Larry King (Al Waxman) - a struggling variety store in Toronto's Kensington Market area has a progressive attitude towards most things. His mother Gladys (Helene Winston), with whom he and his wife Cathy (Fiona Reid) live, is very conservative in almost every way and is a fan of Pat Crane (Roy Wordsworth) - a local talk-radio show host who is a raving right-wing extremist.
Larry gets fired up over one of Crane's anti-immigration rants and calls in to argue with the host. He is provocative enough to strike such a chord that he gets invited to be guest host. Having done considerable research on the issue Larry finds it disconcerting when none of the callers want to talk about immigration.
The frantic radio show sound engineer (Jonathan Welsh) is throwing a fit in the booth because of Larry's gaffes and inability to speak off the cuff which makes Larry even more nervous as cranks of all kinds call in - but not to talk about immigration.
Gladys King was intended to be a Canadian version of Archie Bunker. Portrayed by a Canadian actress that had appeared on multiple American sitcoms (Bewitched, Mary Tyler Moore, Rhoda, Sanford & Son) she was a key factor in its success.
King of Kensington seemed like an American sitcom and looked like an American sitcom in no small part because of the quality of the actors on it. There was not the kind of gap between the production value of this Canadian show and American ones that there usually is.
What made it even more special to Canadians were the repeated references to our culture. This was OUR sitcom.