Emily of New Moon has never been known for its happy-go-lucky, sugar-coated storylines. Even so, the second season of the series based on the books by Lucy Maud Montgomery, has been more grim than usual. Aunt Elizabeth (Susan Clark) went missing at sea and is presumed dead in the season premiere. In the next episode, Aunt Laura (Sheila McCarthy) succumbs to the numbing pleasure of the narcotic painkiller laudanum to deal with her sister's death. This week, Emily (Martha Macisaac) feels terribly alone after a final goodbye to her father's spirit (Michael Moriarty). Even worse, Emily, Laura and Jimmy (Stephen McHattie) could be kicked out of New Moon now that it belongs to distant Scottish relatives, Uncle Malcolm (John Neville) and Cousin Isabel (Linda Thorson). Things couldn't get much more depressing, but that's all about to change. The Highland relations are moving in next week.

"We didn't consider them replacement relatives," says supervising producer Marlene Marthews. "(Isabel and MalcoIm] allowed us to bring Scottish Celtic tradition into the series... we can bring in the literature, the music and the one-liners. Now we have a book of Scottish proverbs that we use on a daily basis!"

That Scottish flavor is a welcome change. The dry wit and thick accents inject a lot of color and fun into the scripts, not to mention spirited scenes shot at the dinner table. Their fiery tempers, says Matthcws, mean "a lot of that Victorian repression is just sliced right through."

For Linda Thorson, Isabel's ankle-length dresses are a long way from the swinging '6Os garb she wore as Tara King in The Avengers. Still, after working in England, Los Angelos and New York, the Toronto-born actress is happy to be back in Canada. Working in Prince Edward Island, and falling in love with a crew member, is a bonus. "If I'd come here 20 years ago I might have been restless, but I'm happy," she says of the Island's relaxed pace. "The delightful thing about going to the market in Charlottetown is everyone has time to chew the fat and people tell you all sorts of things about their families. It's like going back 100 years.

As Isabel, Thorson takes over Aunt Elizabeth's authoritative role left open when Clark decided to leave the show (In an ironIc twist of fate that even Lucy Maud Montgomery would admire, Thorson and Clark are actually stepsisters. In fact, when the series was first cast, Thorson lost the role of Aunt Elizabeth to Clark.) As the new nasty relation, Isabel isn't a sympathetic character. The morning after her arrival, she demands the family silver be polished and itemized to calculate its worth. Then she orders one of Jimmy's cows slaughtered to save on food bills and forbids Emily's best friend from visiting. Thorson, however, hopes viewers will eventually warm to Isabel's whip-cracking ways. "She's bossy [but] I didn't want her to be just a harridan, just in a had mood. Isabel's much more like [Dynasty's] Alexis Carrington, who, although she just goes at everybody, does it with great humor and enjoyment."

Try telling that to Isabel's father, MalcoIm, a bona fide whisky before-breakfast Scot who regularly refers to his daughter as "Lucifer" and "a boil on my backside." Sporting mutton-chop whiskers, a Murray-tartan kilt and his own bagpipes, Neville's crotchety old man is a change from Well-Manicured Man, whom he played on The X-Files for three years. Creating the character of Uncle Malcolm, says Matthews, "gave us the opportunity to develop a close relationship between Emily and a mentor figure." It also allows the show to reflect a big part of P.E.I. history. "The Scottish heritage on the Island is a living, breathing thing, even today."

Viewers who fondly remember Montgomery's novels Emily of New Moon, Emilv Climbs and Emily's Quest will likely be shocked that Aunt Elizabeth has been killed off and they certainly won't recall any far-flung Scottish relatives moving in to New Moon. But Matthews says TV shows can't follow precisely the novels they are based on, "There just isn't enough material [in the books] to sustain three years of the show" she says. "Sometimes, from one line in the novel, we make two or three episodes. You have to build on the spirit of what's there."

And, by adding Malcolm and Isabel, it looks like the rest of the cast of Emily of New Moon are in for some highland games."

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