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On the Toronto set of Being Erica, actor Erin Karpluk is carefully teaching a colleague how to make coffee. The water temperature must be exact; the cream like so … No, the rising TV star has not been demoted to the catering unit. Karpluk is shooting a scene in which the title character of her new CBC series hands off responsibility for making the boss's coffee to the person taking over her job as a lowly assistant in a publishing company.

Erica herself has just landed a big promotion. This may come as something of a relief to anyone who sees the first episode , which airs on Jan. 5. Erica is one of those 30-year-olds who is bright, beautiful and a complete disaster. Accident-prone and impulsive, she spends much of the first episode, in which she is dumped by both a boss and a date, in her pyjamas.

“She's an overeducated, underachieving woman, ever trying and ever failing to live her life to the fullest,” says Karpluk, who finished six months shooting on the new series in time to join family for Christmas back in Jasper, Alta. “She blames her state on past regrets. She realizes she needs to seize the day.”

Losing those regrets is the show's major theme: Erica is visited by a mysterious therapist, played by Michael Riley, who can somehow allow her to go back in time and fix the mistakes she feels she has made. Despite the fantastical element of time travel, Karpluk says the drama does not have any sci-fi feel to it.

“Our talk of quantum mechanics is very limited,” she jokes. Instead, she sees the show both as a drama about the universal theme of human regret that should speak to everyone, and a comedy that offers a realistic depiction of the dilemma of many privileged young people.

“It's common: I have friends who are overeducated [and underemployed]. We have so much freedom and opportunity, it's hard to know what to do,” she says.

Karpluk recalls that her mother, a retired high-school principal in Jasper, told her she always wanted to act but chose teaching because in her generation, you did the sensible thing. Today, you can follow your dreams, get that bachelor of fine arts – and risk getting stuck with a job at Starbucks.

Not Karpluk, of course. Thirty and single, she is in no rush to settle into coupledom, but she certainly has her career together. She studied theatre at the University of Victoria, but quickly moved into film and television after she graduated. She played the restaurant manager on the Canadian series Godiva's in 2005 and 2006. And she was busy in Los Angeles, playing supporting roles on The L Word and The Bionic Woman, when the call came from Toronto that she was being offered a title role.

“In Los Angeles, you feel like a very small fish in a very big ocean,” she says. “It's really nice to work in Canada. I don't have a lot of responsibility right now, no kids, pets, boyfriends. … I love being able to work and travel.”

Currently based in Vancouver, Karpluk is not sure what country she will wind up in: Will Being Erica be renewed for a second season? Will Karpluk ever get that coveted green card? At the very least, she knows she will be in Britain in January, helping Erica's producers woo BBC Worldwide.

For all its mysterious therapist and impulsive heroine (who is shown climbing out a bedroom window within minutes of the show's opening credits), Karpluk thinks Being Erica is rather true to life. One of the character's regrets is a darker thing – the death of a brother – and she promises that as the season progresses, viewers will see not only interesting revelations about the therapist's identity but also a real dramatic mix. Says Karpluk: “Life is that messy: We find a nice balance between the light and the dark.”

Being Erica launches on Jan. 5 at 9 p.m. (9:30 NT), on CBC-TV.