James Bawden

CBC's Sunshine Sketches: Teatime Drama

2012-02-12T13:44:00.004-05:00

"Teatime Drama" used to be an industry term denoting family friendly TV dramas that ran in the early evenings.
Think Road To Avonlea. Think Pit Pony. Think The Campbells. You get my drift.
Well, for a long time CBC-TV has been trying to get back into the field of Teatime Dramas.
For one thing these series sell like hot cakes abroad. Road To Avonlea continues to make millions for Sullivan Films.
About the last attempt at Teatime was Wind At My Back which didn't quite make it to super hit status.
So maybe CBC might be having more success with Sunshine Sketches Of A Little Town which premieres Sunday night at 8 on CBC-TV.
The cast reads like a who's who of bright Canadian TV stars: Jill Hennessy, Donal Logue, Colin Mochrie, Debra McGrath, Peter Keleghan, Leah Pinsent, Eric Peterson, Ron James and there's the added bonus of Gordon Pinsent as the narrator Stephen Leacock who suddenly appears at the end of the two hour TV movie as a postscript.
If CBC programmers know what they're doing they should order a full season of these stories to be served up in an early hour time slot as perfect Teatime Drama.
The book came out originally in 1912 establishing its author, McGill University economics professor Stephen Leacock, as a literary super star of his day.
Indeed actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr, told me one of his prized possessions was an autographed copy of the first edition that had been presented to his father way back in 1917.
This TV version takes only two of the short stories --there are lots more to chose from and many fine comedic characters to also bring to the TV screen.
Hennessy shines as the dour, put upon wife Agnes Leacock whose carousing husband has deserted the family and gone off to try to start up his own railroad company.
Logue is the merry hotelier Josh Smith who is going to lose his liquor license unless he can get the rules bent.
Peter Keleghan is almost unrecognizable as the aptly titled Reverend Drone whose burps during his sermons are unwelcome.
Caroline Rhea gets real laughs as the slightly tipsy grade school teacher Mrs. Diston who is also a divorcee to boot.
Colin Mochrie is stern Judge Pepperleigh and Debrah McGrath is his wife. Eric Peterson is optimistic barber Jeff Thorpe and Ron James shines as the local undertaker Golgotha Gingham. Observing the proceedings is Owen Best as the young Stephen.
Don McBrearty who directed many of the better Avonlea episodes captures all the eccentricities of a small town Ontario community. The movie was shot in various small town and looks very handsome indeed.
In short CBC has a real winner here which if properly exploited could be turned into a long running classic example of Teatime Drama.
SUNSHINE SKETCHES OF A LITTLE TOWN PREMIERES ON CBC-TV SUN. FEB. 12 AT 8 P.M.
MY RATING: ***1/2.

Remembering Ben Gazzara

2012-02-11T21:52:00.005-05:00

It's odd how little space was devoted to the passing of greatish actor Ben Gazzara.
He's one of the few actors who got away --in my career as TV critic I've interviewed almost everybody in person.
I did chat up Gazzara once --it was to promote a fine performance in the 2002 TV movie Hysterical Blindness which won him a supporting Emmy award.
On the phone he sounded as he looked --grizzled, impatient, sometimes quite ironical.
Born in 1930 in New York city to Sicilian immigrants. In 1951 he got a scholarship to the Actors Studio run by Lee Strasberg who became his chief mentor.
At the age of 23 he had Broadway fame in a sizzling adaptation of the novel End Of A Man which he filmed in 1957 as The Strange One. I recently caught it on TCM and Gazzara gives the year's best film performance so far as I am concerned.
Then he created the role of Brick in the original Broadway production of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof opposite Barbara Bel Geddes. It still seems strange to me --Dallas's Miss Ellie as Maggie The Cat.
"People always said I whispered my lines. That was to get their attention. Why yell when you can whisper? It's so much more effective."
In movies he scored a home run as the sadistic soldier accused of murder in Anatomy Of A Murder (1959) and the came roles in such films as The Young Doctors (1961) and Convicts 4 (1962).
It's strange but recently I've been watching the DVDs of Gazzara's 1964 TV series Arrest And Trial --an odd series that lasted 45 minutes an episode and was the forerunner of Law & Order. The series was so strange it was quickly cancelled. "When this happens the creators always say it was but in this case it was true."
Then Gazzara had big success on TV in Run For Your Life (1964-68) which was a clever clone of The Fugitive. "we had big all star casts. the first one, I remember we had Celeste Holm, Katharine Ross, Bob Loggia, Jacques Bergerac as guests -- that's pretty fancy for weekly TV."
It's the films he made with director John Cassavetes which will surely survive: Husbands (1970), The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie (1976) and Opening Night.
Working with Cassavetes, he said was "Something else. He was completely devoted to his actors. Few directors care the way he did,"
I read his autobiography In The Moment where he writes lovingly of a long affair with Audrey Hepburn.
"We made two movies together and she was as lovely as ever although she'd been away for a long time. Eventually she turned to working with the United Nations and had a bew career."
In movies he continued to astonish: The Spanish Prisoner (1997), The Thomas Crown Affair (1999) and Eve (2008). He has several unreleased titles --it's as if he stepped up his pace knowing he was going to die.
I wished I'd had the guts to ask about his second wife --actress Janice Rule whose work I also count as special.

Deathwatch 2012: TV's Doomed Series

2012-02-10T00:33:00.004-05:00

I'm already hearing whispers from my Hollywood sources all about what series will live and which will soon die.
One series already pronounced dead after eight seasons is House which Fox cancelled early despite steady ratings. The network concluded the producers had simply ran out of ideas and I agree --it had become prohibitively expensive to make.
House's departure could mean the resuscitation of Terra Nova for another 13 episodes, I'm told.
More recent shows seemingly doomed include the awful Are You There, Chelsea? which has picayune ratings and the worst reviews of the season.
I was surprised ABC's Cougar Town is still in contention until I realized ABC owns the show and needs more episodes to make it viable in syndication.
ABC sources are saying the Dana Delaney drama Body Of Proof will "probably" get the boot --sinking ratings are one reason and ABC seems to favor Revenge as a second seasoner.
I figured PAN AM had already got the boot but ABC continues to look at this one with hope. Ratings never jelled after a massive campaign of over sell but neither have the numbers tanked. It might hang around if ABC can't find something stronger.
Fox is said to be down on Fringe because of high production costs but it is produced by J.J. Abrams who is revered for his Lost success. I think the Friday night slot is wrong and urge a reboot.
Fox is not likely to renew I Hate My Teenage Daughter which got terrible reviews and a teeny ratings.
CBS continues to tinker away on Unforgettable --it isn't keeping enough of its NCIS:LA lead-in and needs some help --Jane Curtin was recently added to the cast and this may help it gain a renewal slip. Or how about better written episodes?
CBS has three CSI franchises all rapidly aging and one or two of them might be axed. Most vulnerable is CSI:Miami which wilted when moved to Sunday nights. All three series are slipping fast in the same fashion as Law & Order.
Similarly NBC might renew Parenthood just because the fourth network has nothing else half as dependable in the closet.
The Firm has already been cancelled NBC sources are saying unofficially but 22 episodes were ordered and have to be run off in this Canadian co-production.
NBC will also renew Grimm even though it has an unexpected hit in Smash. Critical response was huge but NBC need to try it in a better time slot.
It's the same with Harry's Law which got re-tinkered after the first season and lost its juice and chunks of the audience. NBC needs it as backup I'm guessing.
A big upset would come if NBC killed off 30 Rock. The reasons: ratings are way down and it's very costly to make and why not go out in high style?
30 Rock's powerful executive producer is Lorne Michaels who also controls Up All Night. I'm thinking at least one of these shows will be back and maybe both will givens Michaels' clout..
I hate Whitney, viewers hate Whitney but NBC thinks Whitney Cummings can still shine in this stinker. There's no decision on its fate.
I'm told other new series including Subpurgatory, Person Of Interest and 2 Broke Girls will definitely be back although they haven't received renewals as yet.
Of course all this could change when the next batch of overnight ratings appear. Stay tuned.

MS Wars: An In-Your-Face Documentary

2012-02-08T23:13:00.004-05:00

I wish TV critics would stop writing obituaries for the death of the TV documentary which seems to be disappearing from many networks.
It's alive and kicking and one need look no further than the quite brilliant hour MS Wars: Hope, Science And The Internet which premieres on CBC-TV's The Nature Of Things Thursday night at 8.
It's not surprising to me that this one really works --after all it was made by the Regina couple Leif Storm Kaldor and Leslea Mair (for Zoot Pictures) --they last delivered the award winning documentary Remote Control War.
The story could have been torn from yesterday's headlines. Or just look at the Internet where the debate rages about the so-called Liberation treatment which many MS patients swear has worked for them.
Both sides in this debate would agree Multiple Sclerosis is a crippling disease and as yet there is no cure. Its long range symptoms include fatigue and loss of muscle control and increasing debility.
Starting in 2009 an Itallian doctor Paolo Zamboni announced he was advocating a new procedure that could help many patients.
It was Liberation Therapy that unblocked plugged jugular veins to help cope with a condition he called chronic cerebrospinal venus insufficiency.
He published one small research paper which got picked up on the Internet and suddenly patients were bombarding their physicians with demands for information about the treatment. As one doctor grumbles an erroneous headline in her local paper produced a stampede to her door.
It all seemed too good to be true and it was. The Canadian government blocked treatment until the proper research could be concluded --but that would take up to a decade of clinical trials.
MS Wars examines the conflict that broke out between conservative physicians and the often rambunctious Internet sites.
We even visit with certain Canadian patients who journeyed to places like Costa Rica where treatnent is available. Some experienced wonderful results while others were clearly disappointed. By humanizing the controversy MS Wars shows that hope can sometimes be illusory.
But it also highlights the enormous power of our Social Networks in arming people with all kinds of knowledge to challenge a system they no longer believe in.
Shot like a news program this one could just as easily have wound up on CBC's the fifth estate.
MS WARS PREMIERES ON CBC-TV's NATURE OF THINGS ON THURSD. FEB. 9 AT 8 P.M.
MY RATING: ***1/2.

The River Is Fun And Scary

2012-02-06T21:03:00.002-05:00

Get set for a deluge of new series as the American networks go into overdrive for what's termed "The Second Season".
On Monday night there was Smash which I hope will be a smash for NBC and CTV.
On Tuesday it's The River, a creepy, funny, paranormal adventure series set deep in the darkest stretches of the Amazon.
Both series were executive produced by Steven Spielberg who is a busy boy these days.
The River borrows freely from a lot of other movies and series you're probably familiar with.
Canadian actor Bruce Greenwood plays an intrepid TV naturalist Emmet Cole (think Steve Irwin) who mysteriously disappears while up the river filming his latest series.
He leaves behind a distraught wife Tess Cole played by another Canadian Leslie Hope who is determined to launch an expedition to find his ship --she's convinced Emmet is alive.
Of course they have an estranged son Lincoln Cole (played by Joe Anderson from Breaking Dawn) who was always neglected by a father usually off on another quest or adventure.
When a rescue mission is lauch it's funded by a documentaery film maker determined to turn everything into the latest TV reality show.
And so as the crew set off some of the shots are in grainy video, others handheld reaction takes, with lots of behind-the-scenes tension and drama.
In visual terms The River is spectacular. It was shot not in Brazil but in Hawaii and looks a lot like the hit Lost which cannot be coincidental. Four of the principal directors and producers are from Paranormal Activity.
Special effects abound including one dazzling scene where the ship's passengers are enveloped in a cloud of huge blue dragon flies. What a wonderful effect.
Every scene is exquisitely photographed as if this were a big budgeted movie.
The River is entertaining to watch even if the dialogue is frequently corn pone and some of the plot completely unconvincing.
Will TV audiences want to watch every week or not is all that ABC (and CTV) care about.
Think of this as Alien not in outer space but in a jungle settling with a dash of Joseph Conrad and a touch of The Thing tossed in for good measure. The fact we've seen it before is the most unnerving thing of all.
For Greenwood it's a return to his TV roots. I remember interviewing him as he left his first major TV project, St. Elsewhere in 1988. And I saw him again on the set of Knots Landing in 1991.
In Toronto I interviewed him on the set of Woman On The Run in 1993 --he was having a bit of trouble acting with co-star Tatum O'Neal.
His career jumped notches when director Atom Egoyan used him in the movies Exotica (1994) and The Sweet Hereafter (1997)
The last time I interviewed him he was back in an NBC series Sleepwakers (1997) that that lasted only a few weeks.
He and Hope have come a long way since those days and both deserve to headline a series as expensive as this one. They're now major TV series stars which is an elite category open to very few actors.
It's now up to TV viewers to determine if they want to be scared silly by these jungle antics on a weekly basis. ABC and CTV are hoping the answer is in the affirmative.
THE RIVER PREMIERES ON CTV AND ABX TUESD. FEB. 7 AT 8 P.M.
MY RATING: ***.

Smash Is A Smash

2012-02-05T00:31:00.004-05:00

NBC has a lot riding on its new series Smash.
Like the very future of the network I'm supposing.
Remember NBC gambled buckets of dough that its remake of the British TV hit Prime Suspect would be the one viewers would pick in the fall.
It wasn't and NBC ratings crashed again leaving the peacock proud network mired in fourth place.
Just to make sure American viewers are aware of Smash there's been a blizzard of TV ads, online streaming, billboards, you name it.
And after watching the first two episodes on a DVD screener I'm still not sure.
Not that Smash isn't a greatish series. It's all about the making of a Broadway musical based on Marilyn Monroe and its stars include Anjelica Huston and Debra Messing.
And boy does NBC need a hit right about now, any hit will do. Just last week industry trades had NBC in eighth place on Thursday nights at 10 p.m. Remember this is the time when ER would routinely draw 40 million or more viewers.
Now even Jersey Shore beats NBC after Prime Suspect was suddenly cancelled.
That's why I'm relieved to report Smash is almost a smash. But will it succeed? That's another matter.
First of all the show boasts impeccable credentials. Garson Kanin wrote the original novel, the basis for the story. Listed as creator is successful executive producer Theresa Rebeck (NYPD Blue). Michael Mayer directed the first episode with flair.
Original songs are written by Tony and Grammy winner Marc Sherman and Scott Wittman.
Debra Messing stars as Broadway show tune writer Julia Houston married to a high school science teacher Frank Houston (Brian d'Arcy James). Julia's partner is perennial optimist Tom Levitt (played by Christian Borle).
Anjelica Huston is Broadway showrunner Eileen Rand who desperately needs a new hit so she can shove it to her departing husband.
Jack Davenport is the directorial genius Derek Wills who is mounting a first dress rehearsal and must chose between two very different candidates to play Marilyn.
There's busty veteran Ivy Lynn (Megan Hilty) who has been dancing on Broadway for a decade and dewey newcomer Karen Cartwright (Katharine McPhee) who has a dazzling voice --she lives with City Hall PR head Raza Jaffrey (Dev Sundaram).
A whole heck of dough has been tossed at the first two episodes I saw.
And yet at times the proceedings were so campy I kept thinking of that other Manhattan based dramatic clinker Central Park West with John Barrowman --remember that one?
Everyone here is so bound up with their show bizzy lives that there's not a joke cracked. Anguish and intensity follow this crowd all the days of their lives.
Some TV critics are going to dance in the aisles at Smash but what about the great unwashed audience in middle America? Will they care about a series that's all about putting on a show. I mean Broadway going is an elitist experiment. Let's not forget Smash is up against Jersey Shore which truly does know its audience!
The case against Prime Suspect was that it was irrelevant, using an overly familiar plot that was 30 years old. The buzz about big, incoming series is usually wrong --look at how quickly Lone Star bombed.
Once upon a time (1984 to be exact) NBC was in equal dire straits and one great hit --The Cosby Show--revived its entire Thursday night lineup and allowed such hits as Seinfeld and ER to grow and prosper.
That won't be happening again because of the fractured TV audience.
Smash is different than other network fare, it's well acted (particularly by Messing and Huston), sports recognizable characters and a fair degree of soap opera plotting as well as the requisite beautiful people. It takes itself a bit too seriously but that commitment may work in its favor. The New York locations are beautifully showcased and it could have you rooting for either Karen Cartwright or Ivy Lynn.
Watch Smash. Enjoy Smash. It's as good as a TV serial gets these days. I hope it lasts for seasons to come.
SMASH PREMIERES ON CTV (AND NBC) ON MOND. FEB. 6 AT 10 P.M.
NOTE: AN ADVANCE DIGITAL SCREENING OF THE FIRST EPISODE IS RUNNING ON CTV.ca UNTIL MOND. FEB 6 AT MIDNIGHT.
MY RATING: ****.

PBS's Underground Railroad: Great Canadian History

2012-02-04T13:58:00.004-05:00

Once again American network PBS has come up with the best Canadian history program of the month.
Last fall it was The War Of 1812 and now it's the gripping story of William Still and his efforts to help black slaves fleeing to freedom.
Underground Railroad recreates those harrowing times in brilliant images and for many fugitive slaves the end of the journey was freedom in Canada.
"Our story has everything and it's all true," says producer Gordon Henderson of Toronto's 90th Parallel Productions which made the exciting hour special for Buffalo's WNED-TV.
For one thing few photographs exist of the harrowing tales because the journeys were made through hostile Southern states where slavery was a way of life. Henderson had to visually recreaet these sprints to freedom and does so brilliantly --fugitives could be shot dead at any time during escaping.
For Southern slave owners its was frustrating to see slaves simply vanish. Founding father George Washington blamed Quaker activists when one of his own slaves suddenly vanished.
"It's a story that still resonates today," says Stratford actor Dion Johnstone who stars in the dramatic portions as black activist William Still who was deemed the father of the Underground Railroad.
Says Johnstone: "Many of us can relate to that feeling of being separated from family --never knowing what relatives are out there."
Indeed the highlight of the hour comes when Still interviews one fleeing slave and realizes he is a long lost brother who he never met before. Dramatically it is a hugely satisfying moment.
Johnstone says all his big scenes were filmed in a week. It's odd but in his appearances as Still he rarely speaks except for moments when he turns and talks directly to the camera.
"We had Still's journals to work with," Henderson reports. "That seemed to be the best way to describe the sprawling story."
Henderson says he knew the broad outlines of the story of the Underground Railroad but not the key part played by Still. "As we researched it was apparent his own journey was the best way to personalize the narrative."
In broad strokes the special examines the economics of slavery and the cruel conditions most of the four million blacks had to endure. At least 100,000 had already escaped to freedom on the North by the time of the passage of The Fugitive Slave Act in 1850. That federal act meant bounty hunters could legally abduct fleeing slaves living in the free Northern states and return them to their masters and made it a crime for any one to interfere in any way.
Henderson had to ensure costumes were historically accurate as well as the houses and paraphernalia of the times. He says the dramatic reconstructions had to be done just right --scenes were shot on "living history" plantations in the South and in period locations in Southern Ontario near historic black communities in Niagara Falls, Toronto, Chatham and Windsor.
Says Henderson: "After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act the fleeing slaves had to cross over into Ontario to ensure their safety. It's estimated at least 40,000 did so. After the Civil War some returned but others stayed and built homes in such areas as St. Catharines and Chatham."
In the 1850s Still travelled through Ontario --he'd heard reports Ontario was snow covered for 10 months of the year and how famine was a yearly occurrence.
When shown this was not so Still could return and route former slaves to a new life where they could own land and farm and even have their children attend public school.
The day I chatted with Johnstone on the phone he was guesting on the police series King. He said he's decided not to return to Stratford where he shone this season but try for more TV work.
Directly addressing the TV audience works because of his Stratford experience.
"I wanted to do justice to Still and all that he did but also to make him seem vital and alive. It's living history, what he did for his people was truly remarkable."
Henderson says he has other ideas for specials about history that criss cross the border --for example the Yukon Gold Rush which waas largely peopled by American miners.
A more recent example I can think of is the Sixties influx of American draft dodgers and how they changed Canadian culture. ia
UNDERGROUND RAILROAD: THE WILLIAM STILL STORY PREMIERES ON PBS ON MOND. FEB. 6 AT 10 P.M.
MY RATING: ****.

David Letterman's Long Goodbye

2012-02-02T21:17:00.005-05:00

The most important event in David Letterman's TV history happened off camera.
It came in 1992 when NBC informed Letterman that he would not be replacing Johnny Carson after years as Carson's heir apparent.
Remember that Carson's company had been producing Letterman's Late Show on NBC since 1982. Remember also that Carson appeared on several episodes of Letterman's subsequent CBS late nighter --but never deigned to go near Jay Leno and the Tonight Show.
In fact Letterman became so bitter about the incident that he still occasionally talks about it.
And he got great malicious glee over Leno's predicament of trying to replace Conan O'Brien after Conan walked out in a bitter NBC contract dispute.
Letterman is like that.
Right now he's been celebrating his 30th year as a late night talk icon. But his current CBS gig is very much different from his NBC show.
Not that he's ever been warm and cuddly.
And despite all the bad publicity Leno received during the Conan stink Leno consistently out rates Letterman to this day.
A lot of guests won't go back on his show --like Shirley MacLaine who blasted him on air and never again appeared on the couch.
But the way I'm figuring it departing NBC and not getting the Tonight Show was the best thing to ever happen to Letterman.
There was no way he was going to keep that huge audience Carson enjoyed.
Indeed in his later years Carson got to musing out loud that he could never have enjoyed such power in a multichannel TV universe.
But Letterman is Carson's heir --just on another network.
He's never been friendly to the press.
Indeed the only time I can think of that he appeared before the Television Critics Association came in 1993 when he jumped to CBS.
My attempts to interview him for the Toronto Star were always rebuffed. When I tried to work though sidekick Paul Shaffer I was told to forget it.
It was the same with Carson. I did meet him, But by accident.
In the late 1980s I was in the Burbank office next to his interviewing Freddie De Cordova who was Carson's long suffering director.
And Carson walks in all agitated, sees me making notes and sits down and listens for a bit. Then he jumps up, shakes my hand and departs.
"That's my Johnny," laughed Freddie.
And that's the same way with Letterman. He can be curt, even dismissive to some guests.
But most of the time he gets it very, very right.
Like his decision to keep going the tragic night if 9/11. He effortlessly switched off the comedy and invited old pro Walter Cronkite on board to muse about the essence of American independence and democracy.
And it really worked. Such a pep talk steadied a nation's nerves. Am I right in terming it Dave's finest hour?
He's about to hit 65, an age to be as curmudgeonly as possible rather than the hipster who dazzled us on NBC.
Funny thing about that NBC show: all the regulars he used so wisely and well like actress Teri and Larry "Bud" Melman were dropped when he jumped to CBS. NBC insisted on exercising "intellectual property" although Melman resurfaced as Calvert DeForest --his real name. I've since heard NBC insisted it had copyright on much of the Letterman shtick --I think the term used was "intellectual property".
NBC once tried to sell all of its Letterman reruns to A&E for afternoon repeats but Letterman (now at CBS) kicked up such a stink the offer was withdrawn.
Garr reappeared in 2008 after successfully battling a brain aneurysm.
Then there was the night in 2009 when he told the world about the blackmail attempts. And what powerful TV it turned out to be.
See, he's not the same Dave we've always known. Like the rest of us he's aging. He's visibly slowing down, getting crankier, balder. But still near the top of his game --witness his recent interview with actor Michael Fassbender whose nude turns in the movie Shame gave Letterman some fascinating material to play with.
CBS sources are saying the network is trying to sign him to a new contract for at least two more years. Last year Forbes put his earning at $45 million. I just hope he won't be fading away as Carson did.
Late nights are hard enough to get through these days. It would be impossible without Dave.

/

American Tiger Is First Class Science TV

2012-01-31T23:39:00.002-05:00

I'm told by CBC insiders that it actually happened: a few seasons back CBC senior brass seriously contemplated ending The Nature Of Things after its 50th anniversary.
CBC was then on a youth kick and had already bumped off a precious icon Royal Canadian Air Farce because its viewers were older than Little Mosque On The Prairie's --which had a lower rating. but survived because of youthful demographics.
In the case of NOT wiser heads prevailed or maybe some of those heads departed in the latest CBC management coup.
The result has been a stronger, steadier NOT and more episodes per season. It's as if CBC now recognizes the value of a Brand Name that has stood the test of time for so long.
Witness the first new NOT offering of the Second Season: The American Tiger co-directed by Francis Delfour and Sebastien Tetrault.
The hour looks at the strange status of tiger breeding programs in the U.S. where private owners and companies are still allowed to breed tigers and keep them as exotic if highly dangerous pets.
First we start with the TV news shots --a tiger escapes in a California town in 2003 causing panic and has to be shot down by a tearful police man.
And more recently a private zoo keeper in Zanesville Ohio commits suicide but not before freeing all his exotic pets.
Authorities have to shoot all the rampaging animals and the death toll includes 18 beautiful tigers.
One note: I would have loved a side glance at the situation in Canada and why it is so different here.
In the U.S. it's a question of a welter of conflicting state laws and the disinclination of federal authorities to set national standards for private breeding.
For one thing there's opposition from powerful entertainment sources as well as suppliers of the food tigers eat.
The strange state is this: wild tigers which numbered 100,000 in 1900 now number less than 4,000 and are disappearing fast.
Their habitats are being destroyed with the encroachment of humans and some of the seven species are considered virtually extinct.
But home grown American tigers are thriving as never before. Their population could be as high as 10,000 --according to various counts.
But the scientists interviewed here say these tigers can't quite cut the grade genetically. Many are hybrids of more than one species. At zoos the ancestry of each and every tiger gets scrupulously recorded.
Another thing about the domesticated brand: they haven't been taught survival skills by their mothers. Most do not know how to hunt. The idea that they could be re-released into the wild is ridiculed by the experts.
This hour covers a lot of ground and has some familiar faces. There's Hitchcock heroine Tippi Hedren who devotes herself these days to a big cat sanctuary she runs.
She'd like a complete ban on the private breeding of tigers arguing that tigers can never be pets.
Indeed the case of Siegfried and Roy is brought up --the Las Vegas act was stopped one night when a trained tiger turned and mauled Roy.
This hour passes quickly and is well edited. But it should come with this cautionary note: "No humans were injured in the filming of this documentary." Because the camera gets dangerously close on several occasions to prove the directors' points.
THE AMERICAN TIGER PREMIERES ON THE NATURE OF THINGS ON CBC-TV THURSD. FEB. 2 AT 8 P.M.
MY RATING: *** 1/2.

Discovery Opts For Reality TV

2012-01-29T22:54:00.002-05:00

I never thought it would come to this --Discovery Canada which is an upscale science specialty channel has gone the way of reality TV.
And the result is kind of fun, I'm admitting.
Titled Canada's Greatest Know-It-All this loopey but entertaining series takes 10 Canadians who think they know everything and pits them against each other.
It's sort of Fear Factor plus brains.
Well, maybe not quite. So far in the DVD preview I've seen there are no death defying acts or incidents of sheer grossness such as swimming in a pool filled with wiggly worms.
This time it's knowledge that is king. They get involved in leadership skills, game playing, problem solving but on a very big scale.
There are 10 contestants but only two women --I'd like to chat to the producer about that anomaly.
How they were selected isn't as precisely laid out as it should be. Apparently there was a contest and aspiring Discovery stars had to submit videos.
We get to know a few of the 10 in the first hour and will probably meet up with the rest later on.
One of the skills in the first outing involved building a shed of plywood, some boards and rope and seeing how it would fare on a cliffside against wind powered machines.
There were two teams of five each and the object was to see who could construct the most durable cabin --a stuffed pig was placed inside both houses.
I'm honor bound not to give away any endings but the conclusion surprised me.
I stayed watching.
The second competition was weird --two of the finalists --in fact the oldest two --were pitted against each other in a series of Boy Scouts achievements and the one who won was a true surprise --it was a battle of an educator versus a blue collar worker.
In subsequent competitions they'll have to determine the correct release of a bomb dropped from a Lancashire bomber, arrange an anatomically correct human skeleton from bones stuck in blocks of ice and construct a trebuchet to play an ultimate game of Trojan Basketball.
And at least one contestant gets voted "off the island" every episode--the first season runs for eight weeks.
But the biggest challenge of all is this: Will you turn in next week after sampling the premiere episode?
It all depends whether you're good at playing games or not.
CANADA'S GREATEST KNOW-IT-ALL PREMIERES ON DISCOVERY CHANNEL MOND. JAN. 30 AT 10 P.M.
MY RATING: ***.

Farewell To Two TV Actors

2012-01-28T23:57:00.002-05:00

TV is an ephemeral business. Look at the experiences of two TV actors who enjoyed great fame on TV only to vanish for long stretches of time: James Farentino and Robert Hegyes.
Farentino passed last week aged 73 after decades of weaving in and out of such TV series as The Bold Ones, Cool Millions and Dynasty which is where I met and interviewed him.
And then there's the equally strange case of Robert Hegyes who also died this week of cardiac arrest at 60 --he was one of the original sweat hogs on Welcome Back Kotter which is where I first met him.
Farentino first stepped on the Broadway stage in 1961 as one of the beach boys trying to molest Bette Davis in the Tennessee Williams play The Night Of The Iguana.
In 1966 he copped a Golden Globe as most promising male actor in the hit film comedy The Pad And How To Use It.
Along the way came four wives including actresses Elizabeth Ashley and Michelle Lee.
I had lunch with Farentino on the set of Dynasty in July 1981.
The series debuted in January 1981 and ratings sank like a stone. It was intended as producer Aaron Spelling's retort to Dynasty but the casting was off and the ploys lacked tension.
ABC wanted to cancel it but creators Esther Shapiro and Spelling argued rejigging the cast might save the show so Farentino and Joan Collins were brought on in the first full season that debuted in September 1981.
Collin's vixen Alexis saved the show but Farentino seemed lost and only last 20 episodes.
He continued his TV career in such series as Blue Thunder (1984), the miniseries Sins (1986), the sitcom Mary (1985-86) opposite Mary Tyler Moore and the series Julie (1993) and Melrose Place (1998).
I was on the set of the series Welcome Back Kotter (1975-79) before it went to air with other visiting TV critics.
The original pilot shown to press presented Hegyes as the lead sweathog Juan Epstein but I was one of the scribes who said wait a minute it's gong to be the other guy.
That "other guy" turned out to be unknown John Travolta as Vinnie and he's soared ever since.
To my intense surprise I met Hegyes again years later on the set of Cagney And Lacey. It was 1988 and he was playing the recurring part of Detective Manny Esposito.
In later years he guest starred on such series as Diagnosis Murder and Murder Scorpion and even taught drama at Venice High School for several years.
He told me how toxic TV fame can be and only wanted to continue developing as a character actor.
Farentino blamed the bad publicity he received for allegedly stalking girl friend Tina Sinatra that led to his being less than in demand in later years.
Both were gifted actors who discovered on TV there are few if any second acts.
It's the nature of the business as TV series constantly crave new faces over tried talents.

Why Do Actors Leave Big TV Hits?

2012-01-25T14:52:00.003-05:00

Why do actors leave long running series on big TV hits?
Marg Helgenberger is the latest star to defect from a huge TV success story --in this case CBS's CSI which still has ratings strength..
But she's not the first to decamp despite the lure of huge paychecks and lush residuals.
I remember asking Pernell Roberts that very question.
He became a recognizable name on NBC's Bonanza where he played eldest son Adam Cartwright for seven seasons (1958-65) before deciding he wanted to go back to the stage.
Roberts told me co-star Lorne Greene had argued that a few more seasons and he'd have enough money to buy his own theater but Roberts said he had to leave.
We were talking in Toronto where he was co-starring with Ingrid Bergman in a stage production at the Royal Alexander Theatre (of Captain Brassbound's Conversion).
And I met Roberts again years later on the set of Trapper John MD when it started up on CBS in 1979. This time he stayed with the series until it was cancelled in 1986.
He joked he'd learned his lesson, he was older, wiser. "And I really need the money."
When McLean Stevenson exited TV's M*A*S*H after three seasons he told me he was tired of playing second banana to Alan Alda, the reason Wayne Rogers also quit the show,
Stevenson was a talented guy and even won an Emmy nomination for an episode of M*A*S*H he had written.
He felt he could do very well on his own but this was not the case.
The shows he starred were terrible and short lasting: The McLean Stevenson Show (1976), In The Beginning (1978), Hello Larry (1979-80) and Condo (19083).
Stevenson died in 1996 a broken and embittered man.
TV stars often forget it's the character who is the star and not necessarily the actor.
Despite her brilliance in Ordinary People Mary Tyler Moore struggled to become the kind of movie presence she'd enjoyed on TV.
And Henry Winkler found the same thing, later on without Fonzie he hadn't the same presence.
Ann Sothern told me it was her decision to end the popular sitcom Private Secretary in 1957after four seasons. She was brawling with her producer over the number of outside appearances she could make.
So she sold the series' 98 episodes into syndication --it ran for years afterward as Susie.
And in 1958 she jumped back into a TV series for CBS in The Ann Sothern Show.
"It was virtually the same series only I had a different name and career. The public protested until we brought back Don Porter as my side kick from the first show and we lasted for another three seasons and 98 episodes until CBS cancelled us."
I happened to be sitting next to Pamela Sue Martin at an industry function in Los Angrles circa 1990 and I asked the pert actress if she regretted leaving Dynasty.
"Every day," she joked. But was she joking?
When she starred on Dynasty between 1981 and 1984 she became wildly successful as Fallon winding up with 86 episodes to her credit before she walked off to find other acting challenges.
ABC even asked her back to reprise Fallon in the 1985 spin off The Colbys but Pamela Sue refused. She can still be seen in TV guest spots but has so far failed to recapture that Dynasty momentum.
Biggest loser in the departure sweepstakes has to be Shelley Long who copped a best actress Emmy for Cheers the year it debuted in 1982.
She departed five years later for a movie career that never quite panned out although she remains a talented comedienne.
And leaving Cheers may have helped revive that sitcom as Kirstie Alley jumped in as Long's replacement and the sitcom lasted until 1993 (with Long back to say good bye in the final episode).
Helgeberger is going off to start a chain of restaurants. But I'm guessing sometime in the future she may want to return to series TV.

Farewell To Prime Suspect

2012-01-24T01:12:00.002-05:00

You say you missed the last two episodes of NBC's Prime Suspect?
That was the point.
NBC killed off these last two episodes Sunday night by plopping them against football on Fox.
And as usual next to nobody watched.
That was the problem with PS since its debut in September.
Nobody really cared about it.
I was asking a veteran TV producer about PM's decline and fall and he merely shrugged.
"NBC got it all wrong," he drawled. "I mean when PS with Helen Mirren debuted on British TV in the 1980s it was about a talented female finding her footing in a virtually all male environment.
"That story line doesn't work 20 years later so what was the show all about? Nobody seemed to know what the show's main theme was."
NBC wasn't the only network that completely misread the pilot.
Global's chief programmer Barb Williams told TV critics in September she thought it was going to be the Number One new U.S. series.
As if. It never even cracked the Top 30 in either Canada or the U.S.
Trouble is the producers traded heavily on the aura of the Helen Mirren original. And how can compete with a nearly perfect show still in reruns late nights on PBS.
Many younger people never even heard of the original. And stlll they quickly tuned out in record numbers. Why?
Because terrific actress Maria Bello played the part completely unsympathetically. That hurt efforts to build an audience.
Another question was tough competition from CBS. And NBC hasn't had a drama hit in some time and the PR on this effort from L.A. was very feeble.
The last two shows were among the best as the writers were slowly finding their own way. I know this means nothing because the series is gone.
It only proves a new show has to hit the air with all flags flying. There's no room in today's crowded TV market for a show to work its way toward excellence.

Teaching The Life Of Music Worth Watching

2012-01-22T00:46:00.006-05:00

This is the TV year when Canadian TV became virtually extinct on Canadian Networks.
Most Canadian channels have simply become simulcasting outposts for the American fare already available on border U.S. stations.
And then along comes a perfect example of what Canadian TV should be.
Produced on the proverbial shoestring budget the hour documentary Teaching The Life Of Music is to use an old phrase --pretty swell.
I hesitated to plop in the DVD screener because of the unfortunate experiences I had as a budding cello student with a maniac of a high school music teacher.
However, I persevered and watched and the more I saw the more I liked it.
It follows the concepts of El Sistema, a successful campaign to teach the rudiments of music to poverty afflicted students in the slums of Venezuela who must work together to achieve their goals.
And the Canadian angle comes at Toronto's Rogers Centre when El Sistema's Simon Bolivar Orchestra (SBYO) plays for a capacity audience of Canadian students.
Founded more than 35 years ago by a charismatic teacher Maestro Jose Antonio Abreu, it is wide ranging and ambitious in its scope. It begins naturally enough profiling the now aged music leader and the great success he has enjoyed --and how playing music together teaches the young.
The footage expertly blends interviews with the orchestra leaders in Venezuela with a look at the Canadian attempt to jump start an El Sistema program of our own.
We get to meet some of the Canadian children who are just beginning to study and play. And they get to meet leaders of the Simon Bolivar orchestra and rehearse a bit with them.
There's also a look at the decline of music in Canadian schools. as school boards cut programs to balance their budgets it's apparent music classes are the first to be dumped --instruments are costly to purchase and maintain.
Directed skillfully by David New, produced by Filmblanc,it has Canadian Cory Monteith as narrator. And it's highly recommended. I think you will learn from it but also be entertained.
Teaching The Life Of Music demonstrates to me indigenous Canadian TV production may not be as down and out as I feared.
TEACHING THE LIFE OF MUSIC PREMIERES ON OMNI SUND. JAN. 22 AT 9 P.M.
MY RATING: ***1/2.

Alcatraz Could Be TV's Next Big Hit

2012-01-15T00:05:00.005-05:00

I'm ready to predict the midseason replacement series Alcatraz could be TV's next breakout hit.
I've just watched the pilot and this beautifully shot thriller has all the characteristics of a J.J. Abrams-made TV show.
The plot if fantastic to say the least.
Abrams (Fringe) would have us believe that on the day the famous prison in San Francisco's bay was officially closed (March 21, 1963) over 300 prisoners and guards simply vanished.
Just like that.
The first hour starts with two guards arriving on the rock on March 20 at midnight to find that every single person has disappeared. And as they search the catacombs something happens to them, too.
Then we flash forward to today as feisty Frisco police officer Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Joners) is jumping rooftops in hot pursuit of a baddie. He escapes --but not before she gets a good look at his peculiarly boyish face.
Later on she's investigating a murder when a mysterious FBI agent named Emerson Hauser (Sam Neill) tells her to get lost --any homicide involving an FBI officer is his territory. But he's not listed on any FBI rolls.
But Rebecca is nothing if not determined. Her uncle Ray (Robert Forster) just happens to be an ex-guard himself --which would make him much older than he looks.
And then she just happens to bump into the world's leading aiuhority on Alcatraz, a pot bellied genius with two PhDs --named Diego Soto (Jorge Garcia from Lost).
Watching the pilot proved a gripping experience. A ton of dough was plowed into the fabulously photographed chase scenes, the San Francisco location work and the unbelievably scary recreation of the Alcatraz prison (on studio sets in Vancouver),
But I'm not sure how the story line will evolve over time. It sports such an unique look it could blossom into a hit every bit as big as say Abrams's Lost which went on for seasons with few people ever understanding what was going on.
But there are also mysterious sci-fi strands to the story and the promise of unlocking a huge mystery. As in the hit Twin Peaks.
It satisfies as a detective show. But it's much more than that.
In Alcatraz it seems the guards were almost as brutish as the prisoners. The central character of the first hour, an escapee named Jack Sylvanne, is out to punish the assistant governor who tortured him and kept him confined in the hole for months on end.
Sylvanne is played by charismatic actor Jeffrey Pierce with such passion he overshadows the series regulars.
Fox is known to have had some questions about the pilot and there were industry stories the network might pass on the project.
Among the actors Neill is outstanding as the rapidly aging FBI agent. Sarah Jones doesn't seem mature enough to be a crack police officer --her character's motivations have still to be explained.
The pilot was made with great verve and there are no dull spots whatsoever.
If Alcatraz gets its opportunity to grow its audience it could become the huge dramatic show Fox desperately needs right now.
ALCATRAZ DEBUTS ON CITY-TV AND FOX ON MOND. JAN 16 AT 8 P.M.
MY RATING: *** 1/2.

Who Cares About The Golden Globe Awards?

2012-01-14T15:20:00.006-05:00

Back in the Seventies when I was the kid TV critic at the Hamilton Spectator I never had to cover the Golden Globe awards.
They were a joke then and still are today.
Back then no self respecting TV network would carry the ceremonies.
Instead a tape of the show would get bicycled from station to station in the middle of the night weeks after the actual ceremony.
I mean this is an awards show that gave statuettes to the likes of Pia Zadora and Esther Williams.
The show sprang up in the 1940s from the obscure Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a group of 98 journalists many of whom have day jobs as taxi drivers and waiters.
Jack Nicholson appropriately once mooned the ceremonies in a defiant gesture.
But telecasting the ceremony brings in big bucks in advertising even if many of the actors have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the ceremonies.
Unlike competing ceremonies the nominees are seated at tables very close to the TV cameras so you can watch every twitch and nuance.
Ricky Gervais who insulted stars left and right will be back at it again as host which means the Globes had trouble getting somebody more main stream.
But look the Oscars get things all wrong, too. How could a film as tame as last year's The King's Speech win as best picture over the challenging The Social Network?
Golden Globe acting honors in movies are divided into dramatic and comedy categories which really makes more sense.
Having just caught The Iron Lady I'm curious to see if Meryl Streep will win as best drama actress. Or will it be Viola Davis for The Help?
And sometimes the Golbes are very right when Oscar went horribly wrong.
After all the Globes gave Francis Ford Coppola the award as best director for Apocalypse Now when Oscar chose Robert Benton for Kramer Vs. Kramer.
However, there are also stories of studio largesse being bestowed on the 98 journalists resulting in some bizarre nominations like The Tourist getting a whole heck of nominations in 2009.
I'll be watching just to see the celbs up close who've had more than a couple and are caught with their guard down ever so slightly. And also to catch Ricky Gervais's zingers.
THE GOLDEN GLOBES ARE ON NBC AND CTV SUND. JAN. 15 AT 8 P.M.

CBC Finally Has Something To Shout About

2012-01-11T18:05:00.002-05:00

Here in Canada we have the only television system that openly discriminates against home grown shows.
The villain is called "simulcasting" which allows the cable TV giants to black out incoming American signals and substitute Canadian ones proving the show is exactly the same.
That means practically every U.S. import on the Canadian TV dial gets simulcast so it can enjoy a huge double rating.
The Big Bang Theory, an import from CBS that I enjoy, routinely draws over 3 million viewers a week because of this form of reverse discrimination.
It also means you are paying for hundreds hours of American TV every week from the Buffalo stations or other border affiliates that you actually aren't getting which I think might be illegal.
Simulcasting is the reason Canadian TV drama has deteriorated to the point it s now an endangered species.
And many of the Canadian series you might watch are cagily constructed for resale to the States. Either they're set in the U.S. even if made in Toronto like Global's new series The Firm (which I favorably reviewed) or they're deliberately set in some blurry city never mentioned like Rookie Blue or CTV's Flashpoint.
So there's some case for celebration when CBC's new all Canadian saga Arctic Air nabs 1.1 million viewers its first time out.
CBC has always maintained a series is a "hit" if it attracts over 1 million viewers --for a TV movie or special the bench mark is 1.5 million.
There's been deep slippage this year for Rick Mercer who goes on Tuesdays at 8 --he attracted only 887,000 viewers whereas last year he was averaging well over that million mark.
The Halifax made This Hour Has 22 Minutes by contrast only got 666,000 viewers which is a real cause for concern.
But both shows would be big hits if they were on two channels at a time like the American competition.

CBC Really Needs Republic Of Doyle

2012-01-11T00:26:00.003-05:00

Boy does CBC need Republic Of Doyle.
This has been the TV season when Canadian dram series edged toward extiction --on Canadian networks.
In one flash the return of Republic Of Doyle for its third season shows how important CBC is to telling Canadian stories with Canadian talent.
And Repubic Of Doyle has gotten better with each season.
Not that it ever was a dog but I noticed the polished cinematography of Malcolm Cross and the script packed with one liners from star Allan Hawco and co-creator Perry Chafe..
And for once CBC is banging the publicity drums to get people watching.
The guest appearance of Hawco's buddy Russell Crowe should be a big selling point in the ratings.
Crowe filmed his scenes last summer and everything about this episode exudes warmth.
Getting the buff Australian to do TV was a huge coup --he's currently preparing for the lead as Jean Valjean in a new movie version of Les Miserables.
He appeared only with three of his buddies from his Robin Hood epic: Alan Doyle, Scott Grimes and Kevin Durand.
Truth to tell his part is rather easy and he hardly hogs the TV screen. The story is all about Doyle trying to track down a killer and get gal pal Leslie reinstated in the police force.
Crowe seems to be the beefy head of a gang of extortionists who are out to snatch a mysterious briefcase filled --with what?
Sporting a as shaggy beard and clothing that looks second hand Crowe steals scenes with his slow deadpan delivery.
The biggest character on ROD is St. John's itself from the initial sweeping shots of the harbor and those rows of brightly painted houses.
In fact I though Canadian actor Daniel MacIvor has a better part which he expertly mines for twitchy laughs. I've liked McIvor's work since seeing him in that CBC gem Twitch City.
Stories seem a strange cross between the A Team and Rockford Files. It's a point of view that takes some getting used to but for once with a CBC drama I'm hooked.
The supporting cast remains strong: Sean McGinley as dad Malachy, Lynda Boyd as his fiancee Rose, Kristin Pellerin as Const. Leslie Bennett. Marthe Bernard as Tinny left for education abroad but Mark O'Brien as Des is now studying psychology at university..
Also scheduled for guesting duties is Reality TV star Shannon Tweed who is a proud born and bred Newfie. And I'd really like to see Gordon Pinsent back again.
Republic of Doyle is that rarity, a well made indigenous TV series that's a delight to watch.
And by the way this isn't the first CBC series to ever be made on The Rock. Anybody else out there remember Hatching, Matching And Dispatching?
THE REPUBLIC OF DOYLE RETURNS FOR ITS THIRD SEASON ON CBC-TV ON WED. JAN. 11 AT 9 P.M.
MY RATING: ***.

Arctic Air Is CBC's Latest Regional TV Series

2012-01-09T23:59:00.003-05:00

Regional TV --it's always been the buzz phrase when CBC fashioned dramatic TV series.
Getting out of its cramped Toronto studios and into the various regions has always been CBC's quest.
Hey, it worked wonderfully well for seven seasons and 91 episodes on CBC's Vancouver-based DaVinci's Inquest (1988-2005) didn't it?
But not so well at another series shot in Vancouver, Intelligence (2005-07) which only lasted two seasons.
Another CBC West coast series These Arms Of Mine (2000-01) faded even faster.
It didn't work in Nova Scotia for the short lived CBC venture Black Harbour (1996-99) which lasted three seasons or 39 episodes.
And am I the only one who remembers the one season notched by CBC's Edmonton drama Tom Stone (2002-07)
?And now comes another CBC regional venture Arctic Air clearly patterned after the History TV reality series Ice Pilots --and made by the same production company, Vancouver's Omni Films.
But CBC is hoping to snare that same armosphere that made its North Of 60 such a long running hit.
What emerges in the first episode is an old fashioned sort of adventure series with some side glances at modern life in the north.
Kevin McNulty co-stars as Mel, a gnarled old pilot whose rickety airline Arctic Air still flies with DC-3s that are almost coming apart at the seams.
Nobody wants to fly them so the latest recruit is an adventurous East Indian recruit (*)()() played by Stephen Lobo (Godiva's) complete with a convincing accent.
And who should wander in but one of the absentee co-owners, Bobby (Adam Beach), who has graduated into a top businessman who wants to show his partner the location for a diamond mine.
Then there's Mel's comely daughter Krista (Pascale Hutton) who happens to be the best pilot around. And. of course, she used to be one of Bobby's girlfriends in high school.
It was about then that I sat up and shouted "Whoa!"
The attempt to cast Beach as a suave ladykiller type just ain't gonna make it. I'm hoping it can be downplayed in future episode because the dude looks mighty uncomfortable.
Most of the first episode is very tentative. And that's to be expected until the series finds its legs.
So far it succeeds as mild adventure fare --a pregnant wife has to be airlifted by pilot Mel during turbulent weather --Mel also has heart problems and shouldn't be flying at all.
Although the series is shot on sets about a mile out of Vancouver it's supposed to the North West Territories.There are the standard sets up for the conversation intervals between the action scenes.
Beach did not appear all that at ease in his last TV series, Law And Order: SVU. Here he hopefully can grow into the part but on TV these days series must hit the air running with precious little time allowed for tinkering.
With many of its "regionals" CBC gave understandings the shows could last two seasons because CBC's promotion budget is low compared to the cutthroat American TV competition.
You'll stay watching at the beginning for the dazzling arial photography and the suspense of the plot.
Whether you stick with Arctic Air over the long haul of 10 episodes depends on the writers delivering tauter scripts and the actors becoming completely engaging in their parts. And that hasn't happened yet.
But in a TV season almost devoid of home grown hits I'm rooting for Arctic Air to succeed.
ARCTIC AIR PREMIERES ON CBC-TV ON TUESD. JAN. 10 AT 9 P.M.
MY RATING: ***.

Good News: Californication Is Back

2012-01-08T22:31:00.004-05:00

Californication is back for its fifth season starring David Duchovny as the wasted but talented script writer whose amatory adventures would try a man half his age.
Some of my friends dig this show. Some are repulsed.
There's a lot of nudity here and simulated sex scenes and many of these shots are of actors and actresses past their prime. So no ways is Californication soft core TV eroticism.
Yes, I laughed out loud during the first new episode because Duchovny's deadbeat delivery is supreme. Being a writer Hank always has the perfect line to explain any embarassing stuation.
Seeing his friend and agent Charlie going at it he remarks "Any naked friend of Charlie's is a naked friend of mine."
Remind me to say that when I happen upon a naked friend which I've never done as yet.
All sorts of words usually never heard on television including cable are bandied about. But after five seasons the shock factor has long disappeared.
Quite frankly when it comes to TV I think Mad Men sexier by far.
Too much sex is too much of a good/bad thing. That's why I started tuning out Nip/Tuck after the second year. Been there, seen that, I guess.
Californication was created for Showtime in 2007 all about a sexy writer named Hank Moody (get it) who has writer's block. At 28 minutes it's a rather long situation comedy.
As I watched I wondered if an "Airline Version" was being made at the same time.
That ruse was tried on The Sopranos and means the elimination of most swear words as well as most nudity. But if all that were snipped what would be left?
Creator Tom Kapinos agreed with critics a fresh approach was needed for the fifth season. I agree but it's not immediately apparent in the first new episode which I've previewed.
So the narrative takes place two years after Season 4. Madeleine Martin and Natascha McElhone are back as Hank's daughter and ex-girlfriend. But his ex-wife is now married to her professor. But that's all the plot I'll reveal here.
I find Californication has lots of male fans but not so many females. Hank's misogyny is part of his makeup. He hasn't so much grown wiser with the years but he's certainly grown older, sadder, he looks very tired and no wonder.
I keep watching for its malicious take on the entertainment industry. Duchovmy gives a dead on performance but it's hardly in the leading man mold of Scully.
Moody is self destructive and he knows this and can't do anything about it. Usually we wouldn't care about such a character. The brilliant writing makes us care.
Nothing much seems to happen in the first new episode. But there's a lot of catching up to do. I guess I'll stick with it to the bitter end. I'm still worried how Hank Moody will finally turn out, for better or worse.
CALIFORNICATION 5 PREMIERES ON THE MOVIE NETWORK ON MOND. JAN. 9. AT 10:30 P.M.
MY RATING: *** 1/2.

Citytv's Tough Choices: Must See TV

2012-01-07T15:47:00.002-05:00

The virtual disappearance of TV news specials from Canadian TV is one of the most disheartening trends of the new television season.
Citytv's hour documentaries titled Tough Choices aim to buck that disheartening trend.
First up there's Gord Martineau who I've been covering ever since I became a TV critic for the Hamilton Spectator in 1970.
With Lloyd Robertson's retirement from daily reporting Martineau becomes Canadian TV's dean of anchors despite a still youthful appearance.
As he says in his introduction he brings to the table 40 years of experience and 20,000 newscasts --but whio's counting?
With Tough choices Martineau not only reports but co-writes the shows and this time out it's a most timely report on the pressures facing Canada's public sector unions.
It involves not only Ottawa civil servants but garbage collectors and firemen all of whom are tainted with the same right wing accusations that they're living high while the rest of us suffer through this economic downturn.
Martineau gets to personalize the issue by looking at the life style of one veteran Toronto fire fighter and how he carefully must marshall his economic resources.
And he shows us the historical context --the 2009 strike by Toronto garbage collectors undoubtedly turned the public against them and may have contributed to the subsequent election of Mayor Rob Ford.
We get to hear from a number of experts that public sector wages and pensions are just a bit too pricey these days --Ottawa employees can retire at 58 on comparatively high end pensions many in the private sector are denied.
But union officials rightly point to the protection given us by the police and fire fighters.
Martineau journeys to Stockton, California, to a city under siege facing bankruptcy where fire and police services are back to the staffing levels of 1950 which has meant a vast increase in crime and a response time from fire fighters that could endanger lives.
Ford campaigned for office on a proposal to "Stop The Gravy Train" but very little gravy has been found and all sorts of public services including TTC and library hours are being affected by his cut backs.
Unions are fighting back arguing they've fought for better benefits with the hope the private sector could also benefit down the road. But Martineau says almost 12 million Canadians are set to retire with only CPP benefits --their high taxes are making union benefits seem out of whack in these tough times.
Well shot and edited Labour Pains is ripped from the headlines. As I watched I remembered current newspaper stories stating the Harper government was planning a frontal assault on Ottawa civil servants.
Labour Pains was directed expertly by Karen Pinker who produced and wrote it with Martineau. Its success vaults Citytv to the front rank of Canadian networks in the race to make cutting edge documentaries.
TOUGH CHOICES: GROWING PAINS PREMIERES ON CITY SUND. JAN. 8 AT 10 P.M.
MY RATING: *** 1/2

Global's The Firm Is New And Worth Watching

2012-01-04T23:34:00.004-05:00

I've got a new term for you --"Hybrid TV".
You've heard of hybrid automobiles, heck, maybe you even own one.
But what about Hybrid TV --what the heck is that.
Check out Global's new series The Firm if you want to find out.
Global TV is bringing the John Grisham novel to TV seriesdom with support from NBC, Sony Pictures and Paramount.
Remember the smash 1993 movie with Tom Cruise? Well, that was a mere 19 years ago, a pretty long time for a TV sequel to come along.
In truth CBS had been dickering with the concept for a few years with Lukas Reiter listed as creator. When CBS finally passed Reiter shopped it to Global and NBC and it became a Hybrid with Global's participation.
So enthusiastic were the partners that 22 episodes were ordered, a rarity in today's crowded TV landscape. And novelist John Grisham was involved in the initial batch of stories --another Grisham novel The Client got badly mangled in the TV transition.
Filming started in Toronto in August with Entertainment One listed as the production company.
To qualify for Canadian content most of the cast and crew had to be Canada-based.
But American import Josh Lucas (Sweet Home Alabama) came in for the lead as U.S. lawyer Mitch McDeere and another talented American Juliette Lewis (Natural Born Killers) co-stars as his chain smoking secretary Tammy Hemphill.
The Canadian contingent includes Callum Keith Rennie as Mitch's brother Ray and Molly Parker (Driftwood) as Mitch's ever loving wife Abby McDeere.
I spotted a lot of familiar Canadian faces among the supporting contingent. David Straiton (House) directed the pilot but multi-talented Helen Shaver is set to direct many later episodes. And among the writers there's Canadian Allyson Feltes who produced the Canadian legal show The Associates for CTV a few seasons back.
The TV series hops forward 10 years after the movie where Mitch and his wife have spent time hiding out under the U.S. Witness Protection plan for bringing down the mob-controlled law firm.
The opening scenes are taut as Mitch is shown escaping through Washington D.C. including a stint through the reflecting pool and away to anonymity.
In Mitch's return to law his practise is located in a deliberately small family firm with one secretary and a leg man. The entire family has endured unbelievable stress. When their 10-year-old daughter catches the family in a meeting in the kitchen she assumes they're going on the run again and breaks down sobbing.
The premiere episode is all confusion. There's the exciting chase followed by convoluted talk about whether Mitch should join a high priced law firm. There are flashbacks within flashbacks. I was uncertain for a bit just where the story was taking us.
After the chase the first two hours settles down to a fairly detailed description of a case of a young man who shot a taunting school mate in a rage. In its exploration of the leal points it came across as pleasantly old fashioned and without the usual gimmicks of today's legal shows.
Lucas is a fine actor who can play Mitch as a decent man without making him boring. Parker and Rennie are something of a team --other TV series they've co-starred in include Twitch City and Global's recent show Shattered. Parker seems determined not to play Abby as just another stay-at-home housewife. I mean what other series around would have the action stop and the wife explain the merits of the classic American novel Native Son to her husband?
Rennie's tough, threatening private eye seems a character who has stepped out of some old film noir thriller but that's OK too.
The Firm has enough of these authentic moments to make one want to revisit it several times before passing final judgment.
THE FIRM PREMIERES ON GLOBAL ON SUN. JAN. 8 AT 9 P.M. BEFORE MOVING TO THURSDAYS AT 10 P.M.
MY RATING: ***.

Digging For Britain Is Smart TV

2012-01-03T15:31:00.004-05:00

Has this year's downright awful crop of new TV shows been getting you down?
Sit tight --hope is on the way.
Season 2 of Digging For Britain arrives just in time.
This is TV for the Smart Set. All those craving moronic reality shows should look elsewhere.
Dr. Alice Roberts wanders far and wide as she visits sites around the tight little island where important archeological discoveries are being made.
In the first new hour, Britannia, she looks at digs where important new information about Roman Britain is being unearthed.
And it's pretty exciting stuff. At Folkestone she shows how the once flourishing Roman port offers fresh clues as to how the Romans first invaded Britain in 43 A.D.
The site of a once flourishing Roman port is being excavated and one huge structure currently being dug up was the vast palace of the commander of the fleet.
At another site graves of 97 baby skeletons are discovered --one expert thinks the whole structure must have been a Roman brothel because of the knife wounds still clearly visible on some of the tiny bones.
But DNA testing indicates something e;se --it could be a Roman birthing center where the midwives attempted interventions to save the lives of the mothers.
In Exter we see an excavation of a small Roman town whose discovery turns history upside down --Roman civilization supposedly never reached Exeter. But the pottery examples show Roman cults flourishing here. Dozens of Roman coins show commerce flourished.
There's an amphitheater at Carleen. And the biggest find is a warehouse filled with art objects --the historian likens it to a modern storage locker--it shows the prsence of Roman culture long after the Romans supposedly abandoned England.
One factory system at Bare Regis shows a tanning site --proving some Roman soldiers chose not to return home but instead turned from soldiering to trade.
Made by BBC (of course) Digging For History challenges us at every turn. It also assumes a fair bit of knowledge and interest. Whereas Reality TV panders to the lowest common denominator, Smart TV like Digging For Britain challenges us at every turn.
Subsequent programs look at sites of Viking colonization, the Bronze Age Britain, and Stone Age communities in the Channel islands.
DIGGING FOR BRITAIN RETURNS TO DISCOVERY WORLD HD ON THUSD. JAN. 5 AT 8 P.M.
MY RATING: ****.
.

Meg Tilly Back Acting On Bomb Girls

2012-01-01T22:29:00.004-05:00

It was a real treat chatting up elusive actress Meg Tilly who was phoning from her home on Vancouver Island.
I hadn't seen her since she was in Toronto in 1993 as a guest star in the series Road To Avonlea.
She retired shortly after that to raise her three children and is only now returning to acting in Global TV's new six-part series Bomb Girls. In the intervening years she's become a widely praised novelist.
"I said I'd audition to this as a favor to my agent," she laughs. "To humor him I took the ferry with my husband to Vancouver and we ate junk food and had a day of it.
"And I thought, sure, I'll audition but I wasn't looking for work. It's just that I wanted to keep my agent who doesn't get much money representing me."
Tilly tentatively tried acting again in the fall in a Victoria production of Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? Where she garnered great reviews.
"I always told my husband if I do go back it has to be for the challenge. And Martha was as challenging as it gets. I first had to memorize that huge play. Could I do it? And there was the physical effort --on matinee days I just stopped speaking except on stage to save my voice."
Last year Tilly also did three cameos in the B.C.-made TV series Caprica, a spin-off of Battlestar Galactica so she could hang out with her old pal Eric Stoltz. They had worked together in the movie Sleep With Me (1994).
"For the Bomb Girls audition I listened to what producer Adrienne Mitchell was saying. She sold me on it. I loved the first script. I immediately hooked onto the part of Laura. I sort of understood her plight as the matron of a munitions factory in Toronto during World War II. I wanted the part. They wanted me.
"I came out of the audition and told my husband " You won't believe this but I think I'll do it. And he looked really startled."
What clinched the deal for Tilly was the promise that this would be a resolutely Canadian production with great attention to period detail.
"When I walked on the munitions factory set ain the Distillery District on the first day I thought oh no it's not ready. This was Sunday and we started on Wednesday. But they made it --the crews worked around the clock. And everything is perfect --the plant, the way the girls dressed, the hair, makeup. It's a very expensive production because the Toronto of the Forties no longer exists."
Tilly shines as the dour Lorna who is plopped from the assembly line to become matron for over a hundred girls assembling bombs for the Allied war effort.
"We gradually learn Lorna's back story and why she's like that," explains Tilly. " You'll understand her better, don't worry. Her husband (played by Peter Outerbridge) was invalided in the Great War and still limps around. She's aware the girls' lives are on the line in this dangerous assignment and indeed one becomes seriously injured early in the story."
And Lorna shows her own prejudice by ranting against an Italian-born young man she views as the enemy.
The other girls are a motley bunch including rich girl Gladys (Jodi Balfour) who the other girls suspect is just slumming around.
And there's Kate (Charlotte Hegele) who uses the job to escape from the fundamentalist preaching of her devout father.
And Vera (Anastasia Phillips) is the saucy one who comes quickly to no good.
"We block shot it," Tilly says meaning all scenes set in the factory for a few episodes would be shot before moving on to the next venue. "The writers made t work, it just flows and we had three expert directors in Ken Girotti, Adrienne Mitchell and Anne Wheeler. I tried to memorize as far ahead as possible because I wanted to get her character. It was a stretch but I like hard work.""
Tilly isn't at all certain how Canadians will take to a completely Canadian TV series, one about an aspect of our history that's almost unknown.
"The women had to grow up fast. And then at war's end the lost their jobs to the men returning from battle. And many wound up in the Fifties out in the suburbs. It's such a sad story in some ways."
She's committed for another season if the show gets picked up. And she continues writing fiction.
"But next I'll be acting again in Toronto at Taragon Theater in a Michael Tremblay play."
BOMB GIRLS PREMIERES ON GLOBAL TV ON WED. JAN. 4 AT 8 P.M.
MY RATING: *** 1/2.

Ron James Rolls In Another Year on CBC-TV

2011-12-30T22:25:00.003-05:00

A very strange thing is happening on New Year's Day on Canadian TV.
There are actually back-to-back new hour long specials and both are 100 % Canadian.
As far as 2011 goes Canadian content virtually disappeared from some so-called Canadian TV networks. Let's hope happier days are ahead.
But CBC-TV has a new RCAF New Year's Day Special on Monday at 8 pm. that's right welcome.
And at 9 p.m. Ron James roars back with his own take in his New Year's Edition.
Both specials normally run on New Year's Eve but would anybody expect CBC-TV to give up top-rated NHL hockey for even one night? Not me!
James has been fabricating these specials for six years now and has got the format down part.
First of all he's resolutely Canadian from his Maritime twang to his insistence on sending up the mundane details of Canadian lives.
I'm honor bound not to give away his best lines but he goes right after the obesity epidemic in the States and especially that heavily sugard breakfast cereal for kids with the vampire on the box.
Michael Ignatieff diesn't get off Scott free --James jokes that after leading the LIberals to their worst ever electoral defeat Iggy is not teaching political science at U of T.
Joining James are two icons of Canadian TV: Sonja Smits whose feat of three hit Canadian TV drama series in a row must be some kind of record: Street Legal, Traders, The Eleventh Hour.
But since Canadian networks ditched Canadian TV movies and most Canadian TV dramas that couldn't be peddled to the U.S. as American fodder she's been rightly concentrating on stage.
Also on the show but not in the same sketch is her Street Legal co-star Eric Peterson who recently finished dazzling us as one of the prairie funsters in Corner Gas.
James gives Peterson some droll moments as Sir John A. Macdonald in an inspired take off on Murdoch Mysteries set in a beautifully oaken paneled room that also presents Sir Wilfrid Laurier in a funny murder mystery with that comic twist.
James stars as nineteenth century detective Mordecai Moncton--this is such a hoot maybe James should spring out this character into a regular series of his own.
After al;l James one starred in the unhistorical adventures of a British fortress titled Blackfly. Anybody remember that one?
Smits is more to the point garbed in dazzling red and looking more than a little like Lisa Laflamme as she reads the riot act against meek and mild James for shooting up a certain jolly, bearded gentleman whose only offense was riding through the sky.
One reason why these skits work so well: there are many quick cuts to the audience with huge close ups of people laughing heartily.
It's like in the radio days when Jack Benny would strategically place hearty laughters in his studio audience.
Watching other people laugh just makes the rest of us giggle.
James doesn't do just one monologue, he does three artfully spliced throughout the hour.
And, yes, there's also a visit from Aunt Vivien who delivers her annual message to the royal family. She does get quite rude when addressing the problem with Princess Kate's sister's "caboose". And there's a requisite "Little Ronnie" animated bit.
And finally comes a big and bright hugely staged musical number to welcome in the New Year.
In short a Canadian TV show for all Canadians. Imagine that.
THE RON JAMES SHOW: NEW YEAR'S EDITION IS ON CBC-TV SUND. JAN 1 AT 9 P.M.
MY RATING: ***1/2.

Alan Park And CBC-TV's RCAF Back With A Bang

2011-12-29T12:55:00.011-05:00

Chatted up talented Alan Park of RCAF fame but because of holiday deadline this was before the actual preview DVD for Not The New Year's Eve Special actually arrived for me to review.
With the DVD running I can now report I'm liking a lot of it. But my suspicion continues CBC made a bad mistake in canceling one of its most valuable franchises.
CBC sources told me at the time the series was pink slipped it had nothing to do with ratings which were actually climbing and even surpassed some shows that got pick ups. It had to do with foreign sales: RCAF with its dead on parodies of the like of Stephen Harper proved a tough sell in foreign markets.
Park was part of a foursome of younger comics imported to beef up RCAF. The others: Jessica Holmes, Penelope Corrin and Craig Lauzon.
Only Holmes is missing from this annual edition which runs a day later than New Year's Eve to make way for CBC's NHL Hockey coverage. Back also are veterans Luba Goy and stalwart Don Ferguson.
I had already journeyed down to CBC's cavernous and mostly vacant Front Street studios to watch a Friday night taping that started at 7 p.m. and ambled on to 10:30. leaving the studio audience in a state approaching lethargy.
However, the actual show all spruced up and tightly edited for TV is lively and often hits marks with great malicious glee.
The funniest sketch I saw was a very bizarre parody of Mad Men which had its three players --Park, Corrin and Lauzon--in stitches and they had to stop several times to regroup.
But surprise! It was one of the pieces that got cut!
"Look, I don't edit the show," says Park. "But it was one of the bits that didn't make it for reasons of length.."
Park also does the dandiest impersonation of President Obama --not only does he look like the president when in nutmeg makeup he catches the guy's odd cadence --Obama always seems to lower his voice at the end of each line.
The skit has Oprah Winfrey --impersonated by guest Arnold Pinnock in the Lincoln bedroom as she suggest she should run for president.
The skit starts off terrifically but winds down clumsily and Pinnock in drag needs more padding to approach Winfrey's girth.
Park is plain terrific in a dead-on if highly exaggerated spoof of the way CBC's Ron James talks to his studio audience --I'm remembering it was James who got RCAF's weekly slot so maybe the malice is deserved.
Other highlights: Luba Goy as Ann McMillan interviewing Princess Kate and another Goy bit that has her facing Green Party leader Elizabeth May.
Lauzon shines as a simpering Stephen Harper and as the Blackberry president who offers customers a free iPhone so they can check for outages.
Corrin scores as the distaff side of the Lang and O'Leary report --even her thick red lipstick matches. The real Kevin O'Leary is present and as obnoxious as ever.
RCAF founding father Don Ferguson has fun with the RCAF timeline and as the world's most important man in a fake Mexican beer commercial.
The skits that got cut can still be seen on the RCAF webpage I'm told.
Also guesting on this edition: Ron MacLean, Adam Beach, wrestler Roddy Piper who is really funny.
This special boasts a new directotr Wayne Moss plus new writers in Rob Lindsay, Wayne Testori and Kevin Wallis.
Park told me there was an inevitable whiff of sadness -RCAF founder Roger Abbott died this year--and appears in a stock shot with the late John Morgan. Members of Abbott's family were in the audience.
Park says the Ron James parody was difficult --he wrote it and watched James clips to get the nuances of Maritimer speech.
"It's strange because a lot of our grips also work on his show. When I saw they got it I knew it was working."
I've always thought RCAF should tour in a format that would have them doing one of their radio broadcasts. I first caught the troupe iat Hamilton Place in 1979 doing such a show to an overflow audience..
Park agrees saying "We did talk about it but then Roger became sick and spent summers getting chemotherapy. He was trying to step back a bit you see."
Park says "I'm terrible at auditions"--one reason you don't see him in guest spots on TV drama series shot in Toronto. "So I'm not on Flashpoint --yet."
Aside from his RCAF TV work I wish Park and Corrin would try their own anti-sitcom --as a quarreling couple always trying to top each other at work and in life. I can almost see it now,
RCAF: NOT THE NEW YEAR'S EVE SPECIAL PREMIERES ON CBC-TV SUND. JAN. 1 AT 8 P.M.
MY RATING: *** 1/2.

The Worst TV Of 2011

2011-12-24T15:44:00.003-05:00

It's been quite a year for TV watchers like yours truly.
Canadian TV virtually disappeared from even so-called Canadian netorks during the fall with the compliance of the CRTC which is supposed to regulate these kind of things.
Reality TV sunk to a new low if that is possible --the relentlessly self promoting Kardashians were found out and how.
And Daytime TV sank like a stone with the cancellation of many soap operas that had been running for decades and the exiting of imperious Oprah Winfrey.
Here's my Ten Worst list of the TV disasters of the year.
1. PAN AM: It was rumored to be the big new hit of the year. Trouble is nobody told the TV audience who tuned in once and then tuned right out. One of the most expensive shows in recent years --I guess all the money was squandered on getting the accoutrements of the Fifties just so. Because $10 million was squandered on the plot. But all the intricate irony of Mad Men was gone and instead we got just another vintage soap. Story lines were underwhelming. The four gals were cute and completely unconvincing. What a letdown!
2. THE PLAYBOY CLUB: Another dopey return to the Fifties. But if you were Hugh Hefner's age then just maybe this one was for you. Eddie Cibrian was hired as the lead presumably because he looked a bit like Jon Hamm. But he couldn't act like Hamm, that was the problem. Seeing those busty young things adorned in their bunny outfits incensed the Parents Television Council but nobody else batted an eye. This one sank like a stone proving the Playboy Years are well past us. Who actually reads Playboy these days anyway?
3. PRIME SUSPECT: Mistake number one was snatching the name of the brilliant British show with Helen Mirren and then mucking around with the story. That excellent actress Mario Bello was left to flounder in a part making no sense. All the nuances of the original were junked and what remained was just another procedural thing. Critics fixated on Bello's masculine hats. Some excellent actors were scarcely used. Shooting in New York city did not help. A huge, boring bomb, this was predicted by Global's head programmer to be the big break out hit. But what a flop!
4. TERRA NOVA: Loved the CGI dinos. For about 10 minutes. Then realized there was no money left over for scripts. The look of this one shot in New Zealand was terrific. The family profiled emerged as simply dull and listless. I couldn't have cared less about their fate. Even the children I know stopped watching early on. This stinker proves tossing money at the screen doesn't make for good TV.
5. X FACTOR: So there he was on the talk shows, Simon Cowell I mean, and he was predicting huge numbers for the latest reality effort which he imported from Britain. But these kind of musical competitions have been copied so often boredom has set in. Even with Paula Abdul back at his side Cowell couldn't make it work. And let's face it the best contestants had already been nabbed by the competition. It emerged as simply predictable.
6. CHARLIE'S ANGELS: A real dog. Watching sweet young things racing around in swimwear no longer cuts it. This one flopped because the original producer Aaron Spelling is dead. And Spelling really believed in such trash, he was TV's great schlock meister. He chose Farrah Fawcett and the show went skyward in the ratings. And Aaron never would have chosen any of the latest batch of Angels. His poor taste meter would have given us far worse talent --hence his success.
7. TORCHWOOD: Moving the classy BBC sci fi show to America ruined it. The final British series, Torchwood: Children Of Earth was pretty wonderful. The U.S. follow up Torchwood: Miracle Day just didn't do it for me, a melange of some bold ideas and bad execution. Charismatic John Barrowman was even moved off center stage to make way for such American stars as Mekhi Phifer. So much of what followed was illogical and just plain confusing. After this mess it's unlikely we'll ever see another Torchwood which is too bad.
8. RINGER: Maybe this one wasn't terrible at all. Maybe it was just plain boring. I thought Sarah Michelle Gellar would have gotten a better vehicle for her TV comeback. But this was soap opera territory and not very well written. She simply looked lost. I simply felt disappointed. Everything about it rang false.
9. PIERS MORGAN: Replacing rapidly aging Larry King with this True Brit has been a colossal mistake for CNN. His show biz interviews are vapid. Larry boasted he never did any research before an interview and it showed --he could cut to the quick and Piers is merely fawning. Also, he has no sense of American politics and when King had politicos foisted on him he was blunt and impertinent.
10. 2 BROKE GIRLS: I thought the pilot had potential. But this one has morphed into a weekly remake of Lucy and Ethel. Or even worse Laverne and Shirley. There may be even worse new sitcoms out there but this one had all the makings of a fun show. I've stopped watching because there's only so much I can take.

Watching TV On Christmas Day

2011-12-23T00:07:00.003-05:00

You can't spend all day unwrapping presents can you?
For some there's church in the early morning or at midnight on Christmas Eve.
And a hearty family meal at noon or 4 p.n. depending on the custom.
That leaves plenty of time to hunker down in front of the flickering TV set on Christmas day and night.
Among the highlights:
** The strangest marathon seems to be AMC's salute to Duke Wayne. How that ties in with Christmas I'll never know. But there are chances to catch up with such later day epics as El Dorado, Rio Bravo and that's plenty fine with me.
** HGTV counters with a Holmes On Holmes marathon. Every episode seems the same as the last. Gruff Mike enters a shoddily built new home only to discover dozens of discrepancies the homes inspector simply overlooked. Lots of bleak faces as homeowners are told it's gonna be a virtual redo. And at the hour's end Mike plays kissy face and hugs as he departs another holmes perfect.
** The Queen's Palaces is TVO's marathon --the British made series examines all those monstrous wrecks that constitute HM's homes. Most are old and dusty and however does she afford those heating bills? The look at Henry VIII's ruble was fascinating --spiders seemed to pop out of every crook. No wonder HM is always off to other countries --it's must be to get away from all those bill collectors.
** CBC plays it ultra safe with yet another rerun of Miracle On 34th Street (1947) showing us what a wonderfully civilized city New York was back in 1947 and a rerun of the 2010 TV special A Heartland Christmas.
** CTV dumps three Shrek movies in its prime time package with nothing Canadian about the lineup which is disappointing.
** Global has the 2006 flick Christmas On Chestnut Street but there's a conversation with Premier McGuinty at midnight.
** A&E which was once a real Arts and Entertainment channel has a Parking Wars marathon which really tickles me. See owners fight for the right to get their cars back despite the acres of (U.S.) government red tape.
** Not to be outdone History Channel has a Pawn stars marathon. Hey, this is one of the few reality shows I rather like, at least a bit of history gets mixed in there.
** Comedy has a Big Bang Theory marathon which is all right by me although I'd much prefer a Corner Gas marathon or a King Of Kensington one.
** Space has a Doctor Who marathon --I'm not sure which series this one is all about but it seems to be the latest edition.
** Outdoor L
** National Geographic has a Python Hunters marathon --if you like snakes.
** BBC Canada's marathon is one devoted to Property Virgins which is great but why a Canadian series getting pride of place on our sole British channel.
** But the winner of the best marathon programming is Discovery World HD with has a great marathon --all six hours of the flawless series Human Planet. I started watching the preview DVD and couldn't stop. The first hour, Life At The Extremes, looks at a whale hunter in Indonesia, the Dorobo hunters of Kenya who dare steal meat from a pride of lions, a little girl traveling 50 miles through the frozen mountains to school in Tibet. The photography is outstanding. Why not chose this one to watch?

The 10 Worst Christmas Movies On TV

2011-12-19T19:33:00.003-05:00

I accepted a freelance assignment to view every single Christmas movie running on TV this season.
And it's getting me down already.
I've had to sit through some terrible stinkers let me tell you.
And here are the worst ones so far.
1. White Christmas (1954) is just plain awful. Oh, there are a few great Irving Berlin ditties along the way including the title song. But Bing Crosby looks mighty bored and no wonder --he'd done the same story as Holiday Inn just 12 years before. Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen are cute when warbling Sisters. But Danny Kaye is completely unfunny and he mugs terribly. The sets are so artificial --like the corn flakes for snow. I liked this one when it played at Toronto's Imperial theater way back when I was just eight. But I wasn't a TV critic then.
2. The Bishop's Wife (1947) has Cary Grant returning to earth as an angel to mend the fractured marriage of Loretta Young and David Niven who is an Episcopalian bishop who wants to construct a new cathedral. When I mentioned it once to Grant he made a face and called it "Among the worst films I ever made." And he wasn't exaggerating one bit.
3. Susan Slept Here (1954) --the title was considered so salacious in 1964 that the Ontario censor balked a bit. Dick Powell's last movie and I can completely understand --he's a Hollywood writer saddled with teenage delinquent Debbie Reynolds for the Christmas holidays. Debbie as a delinquent? She's as phoney as Powell's hairpiece and the movie isn't one bit suggestive. This was 1954 after all.
4. Miracle On 34th Street (1947) like most commercial Christmas flicks contains no references to the "J-" word at all. Edmund Gwenn is a puckish Saint Nick everyone thinks crackers and Natalie Wood aged 8 is a very knowing daughter with divorcee Maureen O'Hara as her mom. Shots of what New York city looked like in 1947 are the only redeeming features.
5. The Man Who Came To Dinner (1942) has some nasty zingers from Monty Wooley but as a celebration of Christmas it's a bust. Joan Rivers was once going to do a modern version and said after viewing it she had to walk away. "These days the patient would be air lifted to a hospital and not spend weeks in the family's living room living high off the hog."
6. Remember The Night (1940) presents Fred MacMurray as an ambitious D.A. who takes shoplifter Barbara Stanwyck home for the holidays where she meets an unbelievable family right out of Norman Rockwell. It just doesn't make sense and the dialogue is pure corn.
7. Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) is a cult classic, I'm told. The cult of Satan I'm guessing. Kid sees a guy in a Santa Suit going on a killing spree and after growing up in a Catholic orphanage tries to ape the killer. Released during the holiday season it's pretty terrible on all counts.
8. We're No Angels (1955) casts Humphrey Bogart as a Devil's Island convict who helps a shopkeeper and family in the true Christmas season. Bogey's worst ever film which is saying quite a liot.
9. The Night They Saved Chreistmas (1984) has Jaclyn Smith and Art Carney in something about a mining company threatening to blow up the North Pole in search of an oil field. I watched this mind numbing fantasy almost until the bitter end.
10. Scrooge (1970) is a singin' and dancin' edition of A Christmas Carol with Albert Finney as Scrooge in an over the top characterization. Eleven totally forgettable songs and no relief for the poor viewer. Blah!
I submit the best Christmas movie remains It's A Wonderful Life (1946) because it's very scary and not at all cheerful like most holiday films I've been watching.

Canadian TV Drama Needs A Makeover

2011-12-18T18:07:00.003-05:00

The crises in Canadian TV always start with drama.
Consider the evidence: this fall Global TV had zero hours a week of filmed Canadian drama while CTV had a mere hour.
Remember the CRTC dictates that Canadian networks in prime time should have 50 per cent Canadian content which isn't happening right now.
And now on his most excellent TV website TVFeedsMyFamily veteran critic Bill Brioux reveals that Global's high rated but pricey locally made drama series Combat Hospital is probably kaput.
In Canada the summer series notched huge ratings even higher than Rookie Blue.
But ABC-TV has passed on ordering a second season and Global apparently doesn't have the resources to make it without that all important sale to an American network.
This isn't the first time a Canadian show fared well on Canadian TV but got dumped because the American co-producer pulled the plug.
Consider the fate of Falcon Beach (2005-07) which ran for two seasons also on Global but perished when Disney declined to finance a third year.
And Citytv's ratings wow Godiva's (2005-06)--all about life in a trendy Vancouver restaurant--=collapsed after two years because there was no U.S. sale.
It's true CBC's DaVinci's Inquest (1998-2005) lasted for seven seasons and 91 episodes completely without U.S. money although the entire package was later sold to CBS's affiliates for late night showings.
But another CBC Vancouver series Intelligence (2005-07) didn't make it to a third year despite superb reviews because of American disinterest --although both Fox and CBS tried and failed to make an American spinoff.
CBC's Being Erica currently runs on the American Soap weblet and that sale was a factor in CBC continuing to order new episodes of the ratings weak dramatic serial.
I visited the Combat Hospital set out in Etobicoke in the summer along with a gaggle of veteran scribes and later enthusiastically reviewed the series.
But if this means only shows that can be sold to the U.S. will survive on Canadian TV then we have a huge problem.
Flashpoint kept going on CTV because of the CBS commitment which is apparently now over. CTV's The Listener bombed mightily on NBC but CTV is apparently thinking of a later syndication deal on American TV.
It seems only CBC has the financial resources to make Canadian shows that are not set in some kind of hazy never land.
In January Global premieres a new ultra Canadian drama series in Bomb Girl starring Meg Tilly and shot in Toronto's Distillery District. And by the way I think it's smashing.
And then along comes The Firm which is shot in Toronto but stars American import Josh Lucas. It's also on Global.
Canadian TV movies and miniseries have virtually disappeared over the past few years.
And it all makes me wonder if Canadian TV as a separate entity has any fuutre at all.

Beyond Disaster Worth Catching On Citytv

2011-12-14T21:09:00.006-05:00

So here we are almost at the half way point in the 2011-12 TV season.
And everybody I'm meeting up with keeps asks me what's happened to Canadian TV.
It's disappeared that's what has happened: fewer dramas and comedies than I can even remember and even the news specials seem to have ceased.
That's why Citytv's new documentary Beyond Disaster seems so very special. It ditches the false bonhommie of the season to deftly examine the cracks and fissures on our foreign aid.
The compelling hour is part of an irregular series of specials titled Tough Choices With Gord Martineau and with the departure of Lloyd Robertson from reportage Martineau has become Canadian TV news's new iron man.
Citytv plans three more specials co-written and co-produced by Martineau to highlight his expertise in reporting.
And Martineu wisely chose as his first project a look at the Canadian relief organization GlobalMedic which ferries in life sustaining supplies to regions devastated by earthquakes or tsunamis or armed conflicts.
He shows footage from his earlier expedition to Haiti where the devastation was complete and returns to find the conditions still appalling.
These scenes get so scary the crew is advised to stay inside their vehicles. An old woman has died on a dusty main street and nobody bothers to stop and attend to the body.
His tour guide is Toronto paramedic Rahul Singh who first took him around years ago. Nothing on the surface seems to have changed although Singh keeps reiterating it has gotten --slightly --better.
Says Singh on the phone:"I think Gord was startled by how bad it still is. It's quite a sight --sad. Government agencies do not seem to have the means to turn it around."
Martineau and Singh also travelled to Cambodia where the challenges are completely different. A civil war 30 years ago left the countryside pockmarked with land mines. There are hundreds of thousands of them still hidden underground to go off and maim innocent young children.
But Singh also shows how a very simple solution --involving the most primitive technology can be used to clean the dirty river water and make it drinkable for youngsters who are perishing from cholera. The cost is about $50 a family and involves a combination of gravel, sand, some chemicals and cheesecloth..
The theme is that small is better, it can put the initiatives in the hands of the villagers and let them chart their future.
"When Gord asked me to be in this film I wasn't sure," Singh says. "It's difficult walking around with a cameraman following you. It took me some time to adjust to that."
In Haiti hundreds of million of dollars have been pledged but little has been done so far.
"We're saying give us less money than that and we can show you the results. We can cut corners to get things done," Singh says.
Another project underway: "Buying $100 winter coats for the children of the Attawapisket reserve. We're not about to tie up more money but approaching problems from a different perspective."
Maineau (scarcely changed from the guy I first interviewed at CFTO in the Seventies) surely knows what makes an hour of TV riveting and what questions to ask. Beyond Disaster challenges viewers and offers some small solutions and it's a must see especially at this time of the year.
Beyond Disaster was directed expertly by Karen PInker who produced and wrote it with Martineau.--all for 90th Parallel Productions.
It's an impressive start for the occasional new series of specials..
TOUGH CHOICES WITH GORD MARTINEAU: BEYOND DISASTER PREMIERES ON CITYTV SUND. DECX. 18 AT 10 P.M.
MY RATING: *** 1/2.

Harry Morgan: TV's Best Ever Character Star

2011-12-09T00:13:00.003-05:00

So there I was in the summer of 1976 taking a tour of the 20th Century-Fox backlot with Harry Morgan of TV's M*A*S*H. as my guide.
"See that soundstage over there," he said as he pointed. " We shot a lot of State Fair (1945) there. And that New York street --we shot Orchestra Wives (1942) along it. And over there at the M*A*S*H soundstage I worked with Hank Fonda on the western classic The Ox-Bow Incident (1943).
Harry Morgan who passed this week at the age of 96 had started on the lot in 1942 in the Randolph Scott actioner To the Shores Of Tripoli (1942).
"Played a character called Mouthy," he laughed. "I never forget the character's names.
"I was Ebenezer Burling in The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe (1942) and I was Henchman Nat in The Oregon trail (1942). I was the bath attendant in Somewhere In The Night (1946) --my part was so small I didn't have a name or even billing.
" In The Big Clock (1948) I was Charles Laughton's masseur and my assignment was to kill off Ray Milland."
Morgan chuckled as he toddled off to his dressing room and we had a pleasant lunch and he kept inviting me back to the M*A*S*H set every summer when I was attending the TV Critics' convention.
It just so happened the Century Plaza hotel had been constructed on part of the old Fox back lot and all I had to do was skip out during a boring mass interview and head for the back doors that opened onto the modern Fox studios.
And I did this every year until the final press conference announcing the end of Fox which was held in 1983. The normally taciturn Morgan was teary eyed on the occasion.
And I met up again with Morgan when he was filming an episode of The twilight Zone in Toronto in 1988 co-starring Canadians Cedric Smith, Barbara Chilcott and Robin Ward.
He talked about retirement then but whispered "But I'm a mere tad of 75."
In terms of TV series Morgan could well boast he'd been co-starred in more than any other actor around.
"I was busy in movies until 1954 when I jumped into December Bride on CBS opposite Spring Byington and it lasted five seasons. We shot before an audience until the last season when Spring and Verna Felton could no longer remember their lines so we had to do it on a soundstage in bits and pieces.
"Then CBS had the idea of a spin off called Pete And Gladys. I had been the next door neighbor who was always talking about his wife in comical turns. But when audiences actually got to see her it wasn't so much fun anymore.
"Then I co-starred in The Richard Boone Show (1963-64) which was NBC's idea for a TV repertory show --same bunch of actors every week but different stories. Audiences just didn't understand that at all.
"Kentucky Jones (1964-65) had Dennis weaver as a vet who adopts an orphan and I was his assistant and it lasted one season. It was full of the cutes.
"I then spent three seasons opposite Jack Webb on the revised Dragnet (1967-70). Jack was a strange character, very protective of his formula but very creative. He wanted me to talk in that staccato style of his and sometimes I just couldn't say the stuff.
"Hec Ramsey (1972-74) was one that Webb specifically hired me to be in..Webb told me it was Dragnet meets John Wayne and the critics picked that up. Richard Boone was the star but he was so cantankerous NBC cancelled us after two seasons.
"After M*A*S*H I did one called AfterMASH (1983-84) but viewers wondered where Alda and Swit were and it lasted one season only.
"I didn't learn my lesson, I was back at it with Blacke's Magic (1986) with Hal Linden from the guy who created Murder She Wrote. NBC panicked after initially bad ratings and we got cancelled too quickly."
Morgan then played Judge Bell in two TV movies opposite Walter Matthau (Against Her Will and Incident In A Small Town) and told me "He is an actor's actor. Listens! How many young actors do that?"
Harry Morgan listened intently every time I interviewed him.
For me and for millions of others he'll always be Col. Sherman Potter.
And I'm missing him already.

The Autism Enigma: Must See Canadian TV

2011-12-05T22:48:00.004-05:00

Sometimes a promising documentary gets vaulted into the must see category by events that can only be described as serendipitous.
The hour long The Autism Enigma falls into this category . The explosion of autism in very young children began as a Nature Of Things project co-directed by Marion Gruner and Christopher Sumpton.
Guleph based Gruner is a new mother who was only beginning to hone in on the subject when she interviewed the remarkable 90-year old Dr. Sydney Finegold, the world's leading authority on bowel flora.
In 1998 Feingold had a call from a Chicago gastroenterologist who knew a mother Ellen Bolte with a young son who she figured out might have had some form of bacterial infection.
"And we went to Chicago area to see her,"Gruner reports. "And she's a remarkable woman with a background that enabled her to know where to dig for facts and who to contact.
Her theory went something like this: the baby had to have huge doses of antibiotics which seemed to change his very demeanor and she wondered if it had somehow impacted on his central nervous system.
Interviewed on the hour Feingold says that was entirely possible and that when treated with Vancomycin the baby dramatically improved for the six weeks he was on the drug only to regress later.
"It turns out Mrs. Bolte photographed this period extensively and we see how much improved the boy is. And then we see the shocking regression," Gruner adds..
Bolte's remarkable documentation vaults The Autism Enigma into the category of must see TV.
And being able to personalize the story should make all the difference to many viewers. It provides an instant connection.
"It is a vastly complicated subject,"Gruner says.
And to further personalize the story the experiences of Somali children in Canada are documented --many experience similar symptoms when exposed to Western food traditions.
Then we get to know the leading researchers in the field: Dr. Derrick MacFabe, director of autism research at the University of Western Ontario, Laurie Mawlam of Autism Canada, Hassan and Idman Roble of the Somali Parent Support Group, Dr. Emma Allen-Vercoe and Dr. Emma Allen-Vercoe at the University of Toronto, Dr. Stephen Scherer of the Hospital For Sick Children, Biologist Jeremy Nicholson at London's Imperial College.
As absortbing as all their shared knowledge is it isn't pitched over the heads of an average viewer. And it's not presented in a scarey way either but logically.
Biggest problem Gruner faced was assembling a 44-minute print for NOT but she's done a splendid job here. A longer version has already been sold to French and German TV." It contained a whole segment on the situation in Norway which had to be deleted here for time."
I'd say a sale to U.S. TV should occur sooner than later because of the timeliness of the subject.
The Autism Enigma is the latest first rate documentary running on NOT this season making it one of the venerable series' best.
THE AUTISM ENIGMA PREMIERES ON NATURE OF THINGS THURSD. DEC. 8 ON CBC-TV AT 8 P.M.
MY RATING: ****.

"Yes, I Am Clark Gable's Daughter"

2011-12-03T14:29:00.002-05:00

"Yes, I am Clark Gable's daughter. My mother is Loretta Young."
That was the explosive way Judy Lewis introduced herself to me in 1994 when she was on a promotional tour for her autobiography.
The thing was in 1986 I'd scored a major scoop in Toronto by being the only Canadian reporter allowed on the set of Loretta Young's TV movie comeback called Christmas Eve.
Getting Young to agree to a one-on-one interview had been difficult but on the very last day of shooting she relented.
The head of NBC International which was making the movie simply told her the film had not yet been sold to a Canadian network "because people don't know who you are anymore."
At first Young said she'd give me 15 minutes but seven hours later she was still talking and reminiscing about her great career.
At 73 she was indeed still gorgeous and enviably wrinkle free.
And finally as she prepared for her last scene of the movie I took my leave but not before she offered this compliment: "Thank you for not asking the usual question."
And I said "If I had what would your answer have been?"
Young: "That if true it was the most romantic moment in Hollywood history."
The story was that Young and Clark Gable had an affair on the set of Call Of The Wild (1935). When the deeply religious Young learned she was pregnant she refused to use the studio abortionist but instead went to Europe for months returning anonymously on a ship that docked at Montreal.
From there she proceeded by train via Toronto and Chicago and then had what turned out to be a lovely daughter who was born in a private home in Venice, California. She then arranged to formally adopt the daughter so no one in Hollywood would ever suspect.
To be an unwed mother in 1935 Hollywood would have meant banishment by the studios all of whom had morality clauses in their contracts.
Gable offered to divorce his wife and marry her but Young simply refused.
When I told all this to Judy Lewis, her daughter, eight years later she briefly burst into tears.
Lewis had been told she was adopted and lived with her mother who subsequently married producer Tom Lewis. Young subsequently had two sons by Lewis.
"Growing up I longed to find my real mother. Little did I know she was right beside me."
Judy Lewis talked about the loneliness of growing up thinking she was adopted. But one day in 1949 when she came home from school there was Clark Gable waiting for her in the living room.
"He held my hand, asked all kinds of questions for over an hour. And then he left and kissed me on the forehead. I never saw my father again."
But Lewis joked "I had his dumbo ears, so big I later had to have an operation to reduce them."
Only when she was about to be married did Judy Lewis learn "from my husband" that she indeed was the daughter of Loretta Young and Clark Gable.
"My mother would not admit it to me until 1966. She called me a mortal sin which truly angered me."
In 1994 Judy Lewis was already 59 and had been through several careers as an actress and later soap opera producer. She was studying to be a therapist dealing with traumas of adopted children, she said.
Her book titled Uncommon Knowledge caused a three year rift in her relationship with her mother. They were reconciled before Loretta Young's death from cancer at the age of 87 in 2000.
But when I asked Young for another interview when she was back in Toronto in 1987 making another TV movie she defiantly said "Never!" That movie had already been pre-sold to CTV and she turned down all interview requests.
Judy Lewis died on Nov. 25e of lymphoma at her Pennsylvania home.
She was 76 and is survived by a daughter and grand children.
I remember her saying "Sometimes the real stories of Hollywood are far more interesting than the movies." And how right she was.

TV Talkers See Ratings Drip Away

2011-12-02T22:06:00.003-05:00

The November Sweep ratings are in and the news isn't great for tsome of TV's biggest talkers.
First, Piers Morgan who was plopped into Larry King's coveted CNN talk slot after King's ratings began a downward slide.
Well, it turns out Morgan's numbers are even worse.
Morgan is crazy about himself but few American viewers seem to be.
The November ratings give him an average of just 154,000 viewers a night in the 9 p.m. slot.
Far from stemming the slide Morgan has started his own avalanche.
He's down 4 per cent among the key demographic of viewers 25 to 54.
By contrast MSNBC's Ed Schultz averages 201,000 nightly although he has dropped 35 per cent over the year.
I just don't think Americans cotton on to Morgan's Britishness. His interviews with American politicians have been all over the place. Arts interviews seem a whole lot better.
King thrived for 20 years because he was the voice of the people and took pride in the fact he never studied up for an interview.
Also, Morgan's shows are taped and look it --he apparently didn't have the experience to go llve as King did after decades as a radio talk show host.
Morgan has stepped down from America's Got Talent in order to better prep for each night's CNN show. That's an indication he knows he's in serious trouble.
There's a similar trouble with Anderson Cooper's day job.
The personable CNN news host also has a daytime chatter show plagued with low ratings since its fall debut.
I'm thinking Anderson is just too serious for the fans of daytime who much prefer hyped, confrontational shows than the low wattage discussions his show projects.
As is typical on a show in trouble there's been movement at the top: executive producers Cathy Chermol and Lisa Morin are departing and Terence Noon who did a great job in rebooting Dr. Oz into a TV celebrity is coming in.
Apparently things came to a head during an edition on the Penn State scandals when the executive producer asked the audience no to hold back and Cooper disagreed with her. Tempers flared.
Good for Cooper not wanting to be exploitative but such seriousness does not grow ratings.
And then there's the strange case of Rosie O'Donnell now installed as the celebrity talker on Oprah Winfrey's new TV weblet OWN.
So far ratings have been disastrous --there's been a 49 per cent drop since Rosie's debut in October.
Look, I liked "Rosie Lite" when she had her daytime syndicated talk show and did mostly show bizzy interviews.
Then she got all feisty as part of The View and finally left in a huff --but let's face it veteran Barbara Walters was not going to be sideswiped by anybody.
Here she's a disappointment. The other night she snagged Phytllis Diller and incredibly the show just sagged --Diller in her 90s was quite funny.
Rosie isn't getting the big, competitive guests most nights because her ratings are so low. Like Conan she's been relegated to a network few peopled know exists.
Update: I just caught Rosie with stand up Brett Butler and it was a terrific show. Maybe Rosie is going to turn her show around.

I'd predict a quick cancellation here.

Waking The Green Tiger Is Great TV

2011-11-28T23:00:00.004-05:00

With all the chatter in Ottawa these days about the future of the CBC along comes a brilliant new documentary that fully justifies the Corporation's continuing existence.
Directed by Vancouver film maker Gary Marcuse and narrated by David Suzuki Waking The Green Tiger has its TV premiere on The Nature of things Thursday night on CBC-TV at 8 p.m.
It's quite unlike any other recent documentary on China in that it penetrates beneath the official government censorship to show how peasants in a southern part of China stopped the construction of a gigantic dam in "Tiger Leaping Gorge" in the Upper Yangtze River.
Marcuse's team enjoyed incredible access to the beleagured peasants of the valley and to the green activists who were egging them on to try to stop construction.
The hour blends in perfectly with Marcuse's two other films on environmental concerns. The first Nuclear Dynamite copped a Gemini with its look at the wacky idea of building a new Panama canal using nuclear explosives.
The second Arktika: The Russian Dream That Failed looked at the emerging Russian green movement sparked by fears of nuclear contamination from submerged Russian submarines in the Arctic.
"I was surprised at the level of government cooperation we got on this one," Marcuse tells me on the phone from B.C.
"I think it's because the green movement is seen not as a political problem but as a source of genuine concern for everyone. The premier had even expressed misgivings several times about the plan to build so many new dams on the Nu River and the Upper Yangtze.
"The passing of new green laws encourages people to express their concerns which certainly was not the case just a few years ago."
The production has already won an award as Best Canadian documentary at Toronto's Planet In Focus film festival and was listed as one of the Top Ten Canadian films at the Vancouver International Film Festival.
Marcuse says the Canadian contingent was small --just him and cinematographer Rolf Cutts-but he needed the cooperation of key Chinese green activists in telling the story correctly.
Some of the images are breathtaking --of the lush river valley and the industrious farmers.
"The landscape is simply stunning,"Marcuse says with some awe. "It's a big tourist center."
Government plans called for the displacement of 100,000 people and the complete flooding of 265 kilometers of the upper Yangtze.
Marcuse has compared it to flooding the Fraser river from Vancouver to Hope.
There are some great moments when local farmers board a bus to visit displaced villagers up the river and see for themselves what "progress" means. All over China a staggering total of 16 million people have been displaced by government dams.
"At first they're just happy to be on this trip, many had never been outside their valley. Then doubts set in by what they see."
Farmers in the relocated region now must root through garbage dumps to recycle glass bottles. They say they can't survive on the meagre compensation packets and many are dressed in rags. The villagers return with a renewed determination to fight the government bureaucrats.
When surveying posts are spotted in their fields the posts are quickly torn down. And the villagers meet and discuss ways for peaceful resistance which eventually does succeed in the delay for many years of the dam.
When I say many villagers do no look Chinese he says "There are many ethnic minorities there, many Tibetans and others. The valley was always a meeting spot for traders from different regions."
Everything the environmentalists are doing today runs counter to the pronouncements of Chairman Mao in 1958 as he urged his Great Leap Forward. What Map was really urging his supporters to do was wage war against the environment.
Archival black and white footage shows enthusiasts killing off the sparrows because Mao said they ate too much grain --but the birds also ate insects and without them great swarms of locusts resulted in massive crop failures in 1958 and 1959.
Marcuse even gets a typical Chinese couple of today who remember the starvation to wonder ironically why Chairman Mao so hated the sparrows --it's a great touch.
Today the green movement booms in China. Marcuse says his official government contact --his "minder"-even arranged an exclusive last minute interview with the former head of China's environmental protection agency Qu Geping who in a remarkable candid talk admits major mistakes were made.
Qu explains how environmentalism was allowed to sweep through the nation and how the government actually cooperated with the acitvists as long as they remained apolitical.
Marcuse says one inspiration was green activist Shi Lihong who graduated from film studies at Berkeley and had made a 20-minute film about the problems in the Upper Yangtze.
She emerges as one of the movement's heroines for sure.
For the moment Marcuse wants to get his film accepted for the Sundance festival. Already copies have gone viral in China and who knows some day might even be shown on government TV.
NOT has a 44-minute version and Danish TV bought a 56-minute one. The movie version runs 78 minutes so Waking The Green Tiger is reaching audiences in all sorts of ways.
WAKING THE GREEN TIGER RUNS ON CBC-TV'S THE NATURE OF THINGS ON THURSD. DEC.1 AT 8 P.M.
MY RATING: *** 1/2.

Surviving The Grey Cup: A Guide

2011-11-26T22:57:00.003-05:00

So the other day as I was addressing a Grade 8 class on the future of TV (I don't think it has one) a pert and sassy 13-year old asked me how I survived adolescence in the old world of a 10 channel universe.
I thought it was a funny line and tossed back an equally funny retort.
But now I'm thinking about it because The grey Cup is on Sunday night at 7 on TSN.
It doesn't carry the buzz it used to have.
Not on CBC. Not on CTV.
In ye olden days there'd always be a tussle about which of the nation wide networks would show The Game.
CBS always got there first with big bags of dough --remember this was before Quebecor started asking all those pesky questions about The Corp's finances.
One year I even remember CTV and CBC shared the broadcast so no one would be left out --in those days CTV's coverage was significantly less than CBC's
But these days?
The Game is live on TSN and that's that. The CRTC assumes everybody gets TSN these days but little do they know a lot of people are switching back to antennas these days. They're simply fed up with the huge cable fees and the lousy service.
I think the sports casters covering it will do just fine.
But to misquote my old U of T Chaucer professor Marshall McLuhan, the medium really is the message.
And being relegated to TSN, well, it somehow diminishes The Game.
The same thing happened when Glenn Beck was kicked off Fox TV and wound up on some obscure service and nobody ever quotes Glenn Beck anymore.
Same thing happened to Conan O'Brien in the States as he jumped from NBC to a service (TN) few Americans bother to subscribe too.
Conan no longer is getting the A list stars.
Well, we don't have a 10-channel choice anymore, do we?
The cable universe is 959 cable weblets and counting.
There's VHS and DVD to tape the game for future reference. Yo can tape The Game for later.
A guy I was just talking to told me he has 2,000 hours of curling on TV in his video library. And oh how he loves to watch those classic plays in slow motion.
Instead of Grey Cup CBC has three hours devoted to a movie blockbuster: The Chronicles Of Narnia.
Many households have more than one TV set these days so the days of the entire family gathered around watching CFL football is long gone.
Sunday night CTV is wall-to-wall Americana:Once Upon A Time, the Amazing Race and the 2004 flick The Bourne Supremacy.
Global TV continues its unabashed love affair with American imports: the Simpsons, The Cleveland Show, Alleb Gregory, Family Guy and American Dad.
And so it goes. I could pick Sister Wives on TLC. Naw. Or episodes of Suits and Castle on Bravo! Nope!
Buffalo's PBS affiliate WNED has a two-hour salute to the Lennon Sisters. If it were running a new Mystery! or Masterpiece Theater this is where I'd stop.
Also, there's Animal Planet which carries the repeat of the 2011 Puppy Bowl followed by the special When Animals Adopt at 8. Very tempting, very tempting.
There's a House Hunters marathon running on HGTV. But I'm more tempted by The Walking Dead marathon on AMC.
Turner Classic Movies has its premiere of Marilyn Monroe in There's No Business Like Show Business--Ethel Merman and Marilyn Monroe together again for the first (and last) time.
A baker's dozen of familiar American movie titles also dot the landscape.
And now I'm thinking how did I ever survive in that constipated old 10-channel world.
How did I spend my time?
Than it dawned on me --I actually read a lot of books and magazines back then.
And there was a ton of homework in high school --the government since my day abolished Grade 13 which is the reason record numbers of kids flunk out of university these days.
I made it through the rain OK. I survived on less.
And now with so many chances I just can't make my mind up at all.
Out of sheer frustration I just may watch an old tape or a preview DVD of something I want to review later on.

As My Stomach Churns: The End Of TV Soaps?

2011-11-25T18:03:00.004-05:00

Cue the organ music. Cut to a monstrous close-up of a circling globe.
And now dear friends I must report that two of my fave TV series One Life To Live and All My Children are definitely over.
Kaput. Finished. The End.
For months those of use who follow the soaps with any regularity had been reeling at the news All My Children and One Life To Live had been cancelled by ABC.
One Life To Live. of course, continues on ABC but only until its anticipated climax on Jan 13, 2012.
A new venture Online Entertainment had planned to move both soaps to the internet conditional on whopping pay reductions from the unions concerned.
The media and production company would be Prospect Park founded in 2009 by Jeffrey Kwatinetz and Frank Rich (former head of Disney Studios).
But after five months of negotiations the talks have broken off.
Closing with the AMC stars proved impossible. No way was Susan Lucci going to wind up on the internet after her ABC stardom days. So there already was some sort of delay in getting AMC back up and running.
But among the OLTL cast virtually all the stars including Erika Slezak, Ted King, Michael Easton and Kassie DePaiva were on board and raring to go.
The unions wanted too much, initial viewing figures might be negligible and there even was talk of selling second rights to some cable concern.
New series going straight to the internet?
It was a question of too much, too soon.

Is Dr. Jennifer Gardy CBC's Next Big science Star?

2011-11-21T22:43:00.003-05:00

Whither The Nature Of Things? Hither? Or thither?
Let me explain --the venerable CBC science series with Dr. David Suzuki almost went under a few seasons back when the CBC management team of the day wanted to cancel it after its 50th season on TV.
Nothing strange about that.
Over the years CBC-TV planners cancelled such CBC icons as Juliette, Tommy Hunter, even the gang on Front Page Challenge.
In each case the replacements proved less than stirling and in time got cancelled as well.
I was thinking about NOT's future when previewing Thursday's new episode Myth Or Science starring Dr. Jennifer Gardy.
Is it not a disguised pilot for a bright new hip science series. Just asking.
The formula is the kind of thing Discovery does so well all the time.
And the knock against NOT these days has been its cadre of aging viewers.
And may I also say i has an aging host --Dr. David Suzuki --the one who put NOT on the map eons ago.
I was around back then as NOT and its mighty rival This Land fought ratings duels week after week.
NOT's executive producer at the time, Jim Murray, told me of his game plan to fight back. Murray reckoned with CBC budget cuts there would soon be space for only one of these series and he wanted it to be NOT.
So he personalized the show, installed Suzuki as host and narrator, and when CBC honcos sat down to decide the fate of the two shows it was the hostless This Land that got dumped.
These days the hour long documentaries that are the hallmark of NOT have fallen out of favor with the head programmers.
Myth Or Science is a very watchable, fast paced look at all those scientific old wives tales we hold near and dear.
And instead of Suzuki fronting the show it's bright and perky Vancouver molecular biologist Jennifer Gardy who gets involved.
She's photogenic, has just the right credentials and is a natural on TV.
I've a feeling she'll be back in a series spinoff of this hour. And she's game for just about anything. Down the road a bit she may even get to step in as host of NOT.
Example: She journeys down to a Gainesville swamp in Florida and a mosquito breeding facility to check out whether anthropods really have an attraction for female over male flesh. the conclusion? Watch the hour to find out.
Or can eating fast cause weight gain? In New York city she goes hot dog to hot dog with Dave "Coondog" O'Karma to check out this myth.
At the University of Manitoba she meets "Dr. Popsicle" who submerges her in a tank of ice water to check the myth that the head loses body heat faster than other parts of the body.
Gardy makes a
She tried in 2008 to land a similar series attempt called the Project. But this time out she may make it.
Dugald Maudsley wrote and produced the hour (Jeff Semple directed) for Infield Fly Productions and as I say it's definitely a series possibility.
MYTH OR SCIENCE PREMIERES ON NATURE OF THINGS ON THURSD. NOV. 24 AT 8 P.M. ON CBC-TV.
MY RATING: *** 1/2.

Farewell To Regis

2011-11-18T15:14:00.004-05:00

It was an event of cataclysmic proportions.
Regis Philbin is the latest TV giant to depart from daytime.
Losing Oprah was a heavy enough blow. But Regis? He's been doing TV forever.
When did I first interview Regis Francis Xavier Philbin I'm wondering.
I had to look it up --it was on a 1975 TV junket in Los Angeles that I interviewed him for an NBC game show called The Neighbors which was a clone of the Newleywed Game.
Even then Regis had quite a history dating back to his years as announcer on Joey Bishop's late night show (1967-69).
Another gig of that time was as co-host with Cindy Garvey of the daily local show A.M. Los Angeles (1978-81).
I'd watch him in my L.A. hotel room and it was there that Philbin perfected his excited delivery style --he had to because he had to writers giving him material.
In July 1985 Philbin joined with Kathy Lee Gifford in New York on the daily national talk show Live With Regis And Kathie Lee --it ran nationwide on ABC stations and in Canada on CTV.
I spent a day on the set in the early 1990s. I sat up in the bleachers with all those darling women who'd been bussed in from small hamlets on the East Coast. Kathie Lee came out during the warmup and went right up to me and said "You don't look like you're having fun."
Later after the telecast I went to her dressing room and she was beside herself with laughter. "I must have known you were a critic!" she hollered.
Regis was nice, too, but preoccupied with catching a limo that would take him to a book signing on Long Islands.
They worked very well together and the whole effort was unscripted --that's what really made it work.
Kathie Lee decamped in 2000 and siap star Kelly Ripa was chosen as replacement in 2001.'In 2004 Regis overtook Hugh Downs as TV's most watched ever host with 15,662 hours to his credit --and counting.
The Guinness Book Of records said in 2009 he was up to 16,334 hours.
Philbin's contract with ABC was worth $21 million a year. When it expired the network declined to renew on such lush terms because of his age --he's 80.
So he now joins Larry King as a TV star emeritus. Kelly will go it alone with some guest hosts until a replacement is announced.
And Regis's departure has given way to a lot of musing about the future of daytime TV.
I'd say he's irreplaceable.
Look, nobody has stepped forward to replace Oprah. Anderson Cooper seems diminished as a daily talk show gabber. I don't dig Dr. Phil at all. Nate Berkin is pleasant but preoccupied with decor.
The point is made that at her peak Oprah attracted 6,5 million U.S. viewers daily. Drs Phil and Oz get just half that as does Ellen.
Waiting to jump in is perky Katie Couric while CBS is planning one with Jeff Probst.
Soaps are being dumped left and right for cost but talk shows are oh so very cheap.
Because of his background Regis was one of a kind.
And I for one am going to miss his professional pep and sassiness delivered at such an early hour.

The Nature Of Things Deserves Preserving

2011-11-17T01:34:00.006-05:00

Big news of the fall Canadian TV season is the mighty crash in the ratings of most CBC-TV series.
To me it means that more than ever CBC needs to preserve and enrich its crown jewels among which I number The National, Hockey Night In Canada and the Nature Of Things, Canadian TV's longest running scripted series.
A few years back there were rumblings at CBC that NOT's day was numbered and it would fold after its record breaking 50th season.
That didn't happen. Instead a period of benign neglect set in.
And don't forget the competition from such cable channels as Discovery and TLC.
But so far this season the crop of NOT's documentaries has been unusually high.
And that quality continues with the Emperor's Lost Harbour which looks at the unearthing of the lost harbour of Byzantine emperor Theodosius the last emperor to rule over both eastern and western sections of a United Roman Emperor.
The thing is modern historians knew a lost great harbour existed but its exact placement was in doubt --it has completely silted up at least 500 years ago.
Only when the modern city of Istanbul commissioned a new underground railway into the center of the city of 15 million people did archeologists hit upon this vast treasure trove of abandoned ships from another era.
We get introduced to the vast army of excavation engineers and what they're looking for but there's also a deadline because the train service has to be completed on deadline.
And we get a peek at some of the amazing artifacts unearthed --there are nearly complete ships that sank with complete cargoes onboard.
The Canadian geologist Nick Eyles introduces us to the various experts and what they're doing to unearth the past.
Made as a Canadian-French production and
Although host David Suzuki narrates it's clear he never actually visited the site. It's as if Suzuki's great rival David Attenborough were stuck in a London BBC studio instead of getting out on the road.
THE EMPEROR'S LOST HARBOUR IS ON CBC-TV'S THE NATURE OF THINGS ON THURSD. NOV. 17 AT 8 P.M.
MY RATING: ***.

Murdoch Mysteries Saved --For Now

2011-11-15T20:40:00.003-05:00

Murdoch Mysteries has been saved from the Citytv gulllotine at the last minute.
It's so unCanadian.
If you want all the details click on Bill Brioux's always excellent TV blog TV Feeds My Family for his insider details.
Murdoch and I we go way back, all the way to the time the concept was a handful of TV movies starring -=-are you ready for it --Peter Outerbridge.
But Outerbridge was a busy guy in those days.
In the summers he'd toil on the Murdochs which were then being shot in Winnipeg for three outings in 2004.
His main job was as star of ReGenesis, yet another classy show produced by Christina Jennings.
I remember at one Global TV launch when asked which one he'd chose over the other Outerbridge chose Murdoch Mysteries which really gave Global's executives gas pains.
But of course when Murdoch segued into a weekly series shooting at the same time as ReGenesis Outerbridge had no choice whatsoever. He had to stick with the sci fi hit.
Enter Yannick Bisson who was available.
I've been covering him since he was the new guy opposite Megan Follows in the TV movie Hockey Night (1984) when he was just 15 and already a comer.
Unlike most teen beau hunks Bisson did not falter --I covered him when he was c-starring in the 1986 flick Toby McTeague, the 1988 TV series Learning The Ropes, High Tide (1994), Nothing Too Good For A Cowboy (1999), Soul Food (2000), Sue Thomas F.B. Eyye (2002).
The word in the Canadian TV industry is Bisson always delivers.
So far the 52 episodes shot of Murdoch have been his steadies work.
I remember being on the set when the series was being shot in Toronto's east end and interviewing the author ()()()() who weeks later almost drowned off the coast of Florida in a freak accident.
The CBC press release says the network will be picking up Murdoch for a sixth season and I'm wondering if that includes rights to the reruns --with these CBC could kill off Ghost Whisperer, right?
CBC picking up another network's series? In CBC's Golden Age it never happened.
I remember dining with Brian Linehan after he defected from Citytv in 1989 --he supposed either CBC or CTV would pick him up but it never happened.
Linehan was part of the competition and not CBC's style, I was told.
I'm also remembering the stink when the new Ontario network Global TV filed for bankruptcy in 1972.
A lot of good Global product had to be dumped because neither CBC nor CTV wanted to acknowledge a need for product from a competitor.
Bernie Braden told me he'd tried to shop his Global consumer affairs show to CBC and got laughed at.
Anybody out there remember the great stink when CBC dumped Don Messer's Jubilee in 1969?
A determined Messer jumped to CHCH to tape another season which was syndicated station to station.
I can't remember a single CTV Canadian show ever going to CBC, can you?
I mean why would CBC ever have a need for Thrill Of A Lifetime, Stars On Ice, or Police Surgeon?
Wait, I'm on a roll! Wouldn't it have been hysterical if CBC had snatched away from CHC either Ein Prosit or The Hilarious House Of Frightenstein? No way!
But when CBC cancelled Fighting Words with Nathan Cohen, the Toronto Star critic sauntered down to CHCH to keep taping episodes until his death in 1971.
No, CBC and CTV would fight over American imports but never over Canadian content. CTV raised hell when CBC snatched away Laugh In for its second season by doubling what CTV was paying for the show.
And years later CBC smatched up thirtysomething after Global thought it had made the purchase for Canadian rights.So CBC riding to the rescue rto save Murdoch Mysteries is good news.
It's too bad CBC didn't also save Godiva's a few season ago, now there was a youth oriented series with great potential.
Perhaps as retaliation Citytv might pounce on Being Erica?
It's just a thought but worth exploring.

NBC Makes Big Changes

2011-11-15T00:23:00.003-05:00

Look, things could not be any more dire for the fourth rated U.S. network, peacock proud NBC.
So the network is rearranging the deck chairs.
And the biggest concern is the sudden disappearance of Prime Suspect.
When Global TV rolled out its all American prime time the proud boast was the acquisition of the U.S. version of the Helen Mirren hit Prime Suspect.
Well, that just didn't happen.
Those of us who remembered the PBS original were aghast at the re-tinkering. And new viewers couldn't get around the basic unsympathetic heroine now played by Maria Bello.
In NBC's revamped lineup Prime Suspect is conspicuous by its absence. NVC oiurces say no decision has been made on its future. I don't think it has a future, it's as simple as that.
NBC ran the show in all kinds of days and times to try to build up an audience. It didn't work. Viewers simply were not interested
Another show "disappearing" is low rated Community --but here NBC assures us it is merely being benched.
30 Rock is coming back plus a new comedy based on the exploits of Chelsea Handler.
Starting Jan. 12 a TV version of John Grisham's The Firm replaces Prime Suspect Thursdays at 10.
Harry's Law is getting relocated to Sundays but not until March.
And I know everybody is really excited Celebrity Apprentice is returning Sun. Feb. 12 at 9 p.m.
And NBC says two reality series --Who Do You Think you are? and Project Runaway are also debuting in the New Year.
NBC had been highly touting a new drama series Awake but I don't see it anywhere on the schedule so far.
CBS which has a vast array of hits is replacing Rules Of Engagement (which goes on hiatus) with a new Rob Schneider comedy called imaginatively Rob.
Got all that?

Meet Jon Lajoie

2011-11-12T00:06:00.004-05:00

Poor Jon Lajoie, there he was in Los Angeles in co-starring in a bright new TV sitcom The League.
Only trouble was his friends back in Quebec couldn't get the channel FX until last month it suddenly appeared on Canadian cable TV systems.
"But when I'm out on the road with my act Canadians everywhere come up and say how much they're enjoying me in The League."
Either a lot of cagey folk out in the sticks have illegal satellite dishes or they're on the Internet and can watch Lajoie's saucy song parodies.
When told kids on my street were singing one of them Lajoie is momentarily silent. I guess he's hoping it's not one of the salacious ones like Mel Gibson's Love Story.
"We try to be naughty, not dirty," he then explains. "And of course very funny. But these are not for children."
Lajoie talked to me from Toronto (by phone) as he's about to embark on another road trip to parts of Canada rarely traversed."It keeps me sharp and I use the experience to hone my routines and stories. There's nothing like a live audience."
Which mkes being funny on the League especially challenging as it's photographed in real homes outside L.A.'s core.
"We have to figure out in advance what will work. The only audience really? Ourselves I guess."
Lajoie was born in St. Hubert, Quebec but raised in Montreal. His father is French Canadian, mother English hence his total bilingual ability to be funny in both official languages.
When I tell him how much I liked him in the Radio Canada drama L'auberge du chien noir as a character fantasically named Thomas Edison he thanks me but says it was tough to leave the hit series which is still running strong in the ratings.
"I played a bad father who deserts my child. So maybe if the series ever winds up I guess I'll come back to Montreal and finish it. But I had to follow my comedy expectations."
Every actor comes to L.A. armed with a DVD of best scenes. The fact Lajoie's was in French made some L.A. agents hesitant.
"I took meetings, I think that's the term. I met over 100 people." Quebec actors don't exactly flock to L.A. although a few headed by Genevieve Bujold have done well.
"And Cirque du Soleil." Yes, but they don't really perform in English.
On The League Lajoie plays perpetual stoner Taco MacArthur who blames his condition on the fact he was introduced to marijuana at age 8.
"I've written songs specifically for him to do on the show. I can only report all the guys on the show get along and we try to support each other. My character makes a lot of ringtones, that's the best way to describe him. But I'm the only Canadian in the group."
Filming finished for the year on Nov. 3 and now it's time to travel.
"I like to meet the people. Different areas of Canada have different senses of humor. It's always challenging."
NOTE: THE LEAGUE RUNS THURSDAYS AT 10:30 P.M. ON FX CANADA.

I'm Dreaming Of A Canadian TV Christmas

2011-11-10T22:46:00.004-05:00

It's been a rough fall for Canadians who actually like to watch Canadian TV.
Wall to wall American series prevail even on nominally Canadian networks.
But a friend at a party this week told me she's going to retaliate by buying books on Canadian TV and Canadian DVDs as Christmas presents this year.
Good luck!
I've been trying for years to get our local networks to put more stuff up on DVDs.
Hear me out. I've always advocated a DVD package of the "Best Hits" from CBC's iconic Front Page Challenge.
In a three disc set one could get all the news makers from Martha Mitchell to Lord Mountbatten to prime ministers St. Laurent, Diefenbaker and Trudeau. Every high school would want a box set.
For years I pestered CBC to do up a DVD collection of Juliette's best programs. Too expensive I was told --the grainy kinescopes would have to be remastered.
But I still think it could be done --I'd add Brian Linehan's hour interview with her done about 15 years ago and I'm betting nostalgic viewers would snap it up.
CBC bureaucrats would always sniff and state they were not in the entertainment business.
Why aren't Norman Campbell's superbly staged TV ballets available? And what about those "Raskymentaries" --the 90-minute profiles of greats from Chagall to Raymond Massey --offered up every year or so by Emmy winner Harry Rasky.
I've also tried to get Elwood Glover's best ever interviews from Luncheon Date out there. No luck so far but remember Glover interviewed every great who was touring in a play --Helen Hayes, Virginia Mayo, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. At the time his live series came from the basement of the Four Seasons hotel on Jarvis St. across from CBC's Kremlin.
One CBC dramatic gem was the series A Gift To Last with Gordon Pinsent --it's not on DVD but I once saw it being rerun in Ialian on Telelatino.
I've long been convinced CBC's current team are not even aware of the TV jewels hidden away in their musty vaults.
In recent years Intelligence got a DVD release and remains a must-see. And the first two (of three) seasons of This Is Wonderland came out on DVD.
Current CBC product including Heartland and Little Mosque On The Prairie are available,too.
The same can be said of CTV. When Lloyd Robertson retired as anchor CTV should have produced a best moments compilation which could have sold in all the supermarkets where I see mediocre American shows relentlessly hawked.
Here's a list of the CTV series I covered with on-set interviews: Half The George Kirby Comedy Hour, Stars On Ice, Headline Hunters, Definition, The Pat Paulsen Show, Pig "N Whistle, Rolling Down The River, Simon Locke M.D.
Do you really want to see any of these oldies? I 'm just asking.
But later on CTV had some respectable hits including ENG which has never gotten a DVD release.
When TVO first came on in 1971 I sat down and reviewed its first big new series --a homage to Shaw featuring choice interviews with the likes of Dames Wendy Hiller and Sybil Thorndike. I've never been able to find it since.
One CHCCH oldie is out there and selling like hot cakes and I'm proud to report I was the only TV critic crazy enough to go on the set of The Hilarious House Of Frightenstein.
But what about the CHC series I'm most asked about? Sorry, folks, but only a few choice episodes of the immortal Party Game remain --most of the tapes were recycled at season's end and the originals lost. But I do know player Billy Van did ferret out some of his favorites and these bootleg copies abound.
A later CHCH effort The Palace was tapped at Hamilton Place with Jack Jones as host and it might warrant a DVD release --guests included Ethel Merman and Ginger Rogers. At the end of each taping day the Canadian talent trotted out to do their acts which were spliced into the Canadian content version of the show.
One DVD owner told me he's even had requests for such cable fare as Paradise Falls and Kink.
And he does stock and regularly sells DVDs of Trailer Park Boys believe it or not.
Canadian books on Canadian TV are even harder to find.
There's been no biography of Juliette who at her heyday was drawing three million loyal viewers every week.
Ever big U.S. series seems to inspire an anthology with all the episodes duly rated and rated. But Canadian TV doesn't get that kind of exposure. Our entire system is stacked against home grown talent I'm sad to report.
But there is on Canadian book on Canadian TV that miakes a great Christmas present.
It's Air Farce: 40 Years Of Flying By The Seat Of Our Pants by Don Ferguson and the late great Roger Abbott who died before it could be completed. Veteran TV critic Bill Brioux has contributed some of the most interesting chapters and the whole thing has just been published in time for the Christmas rush.
Why can't other Canadian TV success stories be equally celebrated? I just don't get it.

New Series Tanked Doesn't Tank on Discovery

2011-11-04T23:52:00.003-04:00

I've really got to stop ranting about moronic reality shows. My solution: just don't watch them.
But then I got a DVD preview screener of another new reality show and it seemed so odd I just had to check it out.
It's called Tanked and is all about a family owned aquarium business set smack dab in Las Vegas where water is at a premium.
I mean I do know a guy up the street and he actually says he likes watching the Aquarium Channel. So there are all sorts of TV viewers out there.
And we've head reality shows about a family who own a funeral parlor, American and Canadian pickers, you name it.
And finding out some of the stuff about the aquarium trade is pretty interesting.
Wade King and Brett Raymer are profiled --King is married to Raymer's sister Heather who also works in the emporium.
They build all sorts of tanks to specifications and the weird orders don't seem to faze them: in one episode a phone booth gets transformed into a tank, one Vegas casino wants a gigantic tank with a mob theme. Go figure.
In all these reality things there are deadlines to meet to keep us watching. And the participants get endlessly interviewed about the tensions they must surmount before the finish. There's the clash of egos. And the owners can get testy sand demand revisions. It's the same when buying a coffin or buying a tank.
When I talked to Wade on the phone he agreed getting used to the cameras and mikes in his face took some adjusting. That's because he's the dedicated, determined worker while Brett plays the lovable goofball role.
"But we've been doing it a long time (14 years) and we have really surmounted a lot of obstacles. I just have to learn to talk more."
An aquarium business set in the sand dunes of Vegas? It seems, well, strange. But maybe it's the perfect place because these people have a visceral need for some water in their lives even if its only in a tank.
"We cater to all people,"Wade is saying. "Yes, the huge projects are interesting. But we have a lot of average customers, too."
And the boys hope someday to come up to Toronto. But when I mention the near freezing temperatures I'm sure I can hear Wade's teeth c;attering. He says maybe later.
After all there's been this bizarre proposal to turn the CBC's gigantic white elephant of a building into the world's biggest aquarium. Now that would be a project of all projects.
Of course the wonderful world of aquariums has all changed with the substitution of acrylic for glass which can scratch a bit.
One website says Wade's most expensive project was a tank that held 3,000 gallons and cost $150,000 because it needed a strong foundation. I should have asked him about that one.
But in the episode I saw there was some weird construction going one. One rich dame wanted a huge tank stuck inside a car. The car was tripped to the frame and painted and a custom built tank set up complete with a painted backdrop.
In another sequence a very rich couple had a series of tanks built on top of each other to fit into the recesses of a living room wall. These custom builds had to be made twice before they were satisfied.
And both of these good ole boys had to don wet suits to dress up a huge casino tank so that the dancing girls could prance underwater with the fish looking on.
We also get some pointers on how the fish have to be quarantined for 30 days before being introduced together in a new tank. Wade is very insistent on providing the necessities so the fish thrive.
Alrady a hit on U.S. TV, Tanked is the latest Vegas business to get its very own series.
TANKED PREMIERES ON ANIMAL PLANET ON MOND. NOV. 7 AT 8 P.M.
MY RATING: ***.

Massimo Capra's New Series Gourmet Escapes

2011-10-31T22:16:00.003-04:00

I first started noticing Toronto chef Massimo Capra on City Line where his hearty personality was attracting a wide audience of devoted foodies.
And when he moved over to the Food Network's Restaurant Makeover I started wondering when he'd get his own show.
Well, it's here and exclusive to the revamped Travel +_ Escape network now owned by GlassBOX Television.
Any program with Capra finds the expansive cook front and center but this time he must yield some space every weeks to a guest chef.
I watched the first episode in the new 13-week series and was impressed. Set in Ireland it shows the wide variety of fare available to the connoiseur of local fare.
"Everywhere there's green in many shades,"Capra tells me. "It was a wonderful experience. We shot enough for several more programs, it was hard to stop."
The theme is local cooking so Capra partners with local cooks who show him the insides and outsides of their craft. "I cook beside them, do what they want me to do. But most importantly I ask questions."
"The Irish episode really works. I sample Irish honey, it's so amazingly pure. And when we go for rhubard the stalks are the size of a tree trunk yet when cooked simply sweet and delicious.
"My job is to get these artists to be comfortable on camera. You know my old friend actor Jonathan welsh told me to simply ignore the camera and be myself. That's what I tell all my guests. Oh, sure, I'll play up a little to get them loose but they have a lot of expertise to show us."
Each episode starts with an appeal to the local Tourism board to find the right chefs and the right locales.
"In Italy I won't be doing the obvious places --like Rome. I want to go to Sicily, to Cremona. In Switzerland we are doing two shows. The one in Amsterdam highlights Dutch cooking which few of us know much about. I Wales I've found a food school worth shouting about."
But doesn't all this traveling interfere with his Toronto restaurant Mistura?
"Not really, when I'm here I'm really here and I'm rarely away for more than 10 days. My patrons expect me here and I can't be away more, you see.
"This series is taking a long time but it's the beginning, we want to get everything right.
"I hope the Irish show interests everyone. We go to an island where the only inhabitants are pigs. And our chef poaches a huge pike and I provide assistance with the other courses. We serve it to a large, invited crowd and they were knocked out. It's all in the service of better cooking."
GOURMET ESCAPES PREMIERES ON TRAVEL + ESCAPE ON WED. NOV. 2 AT 8 P.M.
MY RATING: ***.

FX Canada Signs On With American Horror Story

2011-10-30T22:07:00.006-04:00

You can tell from the opening credits of American Horror Story that this new series on FX Canada is going to creep you out.
The Credits open with a montage of creepy stills and bloodied surgical instruments. And it's all been created by Ryan Murphy who last gave us Glee!
But American Horror Story has but one purpose: to scare the viewer half to death.
It also helps to know your horror movies and TV series from the past.
At one point in the basement of this old dark house I swear I heard snatches of Bernard Herrmann's score from Psycho.
As a salute to the best of the past it helps that you've seen Bettlejuice, A Nightmare On Elm Street, Rosemary;s Baby, The Shining and about a dozen other classics.
First up there's the old dark house which psychiatrist Ben Harmon (Dylan McDermott), wife Vivien (Connie Britton) and their daughter Violent (Taissa Fermiga) have moved into in Los Angeles after a move from Boston.
The mansion doesn't look Southern Californian at all but has been lovingly restored from its Victorian splendor.
As in all these stories the family doesn't realize at first the mansion is haunted and has been the site of several grisly murders over the decades.
Next door resides a deliciously evil dumb blonde Constance portrayed in high style by Jessica Lange.
And Ben meets the horriblf burned Chad (Zachary Quinto) who once lived in the house before torching it and killing his wife and daughters. Frances Controy from Six Feet Under plays a strange housekeeper Moira who is attached to the home.
Shot on location in an actual old home in Country Club Park, Los Angeles, the house quickly emerges as the most interesting character of all. Some scenes are filmed at Fox on sets which are exact replica's of the rooms in the house.
Murphy's style has always been to overdo almost everything and here he succeeds. In the horror genre less is considered more --the less you see and know the more creeped out you're going to be.
But on AHS it's all scary scenes without the necessary down moments for the viewers to recuperate.
There's a lot of nudity, blood letting, screaming --you name it.
Jessica Lange understands she must play everything at full throttle to disguise her character's true intentions and she is obviously having a ball. And one line she has in the opener made me sit up straight when she warns the maid: "Don't make me kill you again."
The maid is sometimes Frances Conroy but she morphs into a sexy, young thing when Ben is eyeing her.
But after awhile the profusion of gore got to me. I was no longer shocked by the succession of killings. Too much is too much. At certain points in this story the blood letting gets impossible to top. Certainly you will not be bored although you might have to turn away on occasion.
But logic escapes this story. It ends up not making any sense at all and makes Psycho look like a church picnic. That's when camp takes over. Jessica Lange understands this but Connie Britton tries for subtle touches which are not needed.
AHS emerges as extremely indulgent when what was really called for was a dash of subtelty.
But I effortlessly predict the sales of renovated old dark houses will slip as long as AHS is runs on FX Canada.
AMERICAN HORROR STORY PREMIERES ON FX CANADA ON MONDAY OCT. 31 AT 9 P.M.
MY RATING: ***.

Let's Cancel the New TV Season

2011-10-28T21:04:00.004-04:00

So far the new American TV season has bombed.
There are only two new unvarnished hits: Working Girls on CBS and New Girl on Fox.
Every thing else could be cancelled tomorrow and who would notice?
According to a brilliant new story on ADWeek this week the rest is just filled with also rans.
My network sources say getting play for the new shows gets more difficult by the year particularly with the advent of so many competing cable channels who premiere their fare at all through the year and just not in September.
Jiggle TV is brain dead: look at those casualties Charlie's Angels and The Playboy Club.
The much hyped Terra Nova isn't getting renewed --its plots are sully,. Who tunes in for a bad story but great special effects.
Some much anticipated series like Pan Am and Prime Suspect might still make it but their ratings are anemic so far.
Would you believe Fox is number one right now --that could also be due to baseball playoffs.
CBS is so close that for demographic purposes it says it has a tie. ABC's audience is down 4 per cent this year while NBC is in free fall and has lost a whopping 14 per cent of its audience. The only show saving NBC from complete collapse is Sunday Night Football, I'm told. All this does matter in Canada because the commercial networks purchase U.S. hits for hundreds of thousands of dollars. But why pay a fortune and get a stinker like Charlie's Angels?
It just doesn't make sense to me.
CBS's big problem remains its rapidly aging schedule of procedurals. This could be the last season for one or two of the very expensive CSI franchises.
ABC says its new shows are performing well and has placed full season orders for the Tim Allen show, Once Upon A Time,
Revenge and Subpurgatory.
NBC says it isn't panicking and has ordered full seasons for Whitney and Up All Night despite their bad ratings.
Biggest headache for Fox is the poorly performing The X Factor: it's so expensive to produce it may well wind up a one season wonder.
With ratings plunging why don't the U.S. networks switch to the Canadian ratings system which claims that ratings on conventional Canadian networks (outside of CBC) are up in the past few years?
Because if you believe that you'll believe anything.

American Networks Sliding In Ratings

2011-10-24T20:11:00.002-04:00

The big news of this still young TV season is the drip-drip-dripping away of ratings among most of the American networks. Biggest drop is being posted by NBC which was already in fourth spot when the new season began last month.
Having a whole pack of dopey new shows and some rapidly aging old ones doesn't help.
How does this affect Canadian viewers?
Well, most of the fare on the Canadian commercial networks these days consists of American imports.
According to the Wall street Journal ratings are down across NBC by as much as 30 per cent which is a whopping drop any way one looks at it.
Both Law & Order:SVU and The Biggest Loser lost one of their biggest stars and have posted tremendous declines. NBC's downfall comes after a decade of cutting costs. Remember that stupid plan to cancel all the NBC dramas at 10 p.m. in order that Jay Leno could soar in prime time?
It didn't happen and when the dust cleared Leno was back at 11:30 p.m. in his old Tonight Show berth and decades younger Conan O'Brien had quit the network in disgust.
This year Comcast purchased the ailing web from General Electric with a plan to pump money into bid budgeted new drama series.
Bob Greenblatt who had successfully steered U.S. cable weblet Showtime to ratings success was plopped in. But one of his first new shows the dog awful The Playboy Club has already tanked and is gone.
NBC sources are saying the network is sticking with Prime Suspect which seems to be getting better by the week. NBC has started promoting the heck out of it with multiple runs to pump up audience interest.
And two NBC comedies --Whitney and Up All Night--do how signs of promise. But both poll way below Fox's bright new sitcom hit New Girl.
And the situation at 11:30 just isn't laughable with Nightline on ABC now pulling ahead of Leno.
But The Office is doing OK for a very old show --much better than CBS's Two And A Half Men which has lost half its premiere week audience.
The only thing left in the NBC hamper is the new series Grimm which starts Friday plus Fear Factor waiting in the wings.
But if NBC gets real desperate it could always import a Canadian drama or two as filler, right?

Jayne Eastwood And I

2011-10-23T22:48:00.003-04:00

Jane Eastwood And I, we go way, way back in Canadian TV.
I was a very young summer student reporter for The Globe And Mail in July, 1970, when entertainment editor Donn Downey despatched me to the wilds of west Toronto to interview someone he described as a "bright, new starlet.
"Her name is Jayne Eastwood," he barked "and she's in that hot new Canadian flick Goin' Down The Road."
Wait a minute! A new Canadian "flick" that was hot?
Well, I went to the cinema that night to catch Eastwood and company and boy was she mesmerizing in this brilliant movie directed by Don Shebib.
And all of a sudden critics were talking about the birth of Canadian cinema.
It never happened but that didn't stop Eastwood from sashaying into one of Canadian TV's biggest stars.
I remember how hot it was that day and the bareness of her apartment --the only piece of furniture she had was a lumpy mattress on the floor.
I seem to recall a cat named Frank although that might be from a later visit.
She was funny, she was sassy and willingly posed on the back porch waving a bottle of beer as if still in character as GDTR's Betty. It all added up to a great story although stodgy Globe editors remained unimpressed.
Only later was I to learn Downey's brother was her agent. But no matter. She made for a delicious interview and fopr a few years after that she was much sough after.
I interviewed other starlets in those years and most of them were never heard from again.
But Eastwood persevered. She became ever more busy with the passing of the years.
She was the original choice to co-star with Al Waxman in the CBS sitcom King Of Kensington but was pregnant with her first child and only got onto the show in its last years (1978-80) after original star Fiona Reid decided to quit.
I definitely remember a reunion with Eastwood who was rehearsing for a live drama at CBC with expatriate Canadian actress Allyn Ann McLerie but it is not listed among her credits. Hey you guys at IMDB look out!
I definitely caught up with her again on the promising CBC sitcom Material World (1990-92). Her dressing room was next to Chris Potter who would be her co-star on Zoe Busiek: Wild Card (2003). a decade later.
When she was later dropped from the show the series started to tank.
Of course there were dozens of other credits:guest spots on Friday The 13th, Mom P.I.,Ray Bradbury Theater, Night Heat. It's a virtual who's who of Canadian TV.
One time I sat with Jayne and her delightful brother at the Gemini awards.
And thank goodness she finally received the prestigious Earle Grey awards for her contributions to Canadian TV.
Family commitments kept her from defecting to Hollywood decades ago. She could have been a big star down there.
Her career most closely resembles Barbara Hamilton's. Both had a firm commitment to country and with their verisimiltude they could always find quality work here.
In recent years Jayne, 65, has had a choice recurring role on Little Mosque and two more projects are in post production (Dark Star Hollow, The Story Of Luke).
It couldn't happen to a more talented actress.
And TV and movies have only been part of her career. Check her out in person in the revue Women Fully Clothed where she more than holds her own.
Sorry!Have to ring off now. I'm off to see Down The Road Again, the sequel that only took 41 years to come together.

A New Canadian Series On Canadian TV! Wow!

2011-10-22T22:58:00.003-04:00

I'm being constantly asked this fall why some Canadian TV networks have virtually no Canadian shows save for the obligatory national newscasts.
Well, there are new Canadian series out there, you only have to dig a bit to find them.
Like the brand new series Extraordinary Canadians which premieres Sunday night at 8:30 on Citytv.
The premise made me hesitate for a moment: Canadian authors talking about their subjects for half an hour. The series is a TV adaptation of the Penguin Canada series of books which going to paperback this fall.
I feared it might be another talking heads thing and we've got several of those around where one feels obligated to listen in as academics churn about and drone and drone.
So I plopped in the first DVD --Mark Kingswell on Glenn Gould and --surprise --I learned something and was fascinated all over again with this true eccentric.
And here's my Glenn Gould anecdote --the day of his death (Oct. 4, 1982) all the entertainment critics at the Toronto Star (all save the classical music critic who was cruising down the Mississippi on a junket) got lists of sources to phone to get quotes and reaction.
First on my list was famed pianist Artur Rubinstein and the agent even gave me his direct telephone line in Paris.
The Star operator dialed and Mr. Rubinstein, 94, answered the line.
And for several moments he gave me a precise description of the way he liked to play the piano (with an audience) and how Glenn Gould prefered a solitary recording styudio.
Kingswell plays on this oddity --a star pianist who seemingly shunned the spotlight and even played up his oddities.
Kingswell visits Gould's well worn chair now in the National Archives, we see the Toronto Beach house where he grew up, the summer cottage.
All this is accompanied by TV clips, newsreels, old interviews and various yellowing clippings.
I liked it all and was very disappointed it only runs half an hour.
So I chose the second DVD: Adrienne Clarkson on Norman Bethune.
This could be Clarkson's first sustained TV work since she exited Adrienne Clarkson At Large to become Governor General.
She seems scarcely changed at all, still in command of a medium she dominated for decades.
And the catch is she was born in Hong Kong the same year as Bethune died in China as he was saving soldiers on the battlefield.
Again Clarkson does a fair bit of traveling from Bethune's Gravenhurst family home (now a museum) to Montreal where he became a surgeon to various statues of him in his some country.
The catch is visitors to the museum are mostly Chinese tourists to Canada, his own country doesn't know him as well as his adopted land of China where he is revered as a saint.
PMS Productions Producer Kenneth Hirsch is quoted as saying the series took five years to execute. I like everything about it save the regrettably short running time --the only half hour shows left these days are sitcoms.
Upcoming are episodes on Mackenzie King, Emily Carr and Pierre Trudeau.
There'll be an instant rerun on The Biography Channel on Sat. Oct. 29 at 7:30 p.m.
EXTRAORDINARY CANADIANS PREMIERES ON CITYTV ON SUND. OCT. 23 AT 8:30 P.M.
MY RATING: *** 1/2.

Conspiracy Theory Filled With Conspiracies

2011-10-19T01:59:00.004-04:00

If I were a sceptic I'd think there might be a link between the Wall Street protests and the new TV documentary Conspiracy Rising.
But that would make me a conspiracy advocate, one of many profiled in this must see new CBC program directed and produced by veteran Andrew Blicq for Merit Motion Pictures.
The polls tell us that many of us concoct conspiracies to explain those distressing aspects of this modern age.
I can remember as a high school student being in the middle of a Grade 12 Latin examination when the whisper went around the auditorium that President John Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas.
Then there were the strange, unexplained circumstances surrounding the car crash and death of Princess Diana in 2008.
And let's not forget 9/11. Around 1 p.m. that fateful day I looked out the gigantic front windows at the Toronto Star and saw the sky filled with American jets circling over Lake Ontario --The World Trade Center had been bombed and all planes in American air space diverted to Canada.
Did I concoct any theories about these unusual events?
Well, I have never believed the lone gunman theory at Dallas. And neither did ex-prime minister John Diefenbaker the one time I interviewed him.
So Conspiracy Rising was made for me. And anybody else suspicious about events in recent modern history.
It's remarkably well put together, mixing archival footage we've come to know (and hate) plus comments from talking heads explaining all this phenomena.
It reminds me a bit of a book I read in my American history course at university: Richard Hofstadter's The Paranoia In American Politics.
Because nineteenth century conspiratorialists tried to explain that John Wilkes Booth hadn't assassinated President Lincoln --and it wasn't Booth's body burned in that barn.
The Kennedy assassination continues to fascinate. A recent new story said widow Jacqueline Kennedy suspected vice president Lyndon Johnson had arranged the killing with Mafia support.
The lone gunman theory was dissected years after the fact by CBS's Walter Cronkite who tested rifles at the site of the Texas School Book Depository and wasn't satisfied a poor shot like Lee Harvey Oswald could have done the deed.
But Blicq goes to the site and finds tourists saying it was anywhere from two to nine shooters participating.
It's so much easier to think Princess Diana was killed by the royal family than the simple explanation someone so gifted and wealthy could fall victim to a drunken driver.
I think the best shots are at the alien museum at Roswell, New Mexico, where the supposed autopsy of an alien who had crashed in the desert is discussed at length --the curator's father was the doctor who did the procedure.
There's even an interview with newly weds who got married and then hurried to the site to spend a night searching the stars for answers. they got none.
The authorities who soothingly explain away most of our fears include human rights activist Chip Berlet, Dr. Patrick Leman, Prof. David Livingstone Smith and Dr. Michael Shermer. All of them are expert at what they do.
But I still have this clump of uncertainty at the back of my brain. Not to worry, I'm told we're all genetically programmed to believe what others keep insisting is the truth.
And I'm not alone.
Conspiracy Rising tells us 16 per cent of Canadians believe the American government had some hand in the 9/11 attacks. And 70 per cent of Americans think Lee Harvey Oswald was part of a larger conspiracy. And a fifth of Canadians believe aliens have visited our planet.
You'll watch CR because it is so well put together.
Will you believe what's said or simply revert to dark theories about the great events of our time?
Maybe my theories have changed after exposure to this hour. Then again maybe not.
CONSPIRACY RISING DEBUTS ON CBC-TV'S DOC ZONE ON THURSD. OCT. 20 AT 9 P.M.
MY RATING: *** 1/2.

Does The CBC Have A Future?

2011-10-18T00:58:00.003-04:00

So there I was in the gigantic atrium of the CBC on Front Street. I was there at the invitation of veteran publicist David McCaughna to meet and interview the RCAF gang on the occasion of the publishing of a book of reminiscences.
But I never got near the comedians. There was a long and slowly moving line of well wishers who had purchased copies and wanted their volumes personally autographed.
So what I did was mingle with old friends. And reminisce about the number of times over the decades I've been in this great barn of a building.
It's the last gasp of Trudeau LIberalism based on the theory "Build it And They Will Come". But this barn never worked from the beginning.
When I started out as TV critic of The Hamilton Spectator in 1970 the CBC was in full throttle.
Remember this was in the days of the 10-channel TV universe. CBC had a prominent part although actual production was all over the city in those days.
CBC's Front Page Challenge was telecast from studios way up Yonge street. Other facilities were based at Mutual street.
Everything was cramped: I was once watching Norman Campbell direct a TV ballet and the dancers were huddled on the street in advance. They had to come flying through the open door and bounce onto the stage in one go.
These days CBC has the cavernous Norman Campbell studio atop its building but CBC lacks funds to actually make artistic programs there.
Once taking tea with Campbell in his offices (he has since passed), he mentioned he'd never actually been able to film anything in the studio named after him.
Looking around at the impressive building I was told by one veteran it's more than half empty these days. Live TV is no more outside of the news. Dramatic stuff has been taken over by independent companies who prefer cheaper facilities --usually abandoned warehouses in the fringes of the city.
One veteran told me CBC these days is shell shocked over the huge drop in ratings this fall --shows are down by as much as 30 per cent.
CBC researchers are blaming the end of analog TV and conversion to digital TV --apparently it is being felt not in Toronto but in outlying rural areas and certainly in less populated provinces. Viewers who are elderly or poor or both just have abandoned TV altogether.
Does CBC have a future with a right wing Conservative federal government suspicious of the very notion of public TV? Well, I'd like to point out CBC initially was the brainchild of a Tory prime minister: R.B. Bennett in 1935.
Viewers out there are indifferent I submit particularly those who jettisoned the CBC after it dropped all cultural programs.
Meanwhile the National is experiencing some of its lowest ever ratings after being re-designed by a team of American consultants who added a lot of style and took away a lot of substance.
And by the way I'm stilll waiting for my RCAF book. McCaughna says he'll get it autographed for me and give it to me later.

TV's Ratings Wars: Winners, Losers

2011-10-14T14:30:00.002-04:00

"The Bottom Line" --it's an expression American TV programmers use to describe the ratings depths most new series must go before bottoming out.
Well, CBS is saying its new series Person Of Interest improved Thursday night for the first time since it debuted.
That means it has found its bottom and may now indeed bounce back. The improvement was only a tenth of a percent but any improvement is positive.
On Thursday Charlie's Angels also went up a tenth of a point staving off rumors of imminent cancellation.
But ABC sources are saying that may have been due to the guest appearance of Erica Durance. Insiders are saying ABC may indeed wait a few more weeks to decide the fate of this one.
Then there's the sad case of Prime Suspect which simply cannot escape the long shadow of Helen Mirren in the original.
As a vote of confidence NBC has announced a pick up order for six new scripts. I watched the latest Thursday night episode and I'm saying the format is growing on me.
But ratings actually hit a new low and this despite the repeats running on Mondays.
What's working Thursdays? The old reliables. For CBS that means Big Bang Theory and The Mentalist. ABC's Grey's Anatomy is up 10 per cent giving Private Practice a huge lead in --PP is up 14 per cent.
And The Vampire Diaries on CW is up so much it now routinely beats Prime Suspect and Charlie's Angels on the major networks.
So far the biggest new hit is Fox's New Girl which will be off for baseball playoffs.
the X Factor is a big disappointment. Have North American viewers had enough of Simon Cowell?
Terra Nova has a pretty good ratings number but it's the most expensive show out there at $4 million an episode and Fox says it will only run 13 weeks until the inevitable December cancellation.
Pan Am will probably survive for a full season but ratings keep trickling away. This one is one of the biggest busts of the year considering all the hype.
But Up All Night and Whitney have full season pick ups.
Cancelled stinkers so far include How To Be A Gentleman (CBS), Playboy Club (NBC), Free Agents (NBC).
What new show will be next?

The Nano Revolution: Definitely Must See TV

2011-10-12T14:51:00.003-04:00

It's entirely appropriate that executive producer Michael Allder ends his 14-year stewardship of The Nature Of Things with his most brilliant production.
It's the three part miniseries The Nano Revolution which jump starts NOT's 51st season making it the longest lasting scripted series on CBC-TV.
And it only took five years to get this incredibly complicated co-production between CBC, Japan's NHK and France/Germany's Arte to come together.
The long wait was worth it.
The animation alone dazzles underpinning a provocative look at the important new world of nanotechnology that will soon transform all our lives in many fundamental ways.
"I don't believe in talking down to TV viewers," Allder is telling me in a telephone conversation. "Certainly we didn't do so our last big co-venture and the result was high ratings and pretty wonderful reviews."
The Nano Revolution literally takes us inside the world of the infinitesimally small and let's us listen in to dazzling conversations with the leading scientific authorities in the field on three continents.
the field of endeavor is always shifting from University of Toronto to the Sahara desert to an Edinburgh heart clinic to a medical practitioner in Italy.
Scientists talk routinely of examining matter that is 80,000 times smaller than a human hair and the world they are discovering can be manipulated for mankind's betterment in all sorts of ways.
"I couldn't have done this one without Skype technology technology," Allder jokes. "I communicated almost every day for years with the co-producers in France and Japan. My call time was 8 a.m. but in Japan it would be 10 p.m. It took a tremendous amount of patience and energy just to get us through. Planning was everything."
The first hour, Welcome To Nano City, outlines the scientific breakthroughs of the science of the minuscule and how complicated control of matter can open up a whole range of great possibilities.
Nano technology can control everything and reach areas denied traditional limits. The effect on everyday life could be tremendous. But there are real concerns how much privacy we'll have to give up to enter this brave new world.
"This one was very expensive to do," Allder explains. "And one broadcaster couldn't try it alone. I've done a few other projects that were 50-50 partnerships--the Geologic Journey is an example. But this one had three equal parties. We worked well together. I think we were true to the original objectives. And I just think part of the formula is respecting the audience."
One use of nano technology is seen in a Mexican city where the drinking water is tinged with arsenic. Using the new techniques the injection of nano cells can significantly erase the arsenic and make the water safe for human consumption.
The second hour on Thurs. Oct. 20 really revs up the excitement. Titled More Than Human it looks at the medical revolution that is right around the corner.
Nano technology can deliver treatment directly to afflicted cells which has great importance with cancer victims. Treatment would then become personalized enabling the nano cells top roam freely through a patient's body. And nano technology is leading the way in advanced tissue engineering as well as stem cell therapy.
The third hour Will Nano Save The Planet (on Thurs. Oct. 27) shows how nano technology could battle pollution concerns and help clean up the wastes of the industrialized age.
The images are dazzling but the comments of the scientists are just as remarkable. One British physicist wanders through the ruins of a gigantic British plant in London abandoned because of asbestos poisoning. He says only 80 years ago this was the latest in technology. And he can't say for certain what the world will be like 80 years from now for his grandchildren.
But The Nano Revolution isn't just about new wave science. One amusing segment shows how the intrusion into our daily lives might drive some people crazy. A woman out for a stroll gets bombarded with ads all specifically tailored to her personality. A man can't even get a restaurant reservation because he refuses to wear his nano chip.
"We had to synthesize three different cultures to get this one documentary mini-series" Allder says."The animation came from Japan and right when we needed it to come together the tsunami knocked out production for six weeks. When one has three directors the results can take some time to coalesce. It was quite a jigsaw.
"And I think the ultimate question will be who is going to own things. People owning this information will be powerful. That's the biggest concern of all."
When Allder took over as executive producer of the Nature Of Things 14 years ago he succeeded the near legendary Jim Murray who was definitely a hands on executive. Allder had little trouble holding on to that gold standard of excellence and even taking NOT into a new realm of co-productions that increased its reputation.
Allder he'll definitely continue to make quality co-productions calling on the best from public broadcasters everywhere.
"It's really the only way for this kind of television to go."
THE NANO REVOLUTION PREMIERES ON THE NATURE OF THINGS ON CBC-TV THURS. OCT. 13 AT 8 P.M.
MY RATING: ****.

The Strange Death Of Canadian TV

2011-10-08T22:03:00.009-04:00

It wasn't supposed to happen like this. The decline and fall of Canadian TV, I mean.
But this new season finds Canadian shows hanging on by a thread while American imports we can already catch from border stations get pride of place in scheduling.
Cable operators are instructed by the CRTC to black out incoming border TV signals and substitute the same shows from the Canadian stations thus giving these series a double rating Canadian shows never enjoy.
So American series will always out rate the Canadian competition by huge figures.
Way back in 1977 my greatish predecessor at the Toronto Star, TV critic Jack Miller, started a hell of a firestorm.
For weeks Miller poured over BBG ratings figures and finally announced that Toronto TV fans spent less than 10 per cent of their prime time viewing Canadian shows.
What a political stink that caused! Questions were asked in Parliament. Network heads were relentlessly grilled at CRTC meetings.
And yet it was all true.
Canadian TV in those days was a 10-channel universe. Today there are hundreds of cable channels out there.
But it seems to me the more channels we get the less quality Canadian drama there is available.
Back then the CRTC was setting down the ground rules for the wonderful world of cable TV and the expansion of conventional commercial networks.
Headed by the brilliant, mercurial Pierre Juneau the CRTC envisaged a grand network of new Canadian channels to serve the public with locally grown shows enjoying the best time slots.
At CBC license renewal hearings Pierre Berton who after all starred on CBC's Front Page Challenge told startled CRTC commissioners the Corp deliberately reserved its best slots for American imports because they attracted more advertising revenue. He charged that Canadian material got the inferior time slots and hence lower ratings.
I was covering that particular hearing for The Spectator and I looked over at the bank of CBC executives and all were beet red from anger. But it was true, that's what truly got them going.
When Juneau didn't think CTV was making enough Canadian shows he slapped a one year license renewal on the network despite the protests of CTV president Murray Chercover.
It was Chercover who once explained to me why CTV never had a fall launch: "Jim, our big Canadian show is Littlest Hobo. You want me to promote THAT?"
At CBC's license renewal hearing Juneau went head to head with CBC President Laurent Picard over the long term aims of the CBC. Picard favored a mixed schedule with big rated U.S. shows leading into Canadian shows and thereby juicing up the ratings.
Juneau scolded him harshly --he favored a true Canadian network.
And the irony is when Juneau finally became CBC President and cancelled all American series he found he didn't have the finances to put on many scripted dramas at all. Successive federal cuts had denuded CBC of its greatness.
In 1977 Jack Miller thought Canadian TV on shaky ground. But I'll wager in today's multichannel TV universe that prime time viewing of Canadian shows is way, way below 10 per cent. I think it's closer to five per cent these days.
Look, I remember in 1985 Canadian TV produced 11 prime time hourlong drama series. What a bonanza! Included in the mix were Street Legal, Wind Up My Back, The City, Power Play. Fantastic!.
But by the next season there were only two series left.
What happened? The commercial networks spearheaded by CTV and Global got the CRTC to change the rules and instead of specifically requesting a certain number of filmed dramas the Commission simply lumped all Canadian content into one mass category.
The next season the commercial networks substituted inexpensive documentaries and reality outings. Canadian TV series drama has been dead ever since.
And why not? A seasoned Canadian producer just told me the networks can buy a big American hit for $100,000 an episode. It comes with gobs of publicity --after all most of the morning and afternoon talk shows are American imports, too.
By contrast a beleagured Canadian producer can spend at best $800,000 to a cool million on each episode of his drama series.
Commercial networks exist to make money. Which is why they spend $600 million or more a year on American shows and less than $100 million on Canadian stuff.
Remember that in prime time Canadian content must be 50 per cent.
Remember also that prime time in Canada starts at 7 p.m. --that was a change CTV's Chercover fought for so he could plop in the likes of Stars On Ice and Half The George Kirby Comedy Hour before switching to U.S. imports. And an hour of Canadian content counts as 90 minutes because of another weird CRTC ruling.
This fall CTV has one scripted drama, Global has none right now.
Network sources say some Canadian series are running on their cable networks while other Canadian dramas are expected later in the fall or at midseason.
But this trickling away of Canadian drama has caused no outcry like it did in 1977 after Jack Miller's revelations.
Could it be Canadians no longer care?
Or did they tune away from Canadian TV a long time ago?

The Gayest Show Ever?

2011-10-06T14:15:00.004-04:00

A new Toronto made series debuts Friday night. The title --The Gayest Show Ever --is pretty provocative.
But is it true?
Mainstream TV has gotten gay with a vengeance in recent years.
Look at all the gay TV celebrities now thriving openly: Neil Patrick Harris, Nate Berkus, Ellen DeGeneres.
And when it comes to gay vibes what about such gayer than gay shows as Desperate Housewives, Glee, Modern Family?
The battle for the hearts, minds and pocket books of gay viewers in Toronto was supposed to start some 10 years ago when Citytv revved up the series QueerTV starring Islamic lesbian Irshad Manji.
Citytv's then reigning guru Moses Znaimer thought the series would guarantee him first prize in the CRTC run off for the first Canadian gay TV license.
But it didn't happen. Another outfit got the license and a bewildering array of name changes followed.
Let's see there was Pridevision which morphed into OUTtv as well as HARD.
And the gay license didn't turn out to be a license to print money after all.
That's because regular TV channels were ramping up the gay content.
For five season Queer As Folk was made in Toronto for Showcase and Showtime.
I remember phoning the producers after the first ratings were out showing a majority of viewers were --straight women. That really threw everybody for a loop.
But none of the engaging cast have gone on to do much. Talented star Gale Harold got typecast and his subsequent series appearances have been dim.
So when a series like The Gayest Show Ever comes along it truly has to deliver.
Which it does. This isn' a gay version of 60 Minutes. It's all over the map with some funny pieces and some suddenly serious reflections.
Host is the talented lesbian stand up Elvira Kurt and she demonstrates some interviewing skills as well as some snazzy one liners. An interview with Cyndi Lauper in the second episode gets to the singer's essence.
In the first show there's a longish bit with John Waters that shows him unready to bend his views to suit the current gay tide of respectability.
Best segment in the first show is a skit starring two drag queens titled Project Dumpster. And a profile of a gay rapper is OK. The look at nude yoga is pretty funny --but some parts of the screen are deliberately blurred.
In the second show a continuing segment called People In The Gayborhood works. But Kurt's encounter with male porno stars who pracise unsafe sex finds her looking embarrassed.
Creator David Walberg executive produced it, Paul Bellini wrote the comedy sketches and Frank Prendergast is the producer.
It just may not be the gayest show on TV these days. But it delivers handily. And that's OK, too,
THE GAYEST SHOW EVER PREMIERES ON OUT TV FRIDAY OCT. 7 AT 10:30 P.M.
MY RATING: ***.

Winners And Losers Of The New TV Season

2011-10-05T00:01:00.002-04:00

It had to happen. The first casualty of the new fall TV season is --The Playboy Club.
It had to go not merely because it was a terrible show.
Viewers just were not interested in this type of jiggle TV.
So NBC says it will plop in reruns of faltering Prime Suspect until a new series called Rock Center with Brian Williams can begin at the end of the month.
BUT NBC says it will also give full season orders to two somewhat faltering sitcoms: Up All Night starring Christina Applegate and Will Arnett and Whitney Cummings show called Whitney.
Whitney has been a terrible disappointment but NBC simply doesn't have anything else available.
And what new American shows are hits so far?
Well, CBS's Two Broke Girls hit Number 4 in the Top 20 ratings list its first time out but that was because it followed the audience blockbuster Two And A Half Men Mondays at 9.
CBS's Unforgettable tied with another CBS staple Criminal Minds for 12th spot.
CBS's Person Of Interest was number 15.
The X Factor's two showings were tied for 18th spot on Fox --this despite press reports the show had bombed. It didn't but it never garnered anticipated numbers.
And ABC's Pan Am was a sturdy 24th.
NBC's only entry, old or new, was perennial Sunday night favorite.
Conclusion: TV viewers dialed back to tried and true favorites as they almost always do.

The War Of 1812 Is Must See TV!

2011-10-02T21:10:00.006-04:00

"When I started my research on the War of 1812 six years ago I had to cross the border, naturally," remembers American executive producer John Grant.
"And when I told the Canadian border guard my reason for entering Canada he said 'Oh, that's the war where we whipped you guys'.
"But when I returned the American guard merely shrugged and said to proceed. For her it wasn't something she really was aware of."
Grant's long awaited production The War Of 1812 finally appears on PBS stations Monday Oct. 10. He's surely hoping to change the opinions of both guards he met that day.
Becuse this was a most important war for both sides. It changed both sides for good and bad.
For the U.S. it determined that the new republic needed a standing army. The militia that fought these battles under aged and incompetent generals from the Revolutionary days were completely incompetent.
Canadians began to think of themselves as a separate people and not just sparsely inhabitated colonies of Great Britain.
It's strange to think that here is the best TV production about Canada on TV this fall. Because it comes from an American station.
The War Of 1812 is simply enthralling. It's got everything from superbly staged sea battles to bloody conflicts along the Niagara frontier to an unforgettable cast of characters.
Thrill as Laura Secord trudges through the forests to alert British soldiers to an impending attack of American regulars.
Cheer as First Lady Dolly Madison rolls up a portrait of the American Union's first President George Washington and beats a hasty retreat just before the arrival of British soldiers who promptly burn the White House down.
"I've heard there have been other TV films on the war,"Grant allows. "But ours had to reflect sentiment on both sides of the border." What follows is artful threading as myths on both sides get exploded.
There have already been two Canadian versions, one a CBC effort and one a CTV TV movie produced by Tom Gould but both were deemed too pro Canadian to ever make it south of the border.
"We tried for balance,"Grant says "but we definitely are not dull." Buffalo's WNED-TV made the film with PBS backing --there even are some Canadian finances involved.
The war defined the combatants --it was the last time the U.S. was successfully invaded and it was a defining moment for the beleagured colonists of Upper and Lower Canada.
The two hour production looks very luxuriant with elaborately staged battle recreations.
Of course there's no existing battle footage. There even is a complete lack of still photgraphs --it all happened 28 years before the arrival of the first photographers.
The War Of 1812 seems to have a cast of thousands but that's movie making logic . "Make that a cast of dozens," Grant jokes. "Our intrepid production designer Peter Twist was constantly adjusting buttons on the costumes of the volunteers for authenticity's sake. A lot of these scenes are shot in tight close-ups to show the stark fear of the troops. The Americans were rightly petrified of being scalped by England's Indian allies. The British were treated just as roughly."
Night time shooting and plumes of fake smoke disguise the fact there only were 20 soldiers on each side re-enacting a battle scene.
Two period vessels the USS Niagara and The Pride Of Baltimore were hired for the splendid sea battles which were fought at close range. Many sailors on both sides were killed not by cannon balls but exploding shrapnel or gigantic splinters from the timbers.
Grant says "We had the diary reminiscences of two soldiers and use them to personalize the conflict." One was a Kentucky refleman William Atherton who was captured by the British and spent several years in a stinking Montreral prison. The other was British foot soldier Shadrach Byfield. who survived and died decades later in poverty back in Britain.
"The canvas was huge," Grant says. There were pitched battles in the Northwest, the Niagara Corridor, Lakes Ontario, erie and Champlain, and in Chesapeke and New Orleans.
"All the while the English were concentrating on defeating Napoleon. In fact that's where General Brock would have preferred to be. Consequently it was hard locating British experts to talk saout the war although we did find a few."
Experts pop up throughout but these are not the usually boring talking heads. "It's a real diversity of opinion out there."
We get precise character studies of the important subjects.
President Madison is portrayed as a dwarfish individual entirely under the control, of his more forward looking wife Dolly.
General William Hull is shown cowering in a corner rather than leading his troops into battle.
One of the greatest figures is the Indian warrior Tecumseh who accurately forecast the demise of the Indian nation should the Americans win.
We learn that black soldiers fought courageously on both sides. The British used black soldiers to strike fear into the hearts of slave owning Southern whites.
Laura Secord? Her image increased with the passage of time until the Prince of Wales asked to see her when he visited Canada in 1860. She died at 93 a year after Confederation but her fame continued to grow.
If you want to know about military medicine it's all here --surgeons had but a few minutes to amputate limbs crushed by cannon balls or the soldiers would bleed to death.
Lawrence Hott and Diane Garey directed and Ken Chowder wrote it and they're likely to be nominated come Emmy time.
The War Of 1812 has everything --true life adventure, superb winners and tragic losers (like the great warrior Tecumseh), and a story line that explains how Canadians began developing as a separate people.
It's one of the few recent TV programs I watched and thought it should go on and because it's so chock full of information and excitement. And it's all real.
Grant says he's already working on another history documentary that criss crosses the Canada-America border. "It'll be on the Undergground Railroad. Americans know about the U.S. side but we'll also look at the experiences of fleeing ex-slaves once they reached Canada."
THE WAR OF 1812 PREMIERES ON WNED-TV AND OTHER PBS STATIONS ON MOND. OCT. 10 AT 9 P.M.
MY RATING: ****.

CBC's InSecurity Returns For A Second Season

2011-10-01T22:29:00.003-04:00

Surprise! CBC's situation comedy InSecurity is returning for a second season.
And chatting with creator and show runner Kevin White he says wasn't concerned for a minute the show might not be picked up.
"We all saw a lot of potential," White says. "And there's a lot of fine tuning that has taken place. It's a very different kind of comedy this time out. The plots are more organized. And it's funnier.
"This new season there's more concentration on office work and that kind of atmosphere and less on how bumbling the team can be out on assignment."
In fact the badinage at times in the first new episode which I've sneak previewed makes it seem these bungling spooks would be right at home working at Dunder Mifflin.
White agrees with me the first batch of 13 episodes was often a tad disorganized and rough around the edges.
The sitcom is shot in Regina (for economic reasons) although set in Ottawa and two episodes are block shot every eight days.
The rhythm just wasn't there the first time out but the new batch seem smoother and better modulated.
CBC is desperately seeking a ratings strong successor to Little Mosque On The Prairie which has been wilting away and surely won't be back next season.
CTV is just as desperate for a new hit to replace Corner Gas. Dan For Mayor was obviously not that show (White worked on that one too) and has already been cancelled.
That still leaves hiccups --the decision is still out.
InSecurity isn't the only sitcom to ever get retooled in its sophomore outing.
The same thing saved Seinfeld and Parks And Recreation.
It's clear that the workplace is going to be the real field of conflict. InSecurity has a huge, high tech wokrk place --the set was kept up in Regina on the chance CBC would order another batch. But the order was scaled back to 10 new half hours because of budget constraints.
Also, the focus has been switched so that blonde and beautiful Natalie Lisinska is solidly front and center as the headstrong but slightly daffy head Alex Cranston.
"All of them are more competent and focused on the drudgery of office politics," explains White. "I mean now the actors know each other and they can interact better, they're more at ease."
Returning characters include the director Peter McNeill (played by William deVry of The Bold And The Beautiful), veteran agent Claude Lesage (Remy Girard), team player Burt Wilson (Mathew MacFadzean), forensic specialist Grace Lynn Kung (Grace Lynn Kung from Being Erica)and unpredictable agent Benjamin N'udu (Richard Yearwood).
CBC notes say while the first season played like a CSI parody in the second batch branch out and we'll get to know more about the office romances, the bad clothes some wear and the mistakes common to any disorganized office.
In the first new episode Burt flunks a lie detector test because he's concealing an office romance and Claude comes dressed up in Seventies duds to show he's with it. The best stuff. however, happens out of the office as Alex faces off against an iffy Russian double agent beautifully played by ()()()()().
"On Corner Gas we had an instant winner, it just all came together," says White. He worked on that one as well. "There's no formula. Except maybe hard work and luck. It rarely happens that easily."
Indeed many hit U.S. sitcoms go through multiple pilots before hitting the air, an option that's too expensive for Canadian TV.--InSecurity had two pilots however.
"We had tons of good ingredients the first season. We're going where the show leads us. It's evolving and it is getting consistently better.
"Bringing in personal details from Alex's life --some friends and relations --that will help. It's a very tough atmosphere to launch a new show. But Ron James did it. We have a second chance and we're taking full advantage."
And
0 forgot to ask if the set is staying up in anticipation of Season Number Three.
THE SECOND SEASON OF INSECURITY PREMIERES ON CBC-TV MONd. OCT. 3 AT 8:30 P.M.
MY RATING: ***.

Explaining The Experts.

2011-09-28T22:39:00.004-04:00

It's unfortunate Josh Freed's latest documentary The Trouble With Experts is coming on CBC TV's Doc Zone so early in the season.
Viewers frantically trying to sample all the new series shouldn't overlook this entertaining look at how we seek out self styled experts in almost every walk of life.
I was thinking of this the other night when I watched a 1968 Walter Cronkie news broadcast that originally ran on CBS.
It seemed so weird --it was wall to wall news with no opinionators whatever. Until the end when Cronkite offered his opinion that the War In Vietnam was not winnable.
Contrast this with Anderson Cooper who uses banks of experts in faux fights every night of the week.
At one point we're told there are so many TV experts these days because TV has expanded to all day news and experts are needed to fill up the air time because they're cheap to hire.
And maybe the real problem isn't with all these confident experts who frequently dole out information that's just plain wrong.
The fault may be with ourselves --we're trying too darned hard in today's rush of a society that we try to get experts to tell us what to do. And sometimes it just doesn't work.
Freed's response is light hearted. He's got a knack for making us laugh uneasily at our foibles. And here he's got a lot of ammunition to work with --I think he could have tackled TV's political experts as a separate subject.
These pontificators analyze everything and they're on all day. I was watching a pair go at each other onCNN in the mid afternoon. Then at night I caught one of the guys ranting again on Cooper.
In fact Freed even uses other experts to grade the experts he's profiling particularly science writer David Freedman author of the book WRONG.
One of the best segments is on talented painter John Myatt who began replicating paintings by famous master painters and doing so well he sold them as authentic works to the great museums of the world.
These days he still does forgeries but only on commission and with the understanding the buyer knows he's getting a bogus painting.
Most pompous are the incredibly snobbish wine experts who in one test couldn't even tell red wine from white wine that was dyed red.
I liked the work of Berkeley professor Phillip Tetlock who studied 300 experts in politics over a rwo decade period and studied over 82,000 predictions for a 2005 study. He found their prognostications only slightly better than random guesses.
On TV shows one expert says that verbal battles are encouraged because it makes for exciting TV.
That segues into a great bit at a college where experts are trained in the art of seeming authoritative --how to dress, talk slowly and deeply. There's a course that takes several days of training."
The Oxford doctor Ben Goldacre tells us about the bad scientific information being dispensed on TV health shows.
But the real kicker is a look at a prison expert who counsels white collar criminals who are entering jail about what to expect behind bars.
If anything The Trouble With Experts suffers from a bit of information overload. It's so jam packed with necessary stuff you really should tape it to watch again a few months from now when TV experts are getting on your nerves.
THE TROUBLE WITH EXPERTS PREMIERES ON CBC-TV'S DOC ZONETHURSD. SEPT. 29 AT 9 P.M.
MY RATING: *** 1/2.

I'll Watch A "New" 1943 Movie

2011-09-27T23:00:00.003-04:00

I'm going to play hokey Wednesday night for a few hours.
Starting at 8 p.m. I'll be watching an old movie that's new again.
I've watched enough of those bad new series currently flooding TV networks.
The film is The Constant Nymph and it hasn't been seen since its release in 1943.
Nobody has seen it because the author of the book Margaret Kennedy insisted that upon her death the film could only play in museums and libraries.
The one time I interviewed its star Joan Fontaine she said she hadn't viewed it either since 1943.
Well, Turner Classic Movies which owns the rights later arranged a private screening for Miss Fontaine.
She told the press she staggered out into the light and felt she needed a drink.
The Constant Nymph was directed by Edmund Goulding and besides Fontaine the cast includes Charles Boyer, Alexis Smith, Dame May Whitty and Charles Coburn.
What a cast! Miss Fontaine garnered an Oscar nomination, she was that good.
And she journeyed to sister Olivia de Havilland's home studio Warners to make it. Could that have been the start of a sisterly feud that sizzles and crackles to this day?
"It certainly didn't help," laughed Fontaine with glee.
The one time I was at Alexis Smith's Hollywood home I asked her about the film and she shrugged.
"I was 22 playing a sophisticated 35-year old and it was my best performance. But nobody but nobody has seen it in decades."
Smith has passed but Fontaine, now a feisty 94-year old, must be in heaven about this coup.
But The Constant Nymph is only one of a number of long lost films TCM is trying to find.
Sunday night I watched the 1941 version of Back Street styarring Margaret Sullavan and Charles Boyer --it hasn't been on any Canadian TV station since 1970.
The one phone interview I ever had with TCM's master historian Robert Osborne I asked what other forgotten films he was hoping to re-discover,
One title he gave me was the all star 1933 drama Night Flight.
WEll, Here's the cast: Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, Helen Hayes, John Barrymore, Robert Montgomery.
Warners has just released it on DVD for the first time after years of negotiating over the rights..
TCM owns the TV rights.
So how about it TCM?
POST SCRIPT: I saw the film which was a box office failure in 1943 although Joan Fontaine received an Oscar nomination. It's of a high style of glossy film making that passed from the scene a long time ago. The accoutrements are lavish including a town home in London overstuffed with antiques. Being out of view for 70 years means the film has a reputation it can't really live up to. But it's a lot of fun rev-siting such stars as Alexis Smith, Charles Boyer, Dame May Whitty, Charles Coburn all of whom have passed in the intervening decades. Only Fontaine at 94 is still with us.

2011-09-26T21:20:00.003-04:00

Some things just don't mix.
Like Steven Spielberg and American TV.
Way back in 1984 the world's most successful movie director (in box office terms) decided he'd conquer TV in the form of an ultra expensive series Amazing Stories which he made for NBC.
The drumbeat of publicity was so huge that CBS got scared and suddenly imported Angela Lansbury into its fall preview sessions with visiting TV critics held that year in Phoenix.
Because Spielberg was confident he'd take Lansbury's time slot away from her --Sunday nights at 8 p.m.
But he couldn't budge Lansbury and her series Murder She Wrote,
Because Lansbury had a character viewers took to and wanted to watch week safter week.
And while some of Spielberg's episodes were OK others were just a little too precious for the vast TV audience.
And NBC blinked and twice moved the show in its second season before finally canceling the whole misjudged experiment.
It took almost a decade but an unbowed Spielberg was at it again with the simply silly sci fi show SeaQuest DSV which ran for two shaky seasons on NBC starting in 1993.
Once again the special effects were supreme and the story lines so dorky assembled TV critics laughed in all the wrong places at the special preview.
And once again the show flopped in the ratings --and what was the CBS series that sank this leaky vessel?
You guessed it --once again it was Murder She Wrote with Angela Lansbury.
Spielberg must be happy that his third series encounter comes after Lansbury's retirement from series TV work.
Instead of actors to basically deal with Spielberg has his computer generated dinosaurs --at least they won't talk back.
I never heard of a family sitting around the TV set to watch the special effects.
the story line here is so rudimentary it makes the screenplay Avatar look like Pulitzer Prize material.
The premise borrows liberally from that old hit Lost In Space and adds a mixture of Lost.
I remember interviewing the star Jason O'Mara when he was in Toronto promoting an earlier flop series In Justice (actually it was pretty good dramatically). He then made another flop, the U.S. version of Life On Mars.
Every nuance on Terra Nova gets telegraphed with such obvious dialogue that watching made me squirm at times.
And so much dough was tossed at the two-hour premiere I'm betting subsequent hours will not be half as dinosaur friendly.

Pan Am Still Might Make It

2011-09-25T23:22:00.004-04:00

What I'm hearing from friends is that the premiere episode of Pan Am just didn't make it for them.
Call it Mad Men Lite so far.
The new ABC series has a bad time slot --it runs Sundays at 10 p.m. opposite CBS's venerable but still potent CSI:Miami and NBC's powerhouse NFL football.
I met the four actresses playing the stewardesses during the CTV fall launch.
Best know is Christina Ricci but the others are just as talented: Margot Robbie, Karine Vanesse, Kelli Gardner.
Set like Mad Men in 1963 the serial follows the lives of the four girls in the Golden Age of travel.
"It was when people actually dressed up to travel in an airplane. It was very exclusive and glamourous," Robbie told the TV critics that day.
All the accoutrements of life almost 50 years get developed --this a very expensive series to make.
But unlike Mad Men it can only go so far --remember this is network TV.
CTV has gone all out to promote the new show even going as far as to send me a PAN AM flight bag complete with all sorts of goodies.
And this is the one TV critics everywhere have been hailing as among the season's best new shows.
The pilot failed on most counts --it was disjointed and diffuse but that often happens when a new series debuts. It should improve over the next few weeks.
Pan Am gals back there had to be educated and very beautiful. One gets demoted for not living up to the wardrobe standards. Another has her girdle snapped by a superior --girdles were part of the look back then.
I can see this one developing as a bout of escapism but it needs a lot of work to get up to scratch.
Since the 1960s terrorism and the high price of oil have made air travel less an adventure than a strenuous ride filled with problems.
Mad Men was a dazzlng recreation of a past time but it was filled with nuance and blistering criticisms of its characters. Pan Am is all surface cuteness. It's not at all compelling --so far.
So far it's more Charlie's Angels than anything else.
However on the first night out Pan Am did OK in the ratings bolstered by the overrun of CBS football.

MY RATIONG: **1/2.

The New TV Season: Flops And Hits

2011-09-24T14:54:00.002-04:00

Some of the brightest new series are already on life support.
NBC's Playboy Club is a huge stinker but NBC doesn't have anything else waiting in the bull pen so this one might simply sink slowly over the next month or so.
Playboy Club comes across as a particularly bad reworking of Mad Men.
Also dead is NBC's comedy Free Agents but again it's a case of nothing available as a back up.
That excellent drama Harry's Law is already in trouble I've been told. and may be moved to another night.
Law & Order: SVU was third in its time slot first week back and NBC sources confirm this is its final season.
But The Office held up well with a new boss which is good news for NBC.
Three CBS vets How I Met Your Mother, NCIS and NCIS:LA all bounced back with higher ratings than last season. Go figure.
And the huge numbers for Two And A Half Men was astonishing --but how many viewers will tune in for the second new episode?
Huge expectations were dashed when The X Factor limped forth with extremely anemic ratings. But Night Two held on to almost all of the original viewers.
My conclusion? Simon Cowell's schtick is getting tougher to stomach.
But this is one reality series that's very expensive to make and probably can't long continue after one season.
Young viewers weren't having anything to do with Charlie's Angels which is a very ineptly made show any way you look at it.
But oldies can be golden: Ted Danson was very low keyed but effective on the revamped CSI and guarantees this venerable show at least one more full season, perhaps even two.
And Hawaii FIVE-0 debuted for its second season behind Castle meaning brand awareness doesn't sell if the product in this case is so humdrum.
I'm told the mood at CBC was one of astonishment that the ambitious new comedy series Michael got creamed by The X Family
and quickly repositioned the show to Tuesdays.
But why did CBC open its big shows against such juggernauts as the Emmy Awards and with minimal publicity?

Boardwalk Empire Comes Roaring Back

2011-09-24T02:16:00.004-04:00

Last Sunday night the wonderful new TV series Boardwalk Empire which had 18 Emmy nominations walked off with eight wins including best director (Martin Scorsese).
And boy am I one lucky TV critic.
I've just watched the first two new episodes of this great series on a preview DVD and it's every bit as great and as dark as the first year's episodes.
To get it in Canada you must subscribe to HBOCanada but believe me there's nothing else quite like it anywhere else.
At the end of Season One Atlantic City's honcho and City Treasurer Nucky (Steve Buscemi) was battling a coalition of forces against him although his companion Margaret (Kelly Macdonald) did decide to return to him.
Battling him all the way is the Commodore (Dabney Coleman) who is arraigning all his enemies into a super force.
Season Two starts with real force as a gang of black bootleggers are involved in a pitched battle with a gang of Klu Klux Khan --and there are deaths on both sides. The scene is horrific with bodies piling up, blood spattering and the white supremacists even taking hits as they run away from the carnage.
Charismatic. That's the only word to describe these characters. There's the proud black criminal Chalky played in marvellous fashion by Kenneth Williams.
If the series looks like no other that's because each hour episode costs more than $5 million to make. And all the period details are just right from the lavish Atlantic City mansions to the classy whorehouse with the pianist languidly playing favorites of the clientele.
The very rich women sport all the appertances from the furs to the giant limousines. The men who are very rich have three piece suits and gorgeous tie. All the faux glamour of the era is well presented but peel that back and it's a sordid saga of the rise of big time crime due to Prohibition and the free sexuality that few writers of the time dared write about.
Themes continue to percolate: the racism of the time contrasted with the sudden freedom and the power that Prohibition gave outcast blacks. And there's the continuing corruption of municipal and state government and the culture of kickbacks that dictated huge payouts to politicians in power.
Real characters drift in and out of the sprawling narrative--Al Capone was the young, vicious punk the first season and early this year Arnold Rothstein makes his intentions clear.
The big theme is how much the Volstead Act which made the selling of any liquor illegal (including beer) totally totally unsettled American society. But it wasn't just booze, in the second new episode Michael Pitt's character is advised by the Rothstein gang to move into heroin.
Performances are unifiormly excellent. In the first few new shows we'll learn about the strange marriage of Agent Nelson Van Alden (played by Nelson Van Alden). Then there's the bold decision of Great War veteran Jimmy Darmody (Michael Pitt). And Sheriff Elias (Shea Wigham) is ambivalent about loyalty to older brother Nucky.
I also like Vincent Piazza as Lucky Luciano, Michael Stuhlbarg as Arnold Rothstein, Stephen Graham as Al Capone. And Steve Buscemi has the role of a lifetime and is showing how great character acting can be endlessly fascinating.
In a tepid new TV season filled with remakes and clones of clones Boardwalk Stands alone as a must-see.
BOARDWALK EMPIRE'S SECOND SEASON PREMIERES ON HBO CANADA SUND. SEPT. 25 AT 9 P.M.
MY RATING: ****.

,

A Farewell To All My Children

2011-09-22T16:27:00.004-04:00

Here's the truly big news of the week.
Forget those terrible new prime time TV series currently spewing forth. Most will be toast by season's end.
The biggest TV story out there is the demise of All My Children Friday on ABC.
Did it have to happen? No way. ABC is killing off one of the staples of daytime TV to make way for cheap lifestyle programming.
Take a look at how CBC has been putting new life into its evergreen British import Coronation Street.
CBC runs a new episode every weeknight (except Friday) at 7:30 to jump start its prime time programming. And that same episode is on late nights and at 2 p.m.
Then the four episodes are packaged for Sunday mornings as Sunday brunch with Coronation Street and different audiences watch every time.
ABC could be doing the same thing --re-building the audience base eroded by the multiplicity of choices. Instead the network has sold off the rights and a new version will debut in January on the internet although key cast members will be missing.
What happened to daytime soaps?
Well, first of all more and more women are working these days so the base of traditional support is no longer there.
I remember taking tea once with Agnes Nixon in her New York hotel suite and she was one of those who energized the genre by creating Another World and then One Life To Live.
Soap companies including Procter And Gamble owned the original TV shows outright.
When ratings started to topple these were the vulnerable soaps --CBS has kept on the air soaps it owned outright.
ABC had a controlling interest in the U.S. cable network SOAPnet but has divested itself of that cable web. Thus it no longer needs All My Children.
in the 1950s I'd watch two soaps every afternoon before heading back to school: Search For Tomorrow at 12:30 and The Guiding Light at 1 p.m.
Both were live and each ran 15 minutes (including the commercials which were filmed).
The day I spent with Nixon she explained the fight to get All My Children up and running. It debuted Jan 5 1970--originally Nixon and husband Bob owned it outright but sold all rights to ABC in 1975.
When I visited the set in 1974 it was taped at ABC Television studios at 101 West 67th Street which is now a 50-story apartment complex.
Nixon told me that day the audience was over 30 per cent male and it also attracted a huge audience of college kids.
Lunch on set with grande dame Ruth Warrick was fun especially when she said "I started out in Citizen Kane, the greatest film ever made, and now I'm in a soap. I see no diminution of my status. In fact I've got a lot more fans these days."
The final episode was taped in L.A. on August 11. Its not known when the first Internet episode will run.
But one thing is clear: a phenomenon of American culture has departed from TV forever.

New Prime Suspect Just Doesn't Make It

2011-09-21T21:21:00.003-04:00

Why would NBC do it?
Remake that near perfect British series Prime suspect, I mean.
Yes, I know that way back when such successful American shows from All In The Family to Sanford And Son to Three's Company were remakes of Brit hits.
But in those long ago days American TV viewers had no chance to view the originals.
Since then the going has been tough.
Consider the fate of the U.S. version of Cracker which came and went faster than you can say "ratings bomb".
The British version(1993-96) was superb with Robbie Coltrane as the flawed but brilliant sleuth.
The American version (1996-97) lasted 16 hours and starred the fine actor Robert Pastorelli but we'd all seen the original and anything that was diluted just wasn't going to make it.
Then there was the U.S. version of Life On Mars which lasted 17 episodes in 2008 and 2009.
Again it was mostly a failure --we'd seen it all done so much better by the BBC in the original.
And right now I'm re-sampling Prime Suspect which vaulted Helen Mirren to the top of favorite actresses of the time. The originals ran over many weeks as Det. Inspector Jane Tennison tried to solve very complicated murders. As a commentary on the underbelly of contemporary British society this was tops.
The new version stars Maria Bello, an actress I've admired in the past.
Here she's given a new names (Jane Timony) and a boss who's as strong as she is (Aidan Quinn).
OK, so she's brilliant. Resolute. But she's also unsympathetic, hard boiled in the least appealing sort of way. We can't root for her. She wouldn't want us to.
The discrimination she suffers from male colleagues is brutal. But I would have thought that kind of behavior went out at least a decade ago.
Story lines are solved too patly here, everything is rushed. On the original the crime was analyzed and explored over a month's worth of episodes.
The show is jam packed with talent. Toby Stephens (his mom is Dame Maggie Smith) plays her live-in boyfriend but he has very little to do. One scene does stand out as Jane negotiates visitation rights for his son with the ex-wife during a restaurant encounter.
All the darkness of the original has vanished. What emerges is a well made police show but one that too often invites invidious comparisons with the Helen Mirren version.
Maybe NBC should have used a new name for the series as well as the character.
Thursday nights has been CBS's domain in recent years and I can't see it changing this season out.
However, others are saying I'm wrong. Global TV's head Barb Williams predicted this would be the breakout series of the season during the fall TV press event.
But on U.S. network TV it doesn't matter how great the show is if people are watching the opposition.
And PS's opposition is formidable: CBS's top-rated The Mentalist and NBC's still popular Grey's Anatomy.
PRIME SUSPECT PREMIERES ON NBC AND GLOBAL THURSD. SEPT. 22 AT 10 P.M.
MY RATING: **1/2.

The Fall Season: Ratings Winners And Losers

2011-09-20T23:10:00.004-04:00

My CBS sources are doing the twist over the huge ratings for the revamped Two And A Half Men.
Just a minute, fellows! That was a huge number, I'm granting you, but what will it be the next week when the reality sets in. Most of the people I talked to who saw the premiere didn't like it very much at all.
But the wave also hit CBS's How I Met your Mother at 8 which had its best ever season premiere.
At 8 NBC's Playboy Club really tanked and since it is a serialized drama it's unlikely more viewers will tune in for next week's episode.
And at 9:30 the amiable new sitcom Two Broke Girls also on CBS attracted 19 million curious viewers giving it a great sampling.
Against this ratings juggernaut there was ABC's Dancing With The Stars which still attracted a more than respectable 18 million viewers.
Viewers seemed most curious about Chaz Bono who showed that with parents Sonny and Cher he certainly has inherited dancing steps.
At 10 p.m. CBS's Hawaii Five-0 got stomped on by NBC's Castle which attracted an additional million viewers over its weak CBS rival.
CTV sources are saying Two garnered 4.9 million viewers which may be a new high for a sitcom. It's bigger than even Big Bang Theory gets.
On CBS the number was over 27 million which was once what a hit like Beverly Hillbillies would be pulling in.
In fact I'm willing to bet Playboy Club might be the first prominent new series to get toppled.
More ominously for the future of the U.S. networks Business Week reports a decline in the number of actual viewers this fall tuned into satellite or cable TV.
The phenomenon is called "cord cutting" and means an increasing number of younger viewers are declining to pay exorbitant monthly cable or satellite bills and are watching their programs solely online. The college crowd watch online in their dorms and when they go out on their own decline to hook up to conventional TV services.

Sheen Really Missed On The Revamped Two And A Half Men

2011-09-19T22:41:00.004-04:00

So there I was talking to a Grade Six class about the new TV season.
And I didn't get a single question about the new shows which is par for the course'
No one but TV critics have seen them yet.
The talk was all about Charlie Sheen's departure from Two And A Half Men and whether he could be replaced.
And having just finished watching the first new episode on CBS and CTV the answer is simply: No.
Sheen was 90 per cent of the show. We watched because this guy was really dangerous.
He wasn't playing a character. He was being himself and it worked for an awfully long time.
The show was already losing steam, it was repeating old plots, the kid was growing up but CBS was hoping to get a few more seasons out of it before the inevitable departure to Rerun Valley.
Then Sheen sort of blew up and started acting very strange and got fired.
And there he was on the Emmys the other night looking rather subdued and just a little diminished.
That's also my verdict on the sitcom CBS is trying to resuscitate. Diminished
CBS made every mistake in the book in the first new episode.
When stars depart series in a huff the thing is they must be quickly killed off and never mentioned again.
CBS did it right when McLean Stevenson was unceremoniously dumped from M*A*S*H --his character got killed off and the show continued with a better actor as replacement (Harry Morgan).
When Valerie Harper refused to return to the sitcom named after her the character was killed off and she was quickly replaced by Sandy Duncan and nobody really minded.
But on Two And A Half Men the episode opened with Charlie's coffin as if CBS could not resist one more dig at the guy.
Then a steady stream of gal pals reminisced about the baddie.
"He gave me herpes!" gushed one former lover.
"...vaginal warts..."said another.
"He used my panties to make tea..."
"He loved to be spanked..."
Already viewers were missing the guy. In a bad way of course.
Then came the only good moments of the half hour.
The beach house had to be sold so in walked one potential buyer --played by John Stamos. Did you know he was first choice to replace Sheen and turned CBS down because it was a losing proposition.
Then came the co-stars from Dharma And Greg:Jenna Elfman and Thomas Gibson.
Another cute touch.
Then replacement Ashton Kutcher sauntered in and this sitcom sank like a stone.
He played a would-be suicide who's a billionaire and he buys the property complete with the two occupants. Sure he was nude (to the studio audience) but the zingers suddenly stopped.
This became an aging sitcom in desperate need of life support.
Here's how CBS should have handled Sheen's departure.
1. Repackage the show with the two remaining regulars going off and meeting up with Kutcher in a completely different environment. No mentioning of Sheen after the initial credits.
2. Re-title the show and shop it to the public as a spinoff. As in Frasier which ran forever with Kelsey Grammer in a new situation.
3. then CBS would have a hit and not a re-warmed show where we'll fiorever be wauting for Sheen to return in someway or other.
Stuck against FOX's House and the second half of ABC's Dancing With The Stars and this old show doesn't seem to have much of a chance.
Sure, ratings will be big the first week out. But don't forget House doesn't return until Oct. 3.
And just as important there's going to be no ratings flow into Molly & Me which starts its sophomore season Sept. 26.

John A: A Resolutely Canadian TV Drama

2011-09-17T22:13:00.005-04:00

People have been asking me when the Canadian TV season starts.
They're not thinking of those well made series shot in Canada but set in some unknown place --the ones that are made to sell to American TV networks.
They're thinking of Canadian Canadian shows.
Well, Monday night at 8 on CBC-TV comes a two-hour drama that's as relentlessly Canadian as maple sugar.
The title says it all: John A: The Birth Of A Country.
And the cast reads like a who's who of Canadian TV stars.
Shawn Doyle (The Eleventh Hour) plays John A. Macdonald back when the future prime minister was just another member of a faltering Canadian coalition. Canada in those days comprised an uneasy union of Upper and Lower Canada.
Set against him there's another future Father of Confederation: Peter Outerbridge (ReGenesis) as George Brown, editor of the Toronto Globe.
Aidan Devine (The City) plays another Macdonald, John Sanfield Macdonald, erstwhile leader of the Liberal party and the future first premier of Ontario.
Also there's David La Hayne (George Etienne Cartier), Jean-Michel Le Gal (Antoine-Aime Dorion).
Veteran producer Bernard Zuckerman (This Is Wonderland) made it and veteran Jerry Ciccoritti (Death And Life Of Nancy Eaton) directed it with some class.
The meaty script is by Bruce M. Smith from Richard Gwyn's recent Macdonald biography.
As a former history student at University of Toronto I wish there was more insights from the biographies of Macdonald and Brown by Donald Creighton and Maurice Careless.
The saga opens in 1861 with the union of Upper and Lower Canada going nowhere fast. Governments fall regularly because of the animosity between English and French.
A lot of the story is personal --comprising dual biographies of Macdonald and Brown, ironically both Scotsmen but fiercely loyal to the British crown.
As the American Civil War heats up there's deep concern President Lincoln will one day turn his armies --numbering over a million men --northward and consider Canada easy pickings.
We see Macdonald as first a political opportunist saddled with an ailing wife addicted to opium for her pain.
And Brown is so violently anti-French he cannot cobble together a majority because he has no seats in Quebec.
Now making a drama set in 1861 to 1864 in today's Toronto is a real challenge --there are so few authentic buildings left.
But the on-location photography takes us to University College and Osgoode Hall for some exteriors. Production designer Tim Bider and Costume designer Mary Partridge-Raynor have created alchemy in recreating those Victorian times.
I'm not sure Doyle is quite right as John A. --he's too serene. I think the real Macdonald was more charismatic , mercurial, and certainly a heavy drinker.
Outerbridge complete with thick Scottish accent has the juicier part and with his whiskers in place shows how passionate and volatile Brown could be in his love of the emerging nation of Canada.
Much of the "action" centers on the historic debates between the two antagonists and to me these moments seemed exciting helped by Ciccoritti's directorial touches and the fluid camera work of Michael Story.
At one time CBC was all into dramatizing Canada's past.
I remember being on the set of CBC's big 1978 hit The National Dream. And I was on the set of a companion 1979 mini-series Riel.
And later there were dramatic recreations of the lives of Laurier, Rene Levesque, Tommy Douglas with diminishing returns.
I'm hoping there is still a place to tell uniquely Canadian stories on CBC.
If that is so the future of the public network is justified.
JOHN A. PREMIERES ON CBC-TV MON. SEPT. 19 AT 8 P.M.
MY RATING: *** 1/2.

So Who Cares About The Emmy Awards?

2011-09-14T23:57:00.005-04:00

Here are my predictions for Sunday night's Emmy Awards. As I think this out i see few of the Top Ten U.S. shows are listed. Instead a lot of shows from cable weblets few people watch seem oce again to be dominating the nominations.
For Outstanding U.S. Comedy Series it just has to be Modern Family. I'm thinking the only other contender is the Office which is losing Steve Carell.
For Outstanding Drama Series I'd pick Friday Night Lights which has been consistently ignored by Emmy over the years and has finished its run.
Best Supporting Drama Actor should be John Slattery (Mad Men) because it was his best season.
Best Supporting Drama Actress should be Kelly Macdonald (Boardwalk Empire) although Christine Baranski (Good Wife) is right up there.
Best Drama Actor should be Kyle Chandler (FNL) although Steve Buscemi (Boardwalk Empire) is a close contender.
Best Drama Actress should be Kathy Bates (Harry's Law) but probably Juliana Margulies (Good Wife) will win.
Best Comedy Actress should be Amy Poehler (Parks And Recreation) but some sources say it's Laura Linney (The Big C).
Best Comedy Actor should be Steve Carell (The Office) just because he's leaving after a great run.
Best Comedy Actor should be Ed O'Neill (Modern Family) --he wasn't even nominated last year.
Best Supporting Comedy Actress should be Jane Lynch (Glee)--I see no other contenders.
So do you agree with me or not?

Ron James Returns For His Third Season

2011-09-13T23:40:00.004-04:00

So here I am wandering through Toronto's increasingly decrepit subway.
And I can't help but noticing the multiple posters for new CTV and Global TV series debuting this fall.
It's strange but I can't find a single poster promoting a Canadian series.
And both CTV and Global are Canadian networks.
That leaves the heavy lifting to CTV and the cable weblets.
Which means it's important to welcome back Ron James for his third season of comedy capers starting on CBC Friday Sept. 16 at 8 p.m.
I've watched the preview DVD and am liking what I see.
Ever since I first interviewed James for his short lived Canadian sitcom Blackeye I've been a fan. And in my estimation he truly honed his craft through hundreds of one night stands across Canada in the past decade..
When his show debuted I had mixed feelings --after all the estimable RCAF was just then getting cancelled.
But James wisely refused to stray into political commentary --CBC already has Rick Mercer and This Hour Has 22 Minutes for that.
His sketch pad is all of Canada, He doesn't overly dwell on Toronto but goes out touting the advantages of all kinds of Canadian locations.
"This year I'm starting out by saluting Kingston," he chuckles on the line from his comedy offices. And James really gives it to the denizens, mentioning the area has nine prisons for starters.
"I'm going to take on Owen Sound. Look Out!" he laughs. "Then Kelowna, then Banff. There's lots of comedy material in all these towns."
For me the first episode seems tightly edited, better written, a seamless mixture of a funny monologue and competing sketches.
Says James: "The first season it was all touch and go. We actually did the skits as we were taping each show, it was real pandemonium for me. "
This year James's team wrote the monologues and commentaries first and then stitched in comedy sketches that completed James's ramblings.
So he begins with his ideas about weekend fanatics who dress up in period gear and prance around recreating battles or sci fi encounters.
And then on comes a very lively, well researched skit about a group of Southern Confederates in costume headed by a bearded James going up against various wizards and dragons headed by guest Kids In The Hall's Kevin McDonald.
I won't give away too much except to say it certainly works and is well edited and fast paced.
Remembers James :"It was shot in Summerhill Park and the call time was for 6 a.m. Temperature was boiling hot. I had a fake beard glued on and the glue ran and it was very itchy. It all had to be staged with the extras and it just worked out so nicely."
There's also time for a L'il Ronnie segment about head lice that had me itching --I noticed the voice of mom was supplied by the talented Linda Kash.
"I think what we're doing is breaking down the fourth wall, making everything flow as one and it's a great feeling when it happens. Later we'll venture to PEI and examine the twin phenomena of potatoes and Anne."
The show is working more the way James always hoped it would work and he's always generous in giving guests their fair share of the laughs.
And BlackFly is even running on a cable network --I recently caught one episode at around 3 a.m. and it still makes me laugh.
I tell James I recently heard a lady asking in a downtown DVD store where the DVD for Ron James's show was. The sales clerk merely shrugged.
Season 3 deserves a DVD release, I tell you. Better pass that word along to the CBC bureaucrats.
SEASON THREE OF RON JAMES PREMIERES ON CBC FRID. SEPT. 16 AT 8 P.M.
MY RATING: ***1/2.

Remembering Cliff Robertson

2011-09-11T23:18:00.003-04:00

What I liked about the late Cliff Robertson was his sheer ordinariness.
Sure he was handsome in a square jawed sort of way.
But he never scaled the heights of super movie stardom as happened to such contemporaries as Paul Newman and Jack Lemmon.
Robertson who died on Sept. 10 a day before his 88th birthday once told me he'd survived for decades in Hollywood because "I looked so American to the casting directors I guess."
But what a range of famous Americans he played: John Kennedy, Hugh Hefner, Buzz Aldrin, Henry Ford, Cole Younger.
A group of us shared lunch with Robertson in 1984 in Phoenix, Arizona, where CBS was having its fall TV preview for visiting critics.
Robertson by this time was doing mostly TV --where he'd started in the 1950s--and had signed for a year of guest appearances on the CBS night time soap Falcon Crest at $50,000 an episode..
And why not?
"The money's good, the exposure is tops and people of my generation sit home watching TV these days," he said with a relaxed laugh.
He was born Clifford Parker Robertson in 1923 in La Jolla, California, the son of wealthy parents. He studied English Literature at Antioch College and later worked as a reporter for the Springfield Daily News and served as a merchant marine in World War II.
He joined a repertory company in the Catskill Mountains and he then landed a small role in the touring company of Mister Roberts and another in The Wisteria Trees. In 1955 he signed with Columbia Pioctures and debuted in Picnic opposite Bill Holden and Kim Novak.
"My big break came with my second picture, Autumn Leaves (1956) starring the great Joan Crawford. I know what people say about her but she was entirely professional and saw to it that I was promoted by Columbia."
in 1957 came his first lead in The Naked And The Dead. then he had his biggest ever hit in Gidget (1959) which he hated but which made him a top box office attraction.
In 1963 he was cast as young John Kennedy in the wartime film PT 109 (1963) --"President Kennedy saw it, liked it but mentioned I had my hair parted on the wrong side of my head! Then he was assassinated and nobody had the stomach to see it after that."
In 1968 Robertson won the Oscar for Charly but he was filming in the Philippines and couldn't make the awards ceremony.
In 1977 while routinely reviewing all his earnings for income tax purposes Robertson noticed a check for $10,000 that he did not remember cashing.
He discovered his signature had been forged by Columbia executive David Begelman
Robertson was warned by studio heads not to press charged or he'd be blackballed --he refused and Begelman went to jail for forgery.
"And I did not work again in that town for seven years," Robertson told me.
Robertson who remained a very charming guy --I later got a hand written note of thanks from him for the story I wrote about his joining Falcon Crest.
He was married twice --first to Jack Lemmon's ex-wife Cynthia and then to actress Dina Merrill.
I always liked him in whatever he did.

The One Anniversary Of 9/11 Special You Must Catch

2011-09-09T00:13:00.005-04:00

I certainly do remember 9/11.
I was working away at my desk at the Toronto Star that afternoon and went to the window to see what every one was shouting about.
I looked out at Lake Ontario and saw the sky was clogged with American jumbo jets --every U.S. flight east of the Mississippi had been ordered out of American air space --to Toronto or Montreal airports.
So I get bad vibes watching all these anniversary specials.
Until I popped in a Canadian made one that offered insights and hope --and a truly unique twist.
It's titled Hero Dogs Of 9/11 and amazingly the hourlong documentary offers a twist on that day I had never heard of --the canines that tirelessly worked the field of carnage. And some of them even perished in the line of duty.
The hour is seamless which is astounding because producer Tanya Kelen of kelencontent only started working on it in July.
I had no idea over 300 dogs were involved in search and rescue missions that day and the days after. Some were involved in search and rescue missions and doing outstanding work. Others offered solace to tired and despairing crews who were fighting against time to search the ruins for survivors.
Individual dogs get profiled including the security dog Sirius left in a basement cage in the World Trade Center as his owner walked upstairs to try and offer help.
The resulting collapse of the towers meant Sirius was a casualty --mourned by the officer to this day.
And there's the seeing eye dog , Nikki, who calmly and methodically guided her scared and blind owner owner down flights of stairs to safety, stopping occasionally to allow firemen to walk up the stairs --they would never come down alive.
We see how many dogs succumbed to the same ailments as humans and needed medical care --over 100 dogs would be treated in the next few weeks. Many had to be fitted with canine dog pads because of the smoking heat emanating from the fallen steel beams.
And we see how arduous the training is to turn a dog into an expert search and rescue dog--it takes a good 18 months.
Some are cadaver dogs trained to sniff dead bodies in rubble. Others can catch the scent of living people who need to be helped. And some are simply there as therapy dogs.
There's Nikki, the Golden Retriever, who guided the scared blind man out of the towers. And there's a marker for Sirius who also gave his life.
Producer Kelen has expertly recreated many scenes interweaving actual footage with recreations so masterfully I couldn't spot any seams. Some of it is so scarey viewers seem stuck right there in the stairwells. And she's also highlighted the true saga of one of the few humans who actually survived and might have died in the rubble had not search dogs located her. Incredibly she has gone on to have two beautiful children.
We also visit with a reunion of the search dogs and the introduction of new dogs --many of the canine heroes have passed away in the subsequent decade. Nikki died in 2004.
I came away from this wonderful hour not depressed but uplifted by its life affirming message. Hero Dogs Of 9/11 is simply stated the best 9/11 special I've seen tso far and is highly recommended.
HERO DOGS OF 9/11 PREMIERES ON ANIMAL PLANET SUND. SEPT. 11 AT 7 P.M.
MY RATING: ****.

Christine Cushing's Fearless In The Kitchen Moves To OWN

2011-09-08T00:08:00.004-04:00

"Boy, we have some pretty awful cooks this season," laughs Christine Cushing as her cooking series Fearless In the Kitchen moves from W to OWN for its third season premiere.
"It makes for very exciting TV, I predict. And the twist this year is simply we're using more partners than ever before."
In each of the 13 half hours viewers will be introduced to hapless participants who are just plain lousy in the kitchen.
And by the end? "I'm not saying great chefs will be made," Cushing says on the phone from her editing suite where she's still fine tuning new shows. "But viewers will certainly see a big difference, they'll watch as our guests try and confront their fears about cooking."
In this day of specialized cooking series where great chefs are touted or participants cook in a kind of Survivor Kitchen mode Cushman offers a pleasing difference.
"I'm there to help. I can also tease, cajole, get them going. What I don't do is shout, anything like that. Because it's not me. I don't think that stuff makes for enjoyable TV. It is sort of disturbing."
A lot depends on the selection of the right guests.
"And we really get a great couple in the first new show, a father and his son Peter. Like so many we found them at a travel show --we also get some at home shows. And Peter just came up and said he never learned to cook and his dad was just as bad and their jokes and their energy --that half hour really worked!"
To get those precious 21 minutes of actual footage "well, it took 21 hours of shooting. No, I'm not kidding. We never know at the time what we'll be using, how the session will go, and then comes the editing. So much good stuff has to be discarded. After all we're telling a story that is still unfolding."
Front and center of each episode is Cushing's test kitchen which is laid out to accommodate TV lights and cameras. She says her method is to quickly get the guests accustomed to the cameras and crew and hope after a few moments the subjects will simply settle down.
"It worked this time --pretty son Dave and Peter were joking up a storm. I had them busy preparing a seafood soup and they did almost everything wrong. I asked my producer 'Please don't make me taste that!' But he said it was part of the show. How was it. Utterly awful, like dishwater. Blah!"
From the depths it was Christine's job top raise them to the heights. "By teaching a healthy respect for the food, where it came from, how it has to be managed. I want them to explore but I'm also there to teach."
At one point she takes the men to an actual pig farm and orders them to muck up in one pen --it's one way of showing where food comes from but also gets the boys working in tandem.
I won't give away the final elegant dinner they must prepare --it includes rack of lamb --but it's an adventure for both as well as viewers.
Cushing despite her youth and vigour is a ten year veteran of the TV wars. She effortlessly sports the kind of warm personality that makes guests trust her. And she knows what she's speaking about --she's toiled in such Toronto restaurants as The Four Seasons hoteland Scaramouche and has published two best selling cookbooks including Dish It Out.
Made by Fushion Television for Corus Entertainment Cushing's series was quickly snapped up by Oprah Winfrey's OWN network in Canada and there's a deal going on to bring it also to U.S. Viewers.
"The first one works so well, maybe in the next batch I should only do pairs. I want viewers to learn as much as these two are doing on camera."
THE THIRD SEASON DEBUT OF FEARLESS IN THE KITCHEN IS ON OWN THURS. SEPT. 8 AT 7:30 P/M.

Scott McGillivray Is Back With Income Property

2011-09-06T23:23:00.002-04:00

How do I know the Toronto made Income Property is just about the hottest series currently on HGTV?
Because host/star Scott McGillivray is on the phone telling me that the series has just been picked up for two new seasons (6 and 7).
"And that happened just as we finished Season 5 so that's a vote of confidence."
The fifth season actually debuts on HGTV Thurs. Sept. 8 at 9 p.m. --a new day and time befitting a top rated Canadian cable series.
"We're no longer a new show so things are going to change somewhat this season,"McGillivray promises.
"Big news is we're getting out of the basement. We'll be moving to renovating entire houses as income property --that seemed the way to go."
And with 65 episodes in the can McGillivray's partners can now start selling the show in such markets as Great Britain.
"British TV, they want a lot of episodes, other places we started selling with our first order of 13. So 65 episodes is a big step forward."
A lot of HGTV product needs such refreshening. Some of the more familiar titles have been around for awhile and there's a sameness to the product that inevitably creeps in.
"We're looser in front of the camera, we have some funny moments,"he explains. In earlier segment he often seemed a bit uncertain and that occurred when the series was evolving. These new episodes highlight a more relaxed, genial host who obviously enjoys what he does.
"Some change is good, positive but too much might drive away dedicated fans, that's what I feel anyhow. But with success comes a certain freedom to play a bit with the format."
Indeed in the first new show music gets added to the mix in the demolition segment --what emerges is a sort of fractured rock video.
"I didn't want to tackle the same solutions every week. We still deal with people in emergency situations who desperately need help or they could lose their homes.
"We'll always be about helping."
McGillivray, 33, protests he's still the same guy who went into the series. "Probably I was too trusting, that's all"
He's referring to the lady customer who figured his TV work had made him pretty wealthy and sat in a chair watching as his crew attempted to renovate her home --she demanded something like $70,000 in additional insulation and the experience, he says, was the siole negative experience of TV making.
When I tell him I got a huge number of comments about the feature I wrote on him last year he seems to brighten up.
And I'm still getting comments. I read one received the other day:
"I love Scott and His Show. He has taught me so much about home design. I would like to use his designer on the beach penthouse in Boa Raton. I want them to decorate the 5,000sq ft on the 28th floor."
So what about it, Scott? Interested in branching out from just Toronto?
MacGillivray chortles and says send him the em-ail address.
In fact one of his ventures is as a landlord --he currently owns and/or renovates 20 properties in Toronto but has been slowly converting to U.S. properties.
"In 33 states there are laws encouraging the buying of heavily discounted properties. So I've reduced my Canadian properties by about 50 per cent."
And another correspondent mentioned she'd once eaten in a restaurant he managed and owned in Burlington.
So what kind of food did you serve?
"Mediterranean."
And why did it go under.
"It seems to be the fate of most restaurants these days. They only last six months and then another becomes faddish."
And did you ever think had it succeeded you might have wound up as a host on Food Network instead of HGTV?
"Not really." But he's chuckling.
I ask McGillivray if the burden of being so famous means people can be bothersome on occasion.
"No, not really. The fans are generally great, they like to chat and if I didn't like this I'd be doing something else."
THE FIFTH SEASON OF INCOME PROPERTY DEBUTS ON HGTV THURS. SEPt. 8 AT 9 P.M.

Against The Wall: New "Canadian" Drama On Bravo!

2011-09-05T00:46:00.005-04:00

This is shaping up to be the TV Season of the "New Woman"
Yet another cop drama extolling the virtues of an independent female debuts Wed. night at 9 on Bravo!.
Against The Wall is pretty darned good although wholly derivative of other, bigger network series.
Rachael Carpani is well cast as a struggling police woman Abby Kowalski who at 30 finally gets to be a detective --only its in the hated and feared Internal Affairs division.
If Carpani looks familiar she starred for eight seasons on the Australian TV series McLeod's Daughters.
Here she has mastered a North American accent with apparent ease.
She's got a tough cop (Treat Williams) for a father and all three of her brothers are Chicago beat cops.
And if that doesn't somehow remind you of Blood Brothers then you haven't been watching the CBS drama that stars Tom Selleck.
And on the job Abby finds herself coupled with a toughie, a street smart female detective who shows her the ropes. Think Cagney And Lacey and you're getting warm.
Set in Chicago, the series is getting filmed in Toronto and that's not even a first. CTV's past hit Due South was set in Chicago but also filmed here.
It's a tradition that goes all the way back to Night Heat --look for the streetcar tracks, the Ontario plates on the taxis, and in the very first scene is instantly recognizable as Front. Street West. And I also spotted a passerby buying a copy of the Toronto Star from a coin box.
But I digress. Despite its bag load of derivatives Against The Wall works because of some top notch actors.
As Abby's parents there are two experienced actors with hit series under their belts: Williams and Kathy Bates from PIcket Fences
Catch the droll scene where Baker forces Williams to eat cereal for breakfast after he picks a fight with daughter Abby..
And because this is treasured Cancon lots of fine local actors get chances to shine: Steve Byers(Falcon Beach), James Thomas as brother Donnie, Andrew Walker as boyfriend Brody, and Mayko Nguyen (ReGenesis) who's also co-starring in Rookie Blue.
The series is long on character development, short on the usual police histrionics. In the first episode Abby is investigating a charge of police brutality lodged against two officers who were caught in as barroom brawl.
But that part of the hour seems perfunctory. Against The Wall really works by exploring the family dynamics: a disagreement in church between Abby and her mother, the anger of her father who didn't want her to join the department despised by most cops, and Abby's ambivalence about hooking up with an old friend.
Carpani has the sort of personality that makes you want to get interested in her character.
The series was primarily made for the U.S. cable network Lifetime which specializes in stories of the empowerment of women and on this basic level Against The Wall truly delivers.
Technical details are on a par with any network series. Against The Wall will surely find a willing female audience out there willing to watch this thirtysomething detective find her bearings.
AGAINST THE WALL PREMIERES ON BRAVO! ON WED. SEPT. 7 AT 9 P.M.
MY RATING: ***.

Two More Drama Series Return On Sunday

2011-09-04T01:17:00.004-04:00

This is the time of the year when Americanseries new and returning inundate Canadian TV networks.
But Sunday night the two returning series coming back with new episodes at least have buckets of Canadian content.
First up is Season Two of Lost Girl. It's Toronto made and stars Kristen Holden Ried, Anna Silk (Billable Hours) and Ksenia Solo in a very appealing blend of sci fi nonsense, sheer whimsy and ancient myths and folklore.
Silk is very beautiful in the lead as the audacious BO who when she kisses somebody kills them just like that.
Then there's the police detective Dyson played with panache by Reid who is actually a Fae --a sort of vampire I'm guessing with a dash of werewolf on the side.
Just to be reassuring this is not Buffy land, nor Twilight time, it has an unique style of its own.
Sets and camerawork are up to movie standards and the three leads are obviously enjoying acting with each other.
Did I understand the plot at all? Nope. But I persevered and watched to the end and never once was bored.
For Reid it's a big step forward since I first interviewed him on the set of the late lamented CBC soaper Riverdale. But the series wasn't made for me --it's obviously been carefully crafted to garner in all those True Blood fans out there.
Because of its obviously derivative nature it's a bit of a challenge to get overly excited about Lost Girl.
But there are no weak points --the plot crackles along and the first week's look at an itinerant circus where the denizens are up to no good was pretty smartly staged.
Bo's attitude to men is ambiguous --nothing here is plain and simple.
Lost Girl premiered a year ago to pretty solid reviews and the second season opener may help grow the ratings. Made by Prodigy Pictures and filmed in and around Toronto the show has a look all its own.
An hour later another Canadian made cable drama, Covert Affairs, also returns for its Second Season.
Made in Toronto for USA cable network Covert Affairs highlights the beauty of Piper Perablo as 28-year old Annie Walker who gets picked right from rigorous CIA training and plopped out to the field as a fully functioning agent.
Walker has all the physical training to acquit herself in dangerous situations but she's also darned attractive. Her technical backup comes from Christopher Gorham (Ugly Betty), a brilliant technician despite the fact he's blind. Buit he's awfully funny and supportive.
Kari Matchett returns to Toronto as Walker's CIA assigner Joan Campbell and Peter Gallagher is an ambiguously powerful lawyer. From Heroes as another supportive agent there's Sendhil Ramamurthy.
First new episode has Walker coming to the aid of an Estonian tennis star and she seems to have matured after a first season of battling the baddies.
Covert Affairs is strangely lightly likable despite its serious subject matter.
LOST GIRL SEASON 2 PREMIERES ON SHOWCASE SUND. SEPT. 4 AT 9.
MY RATING: ***.
COVERT AFFAIRS SEASON 2 PREMIERES ON SHOWCASE SUND. SEPT. 4 AT 10.
MY RATING: ***.

Why Warehouse 13 Is Moving To Showcase

2011-09-01T00:18:00.005-04:00

Consider the strange case of Warehouse 13.
The series revved up in 2009 and first ran on CityTV but to weak ratings.
For season 3 it's getting better promotion and a berth on Showcase and why not?
Is it Canadian or American?
Well, it's shot in Canada and the local stars include Aaron Ashmore and Saul Rubinek along with such Americans as Eddie McClintock and Joanne Kelly.
The show is watchable but wholly derivative. In the U.S. it's one of the staples of the SyFy network. Up here its shenanigans might confuse viewers used to fact based shows.
The premise finds two Secret Service agents transferred to "Warehouse 13" after saving the life of the President. It's a massive structure set deep within the mountains in South Dakota where every object and artifact of magic and even whimsy gets stored.
Rubinek overacts wildly as the eccentric curator of the collection named Eddie.
Pete(McClintock) and Myka (Joanne Kelly) are busy chasing down every and all reports of fantastical situations and supernatural happenings. And naturally the U.S. government officially refuses to admit such a facility exists.
Made by Universal Cable Productions, the series sports high production values but the situations are played more for laughs than thrills. The cast are allowed to mug furiously to cover up plot deficiencies. But just try to stop watching --there's something about this band of sleuths that's entertaining.
I think the series is thriving because of the amiability of the stars particularly McClintock and Kelly who refuse to take anything seriously. He's convinced every female is instantly falling for him. She's a by-the-book agent who at first seems impervious to his charms.
Don't take any of it seriously and you might like this show although I think it really belongs on Space.
And this season Aaron Ashmore comes onboard as a new agent--and a gay one at that -- with the ability to tell whether or not people he's interviewing are actually liars. But the show is so plot oriented there's never been much time to explore relationships.
So watch Season's 3 debut Thursday night at 10 on Showcase and tell me what you think.
WAREHOUSE 13 PREMIERES ON SHOWCASE THURSD. AUG. 31 AT 10 P.M.
MY RATING: ***.

Royal Pains Debuts On Showcase

2011-08-30T22:48:00.004-04:00

A funny thing about Showcase. The Canadian cable network was originally structured by Atlantis Films and CBC as a repeat channel for superior Canadian drama series.
Only there are few if any Canadian drama series left on Canadian TV these days.
CBC sold off its percentage years ago and these days Showcase isn't dotted with Canadian repeats but with the cream of American cable TV dramas.
Like Royal Pains which debuts Wednesday on Canadian TV although Showcase is picking it up from its second season.
Starring is a familiar U.S. TV face --Mark Feuerstein who graced such TV sitcom bombs in his younger years as Fired Up (1997), Corad Bloom (1998) and 3 Lbs. (2007) causing him to be dubbed "Murderer Of A Thousand TV Sitcoms)" by one disgruntled TV critic. But it wasn't his fault, he was always better than his material.
In fact Feuerstein is very gifted --look how he effortless stole his scenes in movies' What Women Want (as Morgan Farwell) and TV's West Wing (Clifford Calleyt).
Here in Royal Pains he's effortlessly cast as youngish ER surgeon Hank Lawson who saves a street urchin's life while the hospital's billionaire philanthropist dies. Fired, he winds up watching TV all day and living in a catatonic state until his younger go-getter brother intervenes and takes him to the swank Hamptons to recuperate.
Lawson winds up at a Memorial Day party run by reclusive billionaire Boris Kuester Von Jurgens-Ratenicz ( (Campbell Scott) and he even saves the life of one guest, a lush supermodel, and so gains instant fame in this the wealthiest society in the U.S.
His brash brother Evan is well played by Brampton's Paulo Costanzo and the brothers have a close relationship that reminds me of the banter in the series Number$ --remember that one.
The bros live in some luxury when Lawson is set up as a concierge doctor catering to the ills of the rich and famous. Many of the cases could hardly happen back in New York City.
In the first new episode Lawson rushes to one mansion to save a young man trying to tear down his famous father's inner sanctum where daddy became progressively more paranoid.
In the second episode he's trying to save a young heiress whose increasingly severe fainting spells might indicate congestive heart failure. Lawson diagnosis says it's something else.
Helping Lawson along the way is his gorgeous personal assistant Divya Katdare ( played by Reshma Shetty and an on-off love intertest with the director of the local hospital , Jill Casey, played fetchingly by Jill Flint.
Still only 40, Feuerstein sports charismatic qualities as Lawson --people just assume he's a super talented doctor.
And the bfrothers play out their own personal saga as their long lost father (Henrey Winkler) shows up to disrupt their lives.
Shot in and around the Hamptons, the show has a different look to it than the bavklt productions of L.A.
And this merry mixture of family angst, ripe comedy scenes and love seeking really does work, so much so that the first season of Royal Pains ranked among the highest of U.S. TV cable shows.
ROYAL PAINS PREMIERES ON SHOWCASE WED. AIG. 31 AT 10 PM.
MY RATING: *** 1/2.

I'm Consumed By Consumed

2011-08-30T01:57:00.002-04:00

When the DVD preview for the new HGTV series Consumed arrived I held off for awhile.
Couldn't watch for days. Visions of a similar series called Hoarders danced in my heads.
And I hate Hoarders which I feel unfairly preys on people who need real help.
But when I finally plopped in the DVD for Consumed I liked what I saw.
The series host is efficient but sympathetic Jill Pollack who told me she's a de-cluttering expert and has worked on such shows as Sally Jessy Raphael and Rosie O'Donnell.
"So I know what works on TV and what doesn't."
What doesn't work is brow beating people who are messy.
In the first hour long show Pollack visits with a pudgy young couple who have simply been overwhelmed. The wife keeps everything --she even has boxes of old children's clothing stuck in the crawl space. And her amiable husband is just as messy --his garage is filled to overflowing with junk.
The wife is busy home schooling her kids although they really have no space for books and desks.
Pollack uses "shock therapy" on them --each member may keep only 10 items and everything else is despatched to storage.
For the next month they live in a virtually barren home where they must resort their priorities and then decide what to junk and what to keep.
"Only then do we take them to storage where they must sort through everything in a day, keeping only essentials," Pollack told me. "We get tears. we get anger. But it's something that just has to be done.
"It's an agonizing process and viewers can see the process that ends with a home where people can actually live comfortably in their homes.
"It's not that their house is small, it's just the accumulation of debris. This young wife was so busy looking after her three small kids and without much support from her husband that she gradually lost control of the home."
Even better is the second episode where Pollack visits a middle aged couple with three grown sons all of whom are clutterers. This family is so tightly stuck that they must eat dinner at various locations throughout the home --there's no room at the dining table.
One son has all sorts of sports equipment, the husband keeps every bill --he is a tax accountant. A son has a hamster and his mother has never seen it for the debris. There's so much clutter the distraught mother cannot sleep at night. One son bursts into tears describing how messy the home has become.
Plop five clutterers into a s,all space and this disaster is the result.
Made by B.C.'s Paperny Films, Consumed is compulsively viewable. Pollack's shock therapy really works and the homes are given a redesign to show how the space should be used.
"I don't judge, I don't preach, I help," Pollack explains. "And we do return months later just to make sure the families haven't reverted to cluttering. So far they're all holding firm, they're happy, they see that our redesign helps them to live normal lives.
"And I think it makes for good TV. We have a positive approach, no recriminations. Viewers seem to relate to the process.
" Watch and you'll start tidying up your home. I guarantee that!"
CONSUMED PREMIERES ON HGTV TUESD. AUG. 30 AT 10 P.M.
MY RATING: ***.

Fall Season Is Starting On History

2011-08-29T19:54:00.004-04:00

Tune in Tuesday night on History Television and you'll get the first rush of the fall TV season beginning with a new show for Canadians, Brad Meltzer's Decoded.
Here is the perfect series for Americans who have always harborted paranoidal tendencies when it comes to conspiracy theories.
But I can't see a similar show about Canada working. It's not just that we don't have the reach of the colossus to the South. It's also our approach to politics and history which is relatively free of assassinations.
Every week Meltzer and his history detectives Christine McKinley, Buddy Levy and Scott Rolle tackle one of the big unsolved mysteries out there, wrestle it to the ground and either debunk it or explain what really happens.
Whew! This isn't just another American Reality Show faced with sexy imbeciles who sit around and talk aimlessly.
The focus is strictly on history and depth of research. And trust me it can be very exciting.
First up is the controversy over the cornerstone of the White House. Legend has it that the huge hunk of granite was stolen by the Masons as the building was being refurbished after the War of 1812.
If that's true where is it today? And how did the workmen back then manage to bundle off a slab of granite weighing thousands of pounds?
McKinley is the mechanical engineer among the bunch and she crunches the numbers and seems to insist it just couldn't be done.
Levy, a former teacher, can be found deep inside research libraries as he searches through the arcane memorabilia of the past.
Rolle is a former attorney who asks the edgy questions and refuses to believe anything he hears without proper evidence.
This adventure takes us inside Mason headquarters where we find a large hunk of a cornerstone that was donated to the Mason library by President Harry S . Truman, himself a Mason. Hmmmm.
But things really get complicated when we learn one of the cornerstones of the American Congress also went missing.
Lots of smart talk, running around and furious debate keep us watching . I won't tell the ending but "Conspiratorialists" won't believe it anyway.
Later episodes will deal with Confederate Gold, D.B. Cooper, Statute of Liberty, The Lincoln Assassination --American history is deliciously filled with paranoid possibilities. It's enough to make this Canadian wonder why we're always being left out of this game.
And then at 9 p.m. there's the new season of Pawn stars which is set in Las Vegas. Only we never get to visit The Strip.
This here's a store-based series (specifically the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop) where people come in and try to get various members of the Harrison family to pay for their baubles and trinkets.
There are some history lessons to be learned as experts are trotted in and one guy says a fellow's collection of Harry Houdini shackles are the real thing and worth upwards of $600 --and he goes about telling us how Houdini really did manage his escape tricks.
I like this one although friends complain there's too much talking a promoting the pawn shop but students of character motivation must wonder at some of the dudes entering this store. Most routinely accept far less for their treasures just because they don't want to trudge around and get involved with more haggling at the next store.
And the best item the first week out? It's a mixing machine made during Prohibition when cheap bath tun gin tasted so bad it had to be mixed with other ingredients just to keep it down.
Then along comes a new season of American Pickers at 10 p.m..
Some friends asked me why this aw shucks reality outing is on History. I have no problems with that. It's pop history to be sure.
Our two protagonists Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz play at being good ole boys from Iowa but they're really American entrepreneurs on the hunt for what's called "Rusty Gold".
Sure, they're acting up for the camera --it's strange the long suffering cameraman is never mentioned but his job has to be the hardest of all. You better believe every scene is set and and rehearsed as both sides have to say certain things to keep the momentum going.
The idea of watching two grown men picking through dust and dirt makes for a kind of flip side to Antique Roadshow where everyone is so genteel and the antiques freshly buffed to a sheen..
And, yes, there are some history lessons to be learned although the boys do tend to gravitate to old bicycles and motorcycles.
This week, for example, we got a lesson in the history of pinball machines that was instructive. And when things quieten down the two of them play at being Laurel and Hardy.
BRAD MELTZER'S DECODED PREMIERES ON HISTORY TUESD. AUG. 30 AT 8 P.M.
MY RATING: *** 1/2.
PAWN STARS RETURNS TO HISTORY ON TUESD. AUG. 30 AT 9 P.M.
MY RATING: **1/2.
AMERICAN PICKERS RETURNS TO HISTORY AT 10 P.M.
MY RATING: ***.

The New Fall TV Season Starts Tonight On Bravo!

2011-08-21T00:10:00.004-04:00

This is it --Monday night marks the start of the fall TV season and the first batch of new entries are on cable networks trying to get a jump ahead.
And first up Monday at 9 on Bravo! is the rather carefree legal series Franklin And Bash. Remember the days when U.S. legal series like Perry Mason and The Defenders were carefully crafted salutes to the American legal system?
No more,Franklin And Bash is irreverent to say the least as Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Breckin Meyer are nicely teamed in TV's latest bromance.
They play halves of a legal firm that fights for injustice for the little people meaning they often have to result to outrageous courtroom antics.
Gosselaar plays Franklin, Meyer Peter Bash and they operate out of their home with a few other stranded legal eagles and they use their skills to try and get people acquitted. Also starring is Dana Davis as an ex-con Carmen who is now on the law's side and Kumail Nanjiani who is their agoraphobic legal researcher.
Somehow they attract the attention of one of the wealthiest lawyers in town, brilliant, mercuiral Stanton Infeld, played with great elan by Malcolm McDowell and on what seems like a whim he hires them as adornments to his sprawling law firm to kind of shake things up.
The buddies play video games while debating finer points of the law and Franklin even steps out of a jacuzzi nude in the middle of as party of well wishers just because he wants to.
The two cases they're working on in the pilot are strange to say the very least: a pot bellied airline pilot was determined to join the mile high club just before the plane he was supposed to be piloting crashed and a dominatrix who so beat her husband he died from severe bruising.
Lots of joking not allowed on network TV follows although I kept thinking of that old CNBS hit Simon And Simon because of the heavy doses of male bonding throughout.
And some of the courtroom stunts are so outlandish I'm wondering what judge out there would allow such foolishness.
Still Franklin And Bash is fast paced, reasonably funny, very light and insubstantial and very trendy with its irreverence to the law.
While Franklin And Bash is eminently watchable but Suits makes for riveting viewing.
The premise takes some getting used to. Patrick J. Adams is cool Mike Ross, so brilliant he can read anything and forever be able to re-quote it in detail. A college drop out and sometime drug user he's first spotted in a college law exam cheating --he's taking the course for somebody else and getting paid for it.
Through some convoluted plotting he actually gets in to meet super sharp legal star Harvey Specter played by Gabriel Macht and they become the most unlikely of partners in a top New York city law practice.
Suits refers to the tailored elegance Specter insists from even his most junior subordinates.
This one is superior because the bonding between Adams and Macht is right here from the beginning.
And the first two legal cases are expertly plotted with some big surprises along the way. This one is hardly lightweight the way the lawyers in this firm cynically manipulate the system for gigantic monetary rewards. And both Ross and Specter have some characteristics which are unheroic. In short we recognize them as complex human beings.
In fact Mike despite his brilliant mind is the brilliant one while Harvey is the super shark lawyer out to get top dividends for his firm no matter what.
Suits is slick and sleek and its view of the inner workings of the American legal system is just plain nasty fun.
Shot in the gleaming glass office towers of Manhattan it emerges as cynical as a series can be and something basic TV networks can't compete with. The chemistry between the two lawyers makes this one compulsively viewable.
FRANKLIN AND BASH PREMIERES ON BRAVO! MONDAY AUG. 22 AT 9 P.M.
MY RATING: ***.
SUITS PREMIERES ON BRAVO! MONDAY AUG. 22 AT 10 P.M.
MY RATING: *** 1/2.

big

Big TV Question Of The Week

2011-08-20T03:14:00.004-04:00

Your most asked question on TV this week?
No it has nothing to do with Christine O'Donnell's walking off CNN's Piers Morgan show.
And nothing to do with any of the fall TV series all lined up to debut within weeks.
I'm not kidding by stating that at several places on Friday afternoon I was asked why two Jimmy Cagney flicks (The Crowds Roars and White Heat) wound up as part of TCM's Jean Gabin daylong salute.
You see I'm always addressing this question with Turner Classic Movies.
Ans several years back when I had the chance to interview host Robert Osborne he answered matter of factly.
I remember telling Osborne that after he introduced a Claude Rains movie that was obviously going to be Notorious instead TCM substituted another Rain flick Saturday's Children.
How did that happen I asked. A little old lady down the street said she watched Osborne introduce Rains in a bit of Hitchcockian intrigue and instead up came Rains in a glum Depression drama.
"We don't have the Canadian TV rights to Notorious, somebody else does," Osborne patiently explained.
In fact the differences between the U.S. schedule and the Canadian schedule amounts to about seven per cent of all titles.
So I'm thinking that in case of great French star Gabin profiled on Thursday TCM did not have the rights to Grand Illusion at 10 and Touchez Pas Au Grisby at 2 a.m. Other Gabin titles could not substituted because simply stated there were no other Gabin movies available.
Unfortunately the introductions aren't changed for the Canadian feed.
The only suggestion I have is to consult the separate Canadian schedule on TCM.com.
Odsborne told me it would take years to get complete rights for all films shown on TCM.
I'm not grousing mind you. I managed to see Gabin in the 1934 classic Maria Chapdelaine which I'll wager has never been seen in decades on North American TV.
Osborne himself isn't being seen on TCM these days --he's on a three month leave of absence after minor surgery. So Ben Mankiewicz is substituting for him on most occasions.

Best New TV Series Isn't On TV --Yet

2011-08-17T23:40:00.003-04:00

I've seen the future and it's not on TV. It's on my computer.
More and more these days I'm watching my TV right on my Apple and that's only going to increase I can fearlessly predict.
To back up my prediction the best new TV show premiering this week isn't on TV at all. It's on your computer.
Just call up DiscoveryChannel.ca/things to catch the first installment of a very fast paced new show called Things You Need To Know.
Anybody can and should watch but the core audience seems to be senior public school kids and that's why each segment of the half hour is only about two to three minutes accompanied by heavy graphics and catchy animation.
First subject up is the weather which fascinates us all, myself included. I'll never forget the recent afternoon when The Weather Channel told me it was sunny outside but all I saw out the window was the pelting rain accompanied by bursts of thunder.
So the basics are effortlessly tossed our way by genial host James May.
He goes through all the typical conversation points: how and why the earth tilts, why El Nino is so powerful some years, why hurricanes are different from cyclones and tornadoes.
It's all fast paced and information packed -- I sometimes felt items were too short --and I gather that the typical place for this 30 minute series (which runs 36 episodes) would be in the late afternoon or early evening --if the broadcaster were a conventional network.
I watched the DVD preview tape yesterday and already fiorget some of the segments because they were too fast paced. However animation and presentation are excellent and what more can one expect in a 30-minute sepisode?
Instead Things You Need To Know goes up on Discovery's web site for a week and only then will it appear on Discovery Channel Thursday Aug. 25 at 8:30 p.m.
I've got a feeling the TV audience will be huge, the web audience decidedly less so but that will change over time until TV will be the minor player.
The episode is composed of 12 distinct "mini-sodes" tightly edited because the attention span of young viewers is seemingly fading all the time. I wouldn't liker to try a pop quiz on what was learned because simply stated it's an example of information overload.
This is a Discovery-BBC co-production made by 360Productions and Yap Films. Executive producers are John Farmer and Elliott Halpern. The BBC presence means presenter May comes with a pronounced British accent.
And then a week later it's all available for TV watchers on Thursday May 25 starting at at 8:30 p.m. Got all that?
MY RATING: ***.

Remembering Ralph Bellamy

2011-08-14T00:15:00.003-04:00

When I first started going to Hollywood in 1970 I made sure Ralph Bellamy was on the top of my "must interview" list of great stars past and present.
He lived magnificently on the top of Mulholland Drive in baronial splendor. I just phoned him up, pleaded my case, and he invited me over a few days later for an afternoon of reminiscing.
As far as I was concerned Bellamy had done it all and done better than any other actor of his day.
It's just great that Sunday the 14th is Ralph Bellamy day on Turner Classic Movies and what a feast for movie lovers like me.
The Secret Six (1931) at 7:30 a.m. is certainly an essential: Ralph's first picture paired with such then unknowns as Clark Gable and Jean Harlow.
RB: "I remember sitting in a speak easy with Clark at the end of shooting and he was saying he saved every penny because he didn't think his movie career would last long."
The Wolf Man (1941) at 6:45 p.m.is another classic.
RB: "On that one Warren William got second billing after Lon Chaney Jr. I got third. But look closely as the film continues and Warren disappears quite quickly from view. A delightful alcoholic, he was shipped out to a sanatarium by the studio to dry out, that's why."
His Girl Friday at 8 p.m. remained Bellamy's personal favorite. My favorite Bellamy comedy The Awful Truth (1937) is at 9:45 p.m. I consider it the funniest ever screwball comedy.
RB: "Director Leo McCarey asked me if I could sing. I said no. Then he asked Irene Dunne if she could play the piano and she said only a bit. So he had me sing Home On The Range while Irene clunked away. It always gets the biggest laugh in the picture."
In 1978 i joined him on the set of an NBC pilot titled Clone Master starring Art Hindle shooting at the Paramount lot.
Ralph later told me the network turned it down as a possible series because it was considered too good --"They wanted a show completely unchallenging."
In 1988 I caught up with Ralph In Toronto where he was shooting the movie The Good Mother. And I marveled at his stamina at age 84.
He surprised me by making the miniseries War And Remembrance in 1988 and the TV series Christine Cromwell in 1989. His last picture was 1990's Pretty Baby.
Ralph Bellamy died in L.A. on November 29, 1991, aged 87.
TCM does itself proud by saluting one of moviedom's most proficient actors.

Memories Of TV Press Junkets Past

2011-08-08T23:39:00.003-04:00

Reading the copy from the latest TV Critics Junket in L.A. has me reminiscing about all those great actors I interviewed over the years on junkets past and whatever happened to them.
LIKE:
+JAMES STEPHENS I met on the 1978 TV Critics tour --he was the star of one of the best series of the time, the Paper Chase which first ran on CBS and after cancellation moved over to the new cable weblet Showtime where it appeared on and off until 1986.
Stephens seemed to have everything going for him. Doughty co-star John Houseman pronounced him "every bit as good" as Timothy Bridges who starred in the opriginal movie.
And for a time Stephens flourished --he had recurring role on Cagney And Lacey and co-starred in The Father Dowling Murder Mysteries. But IMDB says his TV acting career ended in 1999. Anybody out there know what happened to the talented James Stephens?
+BESS ARMSTRONG I first met on the 1977 tour as the star of a bright new CBS sitcom On Our Own which alas only lasted the season. She subsisted on TV flicks after that before graduating to the big screen opposite Tom Selleck in 1983's High Road To China.
She was back on TV in the 1986 series All Is Forgiven which I've completely forgotten but scored highly as the energetic mother on My So-Called Life in 1994. And she's made occasional appearances on One Tree Hill.
I still think she had the makings of another Mary Tyler Moore.
+JULIA DUFFY I met first in 1982 when on a visit to the new CBS sitcom Newhart. Simply stated she stole the show as the splendidly vain Stephanie Vanderkellen--she was nominated seven times as best supporting actress at Emmy time but never won. Later on there was a reincarnation on Designing Women but a stint on the very dire sitcom The Mommies did not help at all. Ditto a turn on Reba. I missed her last one Drake & Josh (2004) altogether but I'm still hoping for a stroing TV sitcom return, she's that good.
+HUNT BLOCK was the replacement for Alec Baldwin on Knots Landing when I had lunch with him in L.A. in 1987. A good looker he was also a very serious actor and I touted him highly in my positive profile. But a Star secretary goofed and sent him the page proof instead of the finished article where I'd deleted stuff he read and considered unfavorable. I still liked him the last time I saw him on The Guiding Light.
+TERI ASTIN was another Knots Landing regular when I first met her in 1989 in a San Fernando Valley restaurant. She's one of us --a Canadian who went to York University before landing the plum assignment of Jill Bennett. She worked steadily over the next decade on both CBC shows (Street Legal) and Hollywood stuff (Seinfeld) But Gangland made in 2001 is her last credit --I'm told by friends she works sheltering animals in L.A, these days.
+PAUL RUDD I first met on the set of 1972's Beacon Hill,the CBS spin off from Upstairs, Downstairs. And in 1984 I bumped into him again on the set of Knots Landing. Then he seemed to disappear. Turns out he became a drama professor at Bryn Mawr and died in 2010 aged 70.
What I'm tyring to say I guess is that TV fame is fleeting even p[recarious. So what if you happen to be young, good looking and extremely talented. Without luck it's simply not enough.

Happy 100th Birthday Lucy Ball!

2011-08-08T14:21:00.003-04:00

It was June 1972 and there I was the sole Canadian on the Television Critics Tour in Los Angeles.
Canadian scribes were banned in those days when the U.S. networks ran the show but I sneaked under the line year after year much to the chagrin of the big Toronto newspapers.
Being from the lowly Hamilton Spectator in those days carried perks --Hamilton was then considered part of the Buffalo stations' adverizing territory and the three Buffalo affiliates got me on.
And every night in those days the networks would send critics out to special events. One night I saw that dinner with Lucy Ball and her husband Gary Morton was on the agenda and so I signed up.
Only one other scribe did so --mammoth Kay Gardella from the New York Daily News and we had a grand catered affair in Lucy's gazebo. You see by then Lucy's series was faltering and critics were more interested in younger, prettier stars.
It was all so surreal --we weren't allowed in the house and at one point Lucy's next door neighbor looked over the fence --that would be a guy named Jimmy Stewart.
I startled Lucy by telling her I wanted her to be Lucille --the first female head of a major studio (Desilu) and she obliged by analyzing the industry in a brilliant critique that must have lasted a half hour.
Here was the woman who had green lighted Star Trek because she just had a hunch about the show and she did the same with Mission:Impossible.
But she was certainly a control freak. My old pal Ann Sothern told me she had turned down the opportunity to join The Lucy Show as Vivian Vance's replacement because Ball had become too much of a control freak.
And that night Lucy's daughter Lucie Arnaz was starring in Anne Get Your Gun in summer stock in Atlantic City and was supposed to [phone at a pre-arranged time. When she didn't Lucy went ballistic and then started worrying something had happened.
It had --Arnaz's shows had started late because the curtain wouldn't come down, that's all. When she finally phoned Lucy blasted her.
The master class lasted a few hours. Lucy answered every question quite brilliantly. She analyzed the other comedies coming up on the schedule --I remember on another occasion she particularly loathed Maude which she considered too adult.
Lucy wisely retired from the weekly grind in 1974--she was 63 and her latest movie, a bad musical version of Mame had bombed at the box office.
And she was very wrong to attempt a comeback in 1986 with Here's Lucy. I attended a taping one night --John Ritter was the co-star --and when Lucy attempted a pratfall the audience stood up in horror she'd hurt herself.
This week on TCM I watched some of her great movie highlights --Lucy had always pretended she wasn't much of a movie star but she was.
I caught her in Best Foot Forward and The Big Street with Henry Fonda where her great beauty was on full display.
Hard to believe she's now 100. I think she'd be delighted she's remembered so fondly by fans.

Lloyd Robertson Isn't Really Retiring On Sept. 1

2011-08-04T22:39:00.004-04:00

"I was there the day you joined CTV News in September, 1976," I told Lloyd Robertson a few months ago at the fall CTV Launch.
Robertson's eyebrows went way way up and he asked simply "Goodness! Just how old are you?"
It was 1976, days after Labor Day and CBC was having its annual TV launch for visiting Canadian TV critics --plus one intrepid female critic from the Buffalo News.
In those days CTV didn't even bother having one. My big Canadian program is Littlest Hobo," CTV President Murray Chercover once barked at me. "You want me to promote THAT?"
All of a sudden the CBC affair at Studio Seven was suddenly quiet as the head of CBC news and current affairs Knowlton Nash stepped forward to say something like "I've lost my Mr. Clean!"
We all knew what that meant --Lloyd Robertson --CBC anchor for the past six years had defected to CTV.
"Come back! Come back!" shouted CBC PR head Cec Smith as reporters piled into taxis which sped us up to the Charles St. East headquarters of CTV.
Robertson told me that day he'd decided to move "Because I truly want to be a complete anchor".
CBC regulations at the time categorized him as an announcer meaning he couldn't change his TV script which was written by others and he couldn't do the kind of on location reporting which was one of his strong points.
About 20 minutes into the CTV spiel the doors of the auditorium crashed open and in sped Harvey Kirck looking a trifle distraught. He'd only been told about the change hours before and had taken a plane to get back to Toronto.
Robertson's daring move changed the face of Canadian TV news reporting forever.
After Robertson left his CBC successors (including first Peter Kent and then Knowlton Nash) were able to fully function as reporters and commentators as well as news readers for the first time.
And CTV News got a necessary jolt which helped it leap and sprint into the forefront as the most watched national TV broadcast in Canada.
"I'm not going anywhere," Robertson said a few months ago. He'll be relinquishing anchoring duties to Lisa LaFlamme (chosen over Tom Clark in a controversial bit of casting).
"But I'll be host of W5 which is a great brand for CTV. And I'll do some reporting, too. I'll be around."
Robertson, 77, is smaller in person than one imagines from seeing him on TV. And younger looking too. In terms of :"trust and tradition" --two staples viewers are polled on he's still at the top of the anchor heap.
After all he's been doing it since 1952 when aged 18 he was hired as an announcer at CJCS in his hometown of Stratford. In 1954 he jumped to the new fangled CBC TV and then spent four years in Winnipeg and two more years in Ottawa before joining the Toronto announcing team.As Robertson recently told me "I think it was a mistake for (CBS's) Walter Cronkite to retire at 65. He had a lot more to contribute. " So has Robertson.
Robertson will be available as a commentator for the really big events and also has an idea for a book.
I don't know a single nasty story about him. When he joined with Kirck CTV insiders predicted a real cat fight but the two became friends.
"I still respect his integrity," Kirck told me when he retired as co-anchor in 1984.
Indeed I once printed a letter in Starweek from a frustrated oldster who asked why "Harvey towers over Lloyd when they're standing but they're the same size when sitting beside each other?"
A delighted Robertson commissioned the resident CTV artist to commission a cartoon panel showing Harvey Kirck sitting on the floor with Lloyd sitting on a large number of telephone directories. Both autographed it and it's right up on my wall as a prized possession.
So I can't wish Lloyd Robertson a "happy retirement" because "Jim, I'm not retiring".
Before his last broadcast as CTV anchor on Thurs. Sept. 1 there'll be an hour long CTV special with clips from Robertson's finest moments. .