From Wikipedia-

La famille Plouffe was a Canadian television drama, more specifically a téléroman, about a Quebec City family that first aired in the French language on Société Radio-Canada in 1953. The show was created to fill a void in francophone television in Canada. Whereas the English Canadian television branch of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation could broadcast English-language shows from American stations, the francophone component of the CBC, Radio-Canada had to develop its own programs for French Canadian viewers from the earliest days of television in Canada. This show was one of the few that helped to launch the téléroman genre of programming in French Canada, around the same time the first telenovelas aired in Latin America.

The Plouffe Family was huge on Radio Canada, and reasonably popular on CBC.  The weekly dramas chronicled the life of a middle class Quebec family after WW2.  Also was an attempt to explain French Canada to the rest of the country.  The show finished on both networks in 1959.  Every episode after the first year in 1953 was produced in both French and English with the same cast.  In total 194 episodes of the program were produced. 

IMB says that the English episodes were filmed while other sources say they were live. 

 

I still remember the hi-tech device Mama Ploufe used to communicate with her family members who lived on the next floor. She had a tube like that of the downspout from eavetroughs, running from her apartment up to the other one. They would speak through it