colton Gobbo quips, he’s the “other Son of a Critch.”
Since 2022, Gobbo has appeared in the CBC television series “Son of a Critch,” the semi-autobiographical series created by Canadian comedian Mark Critch (who you may know from “This Hour has 22 Minutes”).
The show follows an adolescent Mark (played by Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) as he grows up in the 1980s in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
Gobbo plays Mark’s older brother, Mike Critch Jr. Mark Critch portrays his own father, Mike Sr., a long-time radio journalist in Newfoundland, and Malcolm McDowell (yes, that Malcolm McDowell) plays his grandfather, Pop.
We recently caught up with Gobbo ahead of the launch of season four of “Son of a Critch,” which airs starting Jan. 7.
“It’s very, very exciting, hard to believe and a little surreal that we’ve done 52 episodes now,” he said. “I sound like a broken record, but every time we talk about the next season that's coming out, I always just say it's better than the last and you know what? It really is.”
Gobbo’s character, 21-year-old Mike Jr., has followed in his father’s footsteps, and gone into radio.
“He’s different than Mark in a lot of ways,” said Gobbo, 24. “In the beginning, he was a lot more quiet and reserved, and is a little more snarky than Mark is, and a lot cooler, I have to say. But where Mark wants to be a comedian and an actor, Mike found his love in radio.
“So the real Mike Critch, Mike Campbell, as he goes by now, still hosts his radio show out of Newfoundland, K-Rock. I’ve had a chance to go out there and hop on it a couple times.”
In the newest season, Mike Jr. is gaining his independence and finding himself.
“He makes it a huge point to not want to live in his dad's shadow, which is an ongoing thing, but this year, he's working at a new radio station,” said Gobbo.
“He's got his own show. He's kind of found his own groove in terms of being a host. So that's been really fun to go on that journey for four years.”
You can watch the trailer for the new season of “Son of a Critch” below:
Gobbo is from Sudbury, and, of course, does not have a Newfoundland accent, so in season one, he and the other actors had a dialect coach.
The show films in St. John’s, Newfoundland, so “being out there is the best way to learn” the dialect, he said, adding that the English actor Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, who plays the young Mark, especially “crushes the accent.”
As for working with Mark Critch, his TV show dad/brother (“Oh, we’ve tried to draw out this family tree — it’s a whole bunch of something,” he jokes), Gobbo said it’s “incredible,” although if Critch ever asks, “it’s very painful and horrible.”
“He has definitely gotten me to improve my timing and my comedy, and it's amazing,” he said. “He seems like the perfect Newfoundlander, and when you talk to him, he’s the most pleasant, wonderful human being. He’s hilarious, will crack you up, but is so knowledgeable and so helpful when it comes to more serious things.”
“Son of a Critch” actually isn’t the only show where Gobbo has found success. He also plays the character Jordan on the Netflix series “Ginny & Georgia.” Filming on season three of the show has wrapped up in Toronto, and will also air in 2025.
Juggling the two series “definitely becomes a struggle sometimes,” he said.
“I mean, I'm incredibly lucky to be working on both, but when it rains, it pours, right? So sometimes you go months without doing anything and not working at all, and then all of a sudden, for three months, you're like, ‘OK you have to be in two places at once, twice a day.’
“So it was a bit of a balancing act this summer, especially just trying to bounce between the two. But I guess that's something that I still have to learn to work on and to manage, but very grateful that I can say I'm a part of both.”
Gobbo got his acting start in Sudbury, when at the age of nine he appeared in YES Theatre’s inaugural production of “Hair.”
“So tried that at nine, and realized ‘Oh my God, this is incredible,’” he said. At the age of 12, he started doing on-camera work, which, in the days before self-taping and Zoom auditions, involved nine-hour days in the car as his parents drove him to Toronto.
“So I think the bottom line is that I would not be doing this, and I wouldn't be able to be here without my folks,” Gobbo said. “They've always been an incredible support system, and doing that alone was like, I still can't believe that they did it, but very grateful to them.”
Gobbo’s acting career came full circle when, in the summer of 2023, he acted in YES Theatre’s “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” playing a youth on the autism spectrum.
A graduate of George Brown Theatre School, Gobbo said he hadn’t done live theatre outside of school from 2016 until last year, so doing the show “meant a lot,” especially as it was with the company where he has his roots.
“It's still one of the things I'm the most proud of, that show,” he said. “I adored it.”
Heidi Ulrichsen is Sudbury.com’s assistant editor. She also covers education and the arts scene.
