Monday, March 27, 2017

What Canadian TV Series Should Be Revived?






The big news on American TV these days concerns the revival of past series hits.
Gilmore Girls is back for a limited run. and I;m, watchging and enjoying it as I find out what happened to the original characters.
So I'm thinking back on all the Canadian TV sets I was on and wondering which ones could be successfully revived.
The new Anne Of Green Gables is all the ratings rage on CBC-TV these days. So why not revive some other big hits over the years?
One of the first sets I ever attended was up at CFTO studios in Agincourt: Headline Hunters with Charles Templeton.
It was a piece of inexpensive Canadian content and it ran from 1972 through 1983.
And if CTV doesn't want it what about CTV News or even History Channel?
In fact I've already told current CBC programmers Front Page Challenge would be a dandy choice for revival.
I'd use Peter Mansbridge as host and a new gallery of panelists that might include Wendy Crewson, Martin Short, Art Hindle and perhaps one of the stars of Schitt's Creek.
Riverdale was a short lived soap opera on CBC running three years (1997 through 2000).
The reason it failed was simple: lack of money.
Had CBC been able to finance a year of the story instead of just 12 episodes per season the soap would have thrived.
But this one never even came out on .DVD. I'm told some of the sets are still standing and used on the various Degrassi series.
 I simply feel an hour revival would make it if heavily promoted and allowed to flourish for a full year of episodes.
A series far older was Quentin Durgens M.P. starring a very young and lean Gordon Pinsent.
The show debuted in 1966 when I was still a student at the University of Toronto and lasted until 1969 in increments of about six episodes a year.
What I'd do is recast the lead with Leah Pinsent, Gordon's talented actress daughter.
Then I'd plop her into the turmoil of the Canadian House of Commons and be immersed in a great political scandal not of her making.
Then I'd plop in Gordon as the aged but politically cagey Quentin who comes to the rescue of his daughter who represents the Ontario riding he once represented 40 years before.
E,N.G. was a popular hourlong drama running on CTV from 1990 through 1994.
I have no idea why this popular series has never come out in a boxed set.
The clerk at HMV Video told me it was one of the most requested Canadian series not on video.
Sara Botsford and Art Hindle were the stars of this newsroom story and I'd bring them back as the station is threatened with foreclosure by failing ratings.
They want to reinvent TV news by giving it a harsher coverage, confident that telling the truth for once on TV will reap big audiences.
Canadian sitcoms that could be reinvented include Maniac Mansion, Frontier Rabbi and Maniac Mansion.
Some Canadian sitcoms did not make it because they needed more work --that's my rationale for reviving In Opposition and Not My Department.
King Of Kensinton starred the gifted Al Waxman --he has passed but I'd recreate the show with his TV partner played so tellingly by Fiona Reid.
One of the first CBC TV events I ever attended was the lavish premiere for  Whiteoaks Of Jalna which ran for 12 hours starting in January 1972.
Did you know French TV later tried a version with the great French star Danielle Darrieux?
I say try again --but this time use only the original story by Mazo de la Roache. TV's version added a secondary modern story with the same bunch of actors also playing their ancestors.

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