Good News: Hard Rock Medical Is Back

About this time every TV season I begin lamenting the lack of filmed Canadian drama series.
And I start with the inevitable stats: in 1985 the Canadian TV networks supported 11 quality hour long TV filmed drama series.
That was the year the three private webs petitioned the CRTC to back off its insistence on scripted shows promising they'd prefer doing it on their own.
They lied.
Next season there were only two scripted drama series left --both on CBC.
The drought has continued ever since.
These days TV movies have virtually disappeared, too, although the lowly sitcom seems to be making a comeback with CBC's rip roaring dual hits Kim's Convenience and Schitt's Creek.
Independent producers tell me they won't make any kind of fiction based dramatic series unless they are assured of an American sale.
And then there's the strange and unique case of Hard Rock Medical.
It's a scripted medical show that runs on TVOntario of all places.
Over thew decades I've been covering TV it was always the TV mantra that the publicly funded Ontario weblet simply couldn't afford the costs involved.
The show returns for its new season of nine episodes Sunday nights at 8 on TVO.
It works because the 30-minute dramas are shot like the afternoon soaps: quickly and nothing fancy here with a lot of close-ups and the focus on the acting styles of the talented principals.
First and foremost there's Patrick McKenna.
I used to have to argue with TV viewers that McKenna was the same actor appearing on both Global's Traders and CBC's Red Green at the same time. He's that talented.
Here he's well cast as the heart of the show. I like the description of Hard Rock Medical as a "Kind of Grey's Anatomy for Canucks" (the opinion of The Star's Tony Wong).
I'd add that there's a lot of Northern Exposure in there too with emphasis on quirky character development.
Shot in Sudbury it looks at a medical school dedicated to training prospective doctors to work in the north.
I'm not exactly sure of the budget but it must be miniscule compared to something like an NCIS--there are no expensive stars and the scenes seem seamless and fluid without the cross cuts of a prime time U.S. export.
When Hard Rock Medical first premiered in 2013 I interviewed the cagey creator Derek Dorio --I first met him when he was playing the character Haggis Lamborgini in the TV series hit The Raccoons.
Diorio honed the craft of shooting fast at the French language arm of TVO --TFO which had even less funds than the English arm.
 His first series was called Meteo+ and then he made a second hit Les Bleus De Ramville (2012). And he had perfected the technique of making Canadian TV drama at reasonable costs.
This series is thus well edited, crisp photographed and up to the strict standards of American prime time shows.
Other medical shows seem short on substance. HRM is gritty and realistic and I've liked the whole cast including Mark Coles Smith, Christian Laurin, Kyra Harper and Danielle Bourgon.
NOTE: Since I wrote this I've been informed by TVO that major funding comes from the Northern Ontario Heritage Corporation with additional help from TVO's production partner APTN.
HARD ROCK MEDIVAL'S THIRD SEASON PREMIERES ON TV ONTARIO SUNDAY JANUARY 8 AT 8 P.M.
MY RATING: ***1/3.