"Why can't Canadian TV make a Downton Abbey?" one guest asked me and everybody stopped eating to listen to my reply.
I patiently explained that first of all Canadian TV simply hasn't that kind of money these days to finance such an expensive undertaking.
Hw m,any TV adaptations of great Canadian novels have you seen on CBC or anywhere else ion the last few years?
"None!" shouted the hostess.
I rest my case.
Canadian TV movies have virtually disappeared as ratings go south.
One of the last ones I recall was the TV biography of Don Cherry which got good notices and strong ratings here.
And how many other countries bought it?
Just Finnish TV, that's all, presumably because Cherry hired a number of Finnish hockey stars over the years.
Successful Canadian series have been shipped to American TV: Motive, Saving Hope, Flashpoint, Combat Hospital.
All of them disguised their Canadian origins so unsuspecting American viewers would think they were watching just another homegrown series.
And as far as replicating Downton Abbey?
I was the kid TV critic at The Hamilton Spectator way back in 1973 when CBC premiered its hugely expensive version of that old chestnut Jalna.
The stars includes Kate Reid, Blair Brown, Paul Harding --the original star was supposed to be William Hutt but he told me later he faked a serious illness to get out of his contract --he had read the first few scripts and shuddered.
The trouble was the adaptators who included George Jonas and Timothy Findley didn't stick with the original source material but unwisely added a modern day story --featuring the same actors but as more modern ancestors.
Viewers were understandably confused when they saw Kate Reid as two different characters in two diffderent scenes.
I attended the lavish premiere of the first two episodes at St. Lawrence Centre which played to an overflow crowd who pointedly did not applaud at the end.
I found the executive producer Fletcher Markle standing by the bar looking completely ejected.
Miss Reid guzzled champagne and talked darkly about the train wreck/ we'd just witnessed.
CBC even forced the producer of Masterpiece Theater Joan Wilson to siut through a New York screening in hopes of selling it to PBS.
"I wondered why they just didn't film the original novel which could have been very successful," she told me.
CBC later made a number of historical epics including The National Dream, Laurier and Riel but there were few international sales.
These days CBC cannot afford anything like the expenses sunk into Jalna.
Which is why we were all watching Downton Abbey Sunday night--it's the kind of lavish TV making that long ago disappeared on Canadian TV.
2 comments:
The Book of Negroes?
aw, there goes bawden spouting his paid-for american propaganda again.
toronto industry took in 1.3 billion last year, vancouver took in over 2 billion. the rules said enough of that was supposed to go to making 100 % canadian productions that canadians would pay to enjoy watching.
every year, none of it ever does.
so they claim we have no stories to tell, or none anybody wants to hear.
and stupid canadians lap it all up as gospel.
shit- just Canada's History Magazine alone has over 400 years of riveting stories to do.
there's no end to it, there's just too many of them telling us the same B.S., , and to back it up they choose what little we do get to see is so bad it's the same as claiming margaret atwood and emily carr and the group of seven are the best canada has ever 'produced' while keeping us all in the dark about the really world class stuff that has been and still is being done that most canadians never know about cause it's in private collections, usually american, or hidden away in small rooms and back hallways of the museums in ottawa, or the NFB which recently closed most of it's offices but that very few canadians have ever heard about anyways, or worse, rotting away in the leaking basements of 200 year old storage buildings that are falling apart.
I went to the Lightbox Archives centre downtown Toronto one time, they have a huge collection of stuff, and even teach classes in film history -- almost totally nothing to be found there about CANADIAN film history.
Ever heard of Cory Trépanier ? Past few years he's travelled all over Canada's Arctic to paint huge totally stunning landscapes that are absolutely the best anyone has ever done. He's a huge name now all over the world. You haven't heard of him in Canada because - he's Canadian, and his best works went to - Washington DC. Instead of boosting awareness of him by Canadian press, they write about an American black artist who slit his throat in NYC who used to do 'art nouveau' that looks like it was done by drunken monkeys stoned on wacky tabacky. -
go to any gov't endorsed art gallery in canada, ottawa the only exception, and you'll be very hard pressed to find anything by canadians, let alone worth the visit.
despite it being OUR money that funds them.
ah, the whole situation makes me wanna puke.
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