Being Erica Deserved A Third Chance

Among TV's stranger couples the twosome on CBC-TV's Being Erica strike me as the most inexplicable.
I'm talking about the bizarre relationship between the nicely titled Erica Strange (played winningly by Erin Karpluk) and her psychoanalyst (another brilliant turn by Michael Riley).
I mean what is this, an evolving romance, a relationship between two unequals, a visit to a psychiatrist.
Or all three of the above.
The hour Canadian drama returns for a rare third try at the brass ring Tuesday Sept. 20 at 9 p.m. on CBC.
Given last season's weak ratings CBC sources are saying the series is only back because of its tremendous popularity in the U.S. on the SOAPnet cable channel. CBC took its time in renewing this one but finally the lure of all those American dollars proved too much.
Plus the series is good if starved for Canadian viewers.
I have one American friend wgo is totally obsessed with this series and still refuses to believe it could possibly be made in Canada.
I have another friend here in Toronto who think the time travelling stuff "a bunch of guff" although she continues to watch.
For me the series had a strong second beginning and then got bogged down to the point of ennui. Nobody on the show seemed to be growing, it was the same premise every week.
Viewers noticed by migrating to the strong American competition.
When CBC gave Being Erica a third chance it seemed the series should go off in new directions. And it has although I cannot break my TV critic's oath and reveal plot details here.
Getting a third season out of a series has always been a conundrum for CBC which lacks the promotional dollars to go out and create a blitz of recognition. For that reason CBC series tend to get picked up for a second season in the hope that word of mouth can create a winning formula.
Hey, it worked with DaVinci's Inquest but it didn't work with the excellent Intelligence.
On Riley's last CBC series This Is Wonderland season 3 proved to be the killer --CBC decided it was a 10 p.m. show and since the network had news at 10 the show got cancelled.
The plot does deepen this season as Erica enters Phase Two of her therapy. I'm just asking but why does she think she needs therapy anyway.
She's so danged nice that everybody else around her always beats up on her and Dr. Tom especially likes to play mind games. Being so nice she always defers to his requests.
In group therapy the other patients seem to gang up on her.
And after Phase Two Dr. Tom warns she'll then to Phase Three and become a doctor herself.
Visuals are splendid --Toronto as Toronto is really on display here, the supporting cast is attractive and this is on CBC series that doesn't look stodgy.
But having a great product doesn't guarantee Canadian TV success. If it did The City, Power Play and half a dozen other series would still be running. And most of these aren't even available in DVD boxed sets.
And the fact that Americans really dig Being Erica more than we do is something pretty substantial. If only more Canadians would watch then the series might yet become a deserved hit.
THE THIRD SEASON PREMIERE OF BEING ERICA IS ON CBC-TV TUES. SEPT. 21 AT 9 P.M.
MY RATING: ***.

Hawaii Five-0 Is The Best New Network Series

For years CBS has been the U.S. network ratings leader, loathe to drastically change its schedule.
But recent survey's indicate the Tiffany of the networks is servicing an increasingly older audience --the average age of a CBS viewer is now 57 years.
So in May CBS cancelled seven faltering series and introduced three new dramas and two new half hour comedies to its lineup.
CBS is making changes but not radical ones. Old pro Tom Selleck returns to series TV in a police saga Blue Bloods while Jim Belushi plays a lawyer in the hour series The Defenders --the title was once the domain of a famous CBS series starring E.G. Marshall.
But the best of the bunch is the restructured Hawaii Five-0.
Jack Lord is dead, James MacArthur no longer acts. But the surfs still up and there are baddies running everywhere on these islands.
And CBS has placed its trust in young hunk Alex O'Loughlin who may not exactly sport the coiffure of Lord but is steel jawed and manly.
CBS sees something in O'Loughlin that viewers must have missed. The Aussie import has twice starred in CBS shows that tanked in the ratings: first there was Moonlight (2007) followed by Three Rivers (2009).
CBS has to realize there are troubles inherent in the restructuring of such a classic as Hawaii Five-0.
Recent remakes from The Bionic Woman to Knight Rider were lifeless remakes that added nothing but subtracted mightily from the originals.
I remember CBS once tried to refloat Perry Mason with the colorless Monte Markham and paid heavily for that effort.
The new Hawaii Five-0 does have the music. It does have the same splendid locations. And once a week you'll hear the familiar "Book 'em Dano."
That's about where the resemblance ends.
In this version Garrett doesn't work for Honolulu Homicide but heads a special agency established to battle crime funded by the state's governor (played by Jean Smart).
Writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman did the successful 2009 reboot of the Star Trek franchise and are aware of the pitfalls. Here they've made McGarrett a vengeful ex-Navy SEALS who roughs it up, soots it out and performs some pretty spectacular stunts whereas Jack Lord in his day would never get his pompadour touselled.
It's sidekick Dano (played by Jimmy Caan's son Scott) who supplies some of the humor. These two guys hate each other at first sight but by the end of the first hour a bromance clearly is brewing.
Ad the role of Kono has been modernized. Grace Park turned a former male character on Battlestar Galactica into her own female version now does the same here. Kono is now a recent police academy grad with strong kick ass tendencies.
And jumping over from Lost there's Daniel Dae Kim as another member of the elite force named Det. Chin Ho Kelly.
Look, this is basic entertainment. You want sometghing brooding and challenging try Mad Men on cable.
CBS knows its audience and knows procedurals sell mightily in the mass TV ,arket.
Some of these reboots have worked, others have failed spectacularly.
But Hawaii Five-0 could make it big as CBS looks to the past for its ratings future.
HAWAII FIVE-0 PREMIERES MOND. SEPT. 20 ON GLOBAL AND CTV AT 10 P.M.
MY RATING: *** 1/2.

Boardwalk Empire: A Huge New TV Hit

Get set for Boardwalk Empire the best new TV series of the fall.
The series might just as well be called Prohibition. It begins in 1920 with passage of the Volstead Act that outlawed the sale of liquor and spawned a vicious new breed of American gangster.
The opener on HBO Canada Sunday night at 9 is virtually a must see.
If it looks and sounds like a Martin Scorsese movie then guess what? It was directed by Scorsese who also serves as executive producer of the series.
Steve Buscemi moves from his lauded status as a great supporting actor to front and center star of this rambling, violent saga. He persuasively plays Atlantic City treasurer Nucky Thompson who gets a kickback from everyone from cops to liquor salesmen.
Buscemi predictably captures all the weasel-like attributes of Nucky but he's also suprisingly funny, wisecracking his way through situations that might defeat a lesser hood.
The first scene shows him addressing a ladies Tenperance Union meeting and reducing his captive audience to tears with tales of how as a young boy he fed his family by shooting rats for dinner.
But competition is threatening to hone in.
There's the suave fixer of the 1919 World Series Arnold Rothstein (Michael Stuhlbarg) and his depraved sidekick Lucy Luciano (Vincent Piazza).
Watching his every move is his protege ex-doughboy Jimmy Darmody (Michael Pitts) whose first heist results in five bloody corpses and the immediate attention of the newly formed FBI led by a Christian chain smoking agent Van Alden (Michael Shannon).
The opening 70-minute installment directed by Scorsese is chock full of artmosphere. The whole boardwalk gets recreated complete with shops and beer halls. And Biuscemi's Nucky inhabits a whole floor of a grand hotel that positively reeks of Twenties overindulgence.
But Nucky also has a softer side. When an indigent admirer Margaret Schroeder drops by to plead for a good job for her German immigrant husband Nucky goes all out --and her husband suspects somehing is going on.
There's corruption at every level --Nucky passed off his old job as sheriff to another brother who obligingly dumps one of Nucky's enemies right into the ocean.
At times the plot will remind you of such classic crime movies as Public Enemy, Scarface and The Roaring Twenties. But Scorsese's vision is far more fierce: in one midnight rendezvous out on a rural road there's a cacophony of shootings accompanies by deer from the forest bouncing through the images.
In another scene a crime boss is shot in the head in his own restaurant and as he slumps to the floor pools of blood clash with the white tiles.
HBO is clearly culling this historical crime scene for a possible follow up to The Sopranos. But will a contemporary audience be fascinated by events now 90 years in the past?
If you think the first episode is violent be forewarned the next two segments are even more vicious. A young punk named Al Capone (Stephen Graham) enters the scene as one of Darmody's hired thugs and beats and maims his way up the crime ladder.
The similarities to The Sopranos are very evident. Sopranos was now, Boardwalk was then. Terence Winter, creator and executive producer of Boardwalk Empire, was also an executive producer on The Sopranos.
He knows a new series has to instantly grab its viewers and hold them. And he does so with brilliant dialogue, snatches of nudity, and a completely brilliant recreation of a former era that closely ressembles contemporary life.
Boardwalk Empire is must see TV, believe me.
BOARDWALK EMPIRE PREMIERES ON HBO CANADA SUNDAY SEPT. 19 AT 9 P.M.
MY RATING: ****
ALSO ON: Congratulations to OMNI for running a new Canadian made documentary on one of the most competitive nights of the year --just as the new U.S. TV season comes trickling on.
It's called For The Love Of Horses and is very well made, the saga of the Allard family who are completely dedicated to the art of horse racing.
We see them at Woodbine racetrack --there are four brothers Joe, Tino, Sid, Larry and they are persevering at a time when horse racing is under competitive pressures --the disappearance of Greenwood racetrack says it all about the business. we learn what makes them tick and how they acquired their impressive skills. Their strong ties to the Maltese community are shown as well as all the steps taken for their present command of horses.
And the program is worthwhile --I watched the English version --Maltese language dates follow.
And it seems to me OMNI does a lot of this worthwhile programming which the mainstream media completely ignores.
Although I'd like to see OMNI get back into production with a second season of Metropia. How about that. folks?
FOR THE LOVE OF HORSES PREMIERES SUN. SEPT. 19 AT 9 P.M. ON OMNI.1.
MY RATING: ***.

Ivan Fecan Isn't Finished --Yet

Believe me I know Ivan Fecan. Or at least I did.
The charismatic CTV president and CEO of CTVglobemedia has confided to staffers he's leaving his beloved empire sometime next year.
That's because CTVglobemedia is no more.
In a complicated deal BEC is buying the CTV portion which includes dozens of specialty channels as well as CTV. And David Thomson is buying back control of The Globe And Mail, the last of literally hundreds of papers his father Lord Thomson once owned.
Make no mistake about it Ivan Fecan isn't going to ride happily into the sunset, not at a mere 57 years of age.
Besides CBC-TV is now in turmoil. Why not let the once and future wunderkind go back "home" to repair all the damage recently done to the publicly owned Corporation.
I must have met met the guy (I think) when he was a unit producer for CBC Radio's Sunday Morning under the equally charismatic producer Mark Starowicz.
I definitely remember him when he jumped to CITY-TV as a most charming and trendy news producer --he got so excited one night at a breaking event in Oakville that he tried to jump a fence and wound up instead breaking his leg. Moses Znaimer was his CITY boss.
Any guy who can beat Starowicz and Znaimer at their peak certainly deserves respect.
Then it was on to CBC where he wound up as station manager of CBLT.
This was at a time when CBLT actually still made programs and one of the best Fecan made was a musical series with Oscar Peterson.
He then jumped ship again to NBC in Los Angeles --renting out Znaimer's garage down there to live in (so I'm guessing there were no hard feelings).
Every where he went he had a mentor. At NBC he had two: Grant Tinker and the late, great Brandon Tartikoff and Fecan's resume included a stint helping to cobble together the comedy series Kids In The Hall.
He was enticed back to CBC with the promise of running the entire English network and jump started such hits as Road To Avonlea, Degrassi and Air Farce. Flops included Material World and Not My Department.
Certainly he was cocky --he had a right to be and he was very pugnacious concerning rival CTV. He even bought away from CTV rerun rights to the network's current running hit ENG and ran the repeats afternoons on CBC.
His CBC mentor was Denis Harvey but when Harvey retired Fecan's CBC job was in peril.
Fecan's CBC downfall came after clashes with CBC President Gerard Veilleux weho at one point moved The National to 9 p.m. Undaunted, Fecan came up with the bold idea of two prime times, one before and one after the news.
But when Veilleux exited so did Fecan to CTV.
CTV was then a non-network. Affiliates contributed series --Ottawa made Kreskin and The Galloping Gourmet while Toronto produced Stars On Ice and Littlest Hobo and Montreal had Pardon My French.
As a cooperatively owned entity it had never worked because Baton Broadcasting in Toronto --owned by the Bassett and Eaton families-- virtually ran the show.
All that changed with Fecan's appearance. I was never sure if Baton absorbed CTV or was it the other way around but Fecan wound up running a fully fledged network. He made CTV news completely competitive (helped a bit by CBC news moving back to 10 p.m.)
When he hit CTV Fecan was very pro-Canadian: he programmed three new and very good hourlong Canadian dramas Saturday nights on CTV, hoping to fight back against CBC's Hockey Night In Canada.
The three were Power Play, Cold Squad and The City and they collectively flopped. But Cold Quad lasted for years in various slots. Today CTV airs American reruns Saturday nights.
Fecan also revived the Canadian TV movie format-- Wendy Crewson starred in a series of Joanne Kilbourne murder mysteries and other stars included Paul Gross and Kelly Rowan and Fecan usually ran these TV movies before the new season officially started to big ratings.
But as the years went on he became more of a conservative planner. The bulk of CTV's programming schedule budget was spent on buying U.S. imports and then simulcasting these against the U.S. border stations. In effect this meant shows like CSI and The Mentalist had double ratings and Canadian shows couldn't possibly compete.
But in recent years CTV has been edging back into quality Canadian stuff: Corner Gas was a huge success, Firepower is one series that thrived (and even been sold to CBS).
Mistakes included hiring journalist Kirk LaPointe to head up CTV News --LaPointe was quickly replaced by veteran Robert Hurst.
And as a hands-on executive one can bet Fecan played a major hand in appointing Lisa LaFlamme as the new CTV News amchor over the obvious choice veteran Tom Clark.
In recent years the model Fecan so assiduously built up started to crumble.
Old line networks attract older audiences and Fecan made a brilliant move in acquiring the hipper Citytv franchises like MuchMusic and MTV to bolster sagging audience numbers.
When Fecan also tried for the City stations he was humbled by the CRTC which also balked at Fecan's idea for CTV to get a carriage fee from cable operators.
Fecan's downfall came with the deepening recession which hit just as CTV's Winter Olympics opened to huge audiences but not the expected ad revenues. The Olympics were the best produced of any seen on Canadian TV and the numbers higher than ever.
In a memo to staff he says "I've had a great run."
And knowing Fecan's history as I do and his sheer competitiveness I can say without qualification it's not Fecan's nature to retire. Here is the guy who has successfully run both public and private Canadan networks, surely he knows the business like no one else because he built the models.
And who else am I going to write about. Canadian TV without Ivan Fecan. It's impossible.

TV Recycles Nikita

One must never accuse the CW of overestimating the tastes of its fans.
Last season the weblet tried to reinvent that old series Melrose Place only to fail miserably.
This year CW is back at it with a new interpretation of the much travelled Nikita.
The enigmatic female spy first appeared in the French movie La Femme Nikita, then was reinterpreted by Bridget Fonda in the quickie American remake Point Of No Return.
Then it was Toronto's turn --I journeyed to the west end set to watch some serious butt kicking.
Australian import Peta Wilson was the suddenly blonde spy and Quebec's Roy Dupuis was the mass murderer she loved, Michael. Also in the cast and the sexiest by far was the controller played by Alberta Watson.
The Canadian cast included Matthew Ferguson, Eugene Robert Glazer and Don Francks.
Warners made this one for the USA network but finally jettisoned everything after four violent seasons. Fan reaction brought it back for a brief fifth season.
The new Nikita isn't quite up to the standards of the first series in terms of atmosphere and ambiance. It exists for its cartoonish violence --after a baddie has been despatched we never withess his corpse or even his body. The kids who play all those video games will dig it, older viewers may feel squeamish.
The storyline is strictly formulas but it's a formula that's worked in the past. And compared to CW's other new series, Hellcats, Nikita is almost Chekovian in its plot developments.
I still feel the first Toronto version was the best in terms of style. This one is very gloomy without that note of self mockery that made the first series so much peverse fun.
CW sources are claiming Nikita is right in there with its other shows in appealing to a young, hip and female audience who'll presumably drag their boyfriends into warching, too.
But as a stepping stone to stardom? Forget it!
Whatever happened to Wilson who was once so hot she got to appear on the Letterman show? And Dupuis retreated back to Quebec made projects. Star editors forced me to venture out to an auction of the series artifacts where eager fans purchased Dupuis's clingy leather pants for hundreds of bucks. Go figure that one out.
The stars of the new one are Maggie Q who looks too thin to really kick butt plus Shane West and Lyndsy Fonseca as the newest assassin around.
MY RATING: ** 1./2
NIKITA PREMIERES THURSDAY AT 9 P.M. ON A CHANNEL AND CW.

Tom Clark Will Be Missed

Sometimes you can wait too long as heir apparent.
The latest to understand this is Tom Clark who has just quit as second-in-command at CTV News.
Ths is a stunning loss for CTV which had been grooming Clark for decades as its next anchor.
And he'd made all the right moves from CFTO anchor to CTV's man in Beijing to CTV's man in Washington and lately as Mike Duffy's replacement on CTV News Net with a new Ottawa-based series Power Play.
CTV insiders are telling me Clark was understandably shook up when Lisa LaFlamme was suddenly named as successor to retiring Lloyd Robertson as CTV chief Anchor.
My sources say Clark was quite bitter and had always been led to believe that he would logically replace Robertson.
Clark sent out a Twitter with the cryptic message: "Suffice to say there is no more PowerPlay with Tom Clar."
Jane Taber from Question Period was hosting Power Play on CTV Tuesday evening.
The announcement from CTV News head Robert Hurst was a mere eight lines, an indication of the suddenness of Clark's decision to quit.
All Hurst said was simply "CTV is extremely proud of its long association with Tom Clark and wishes him well in his future endeavours."
Which is a bit strange considering Clark's long association with CTV.
Clark is not the first of Robertson's supposed heirs to leave the network.
For years Keith Morison was thought to be the insider until Robertson got tired of the inevitable talk and Morison moved on to NBC.
And certain Pam Wallin also had the inside track for the next few years until she left for a political career --these days she's in the Senate.
I first profiled Clark in the 1970s when I was TV critic at The Spectator and he had taken over from Gord Martineau as CFTO news reader. He was strong from the start, no wobbling whatsoever.
I learned he'd been studying journalism at Carleton University the same time I was there but had left for a news job on Montreal TV.
He was filled with stories of working for the senior John Bassett. And Clark also co-hosted The Bassett Report with Isabel Bassett.
In recent years Clark was a senior correspondent on W5 and his TV reporting included the fall of the Berlin Wall and the srtudent uprising in Tien An Men Square.
As Global anchor Kevin Newman twittered: :"Many memories of working alongside and in competition with Tom Clark. He's tough, smart, and personally kind. We need more of his class."
I also discovered that day over lunch at the King Edward hotel that he was basically a nice guy. True, he was very handsome but he'd worked hard on all his assignments. I thought he had fared best during live coverage of provincial leadership conventions.
He chose the King Eddy because he'd often be there with his great uncle, the legendary writer Gregory Clark. His great-grandfather was Joseph T. Clark, managing editor of the Toronto Star and Saturday Night. His grandfather reported for The Star while his father was the founder of CanadaNewsWire. And I knew a cousin Andy who was a Spec photographer at the time. So journalism ran deep in his family.
Where can Clark go? He'd be a catch for either CBC or Global, of that I'm sure.

All About Scott McGillivray

So here's all the low down about Scott McGillivray, the suddenly famous host and interviewer on HGTV's Income Property which returns for its third season Monday night at 9 on HGTV..
First of all he seems fairly amiable, not full of himself as I rather expected.
After all he has legions of female fans who keep pestering this column with questions about his marital status (he's married) , age (he's 32) and how much is he really worth (he seems well off).
But what has kept Income Property going is his sheer good sense.
"When HGTV first approached me about a series they wanted something about flipping properties," he confides over glasses of San Pellegrino in a downtown Toronto watering hole.
"And I said no way. I'm not a fan of those shows, particularly the U.S. ones. They are made with a false premise --that everyone can become rich just by flipping a few houses. With the housing crash in America we've seen just the opposite. It's not a healthy time to flip."
McGillivray had a different idea. He wanted to show how average homeowners could refix their basements or upper floors into income generating apartments that would help them more quickly pay off the mortgages.
The first season wobbled a bit as McGillivray and his producers worked on getting the format down just right.
"It's pretty hard to set up the situation, have me interview the owners, get a tour of the house, bring in my designs and show the finished project --and all in 22 minutes," he laughs.
Also, McGillivray wasn't used to being the star attraction. He needed to hone his interviewing skills --which came quickly.
"We tell a different story every week. Getting the right combination of owners was our first challenge. We didn't want to do the same thing every week."
McGillivray, 32, got into the renovation racket when he was only 23 and still a student at the University of Guelph. "I saw there was a need for affordable housing for students and I went for it." Within a few years he was buying and selling properties as well as leasing out his own properties and renovating others.
You've seen him on TV on From The Ground Up with Debbie Travis --the second season set in Ottawa cast him as the resident
carpenter.
For Income Property to make money it must notch strong foreign sales. Income Property, Propertry Virgins and Mike Holmes are all the rage on the U.S. version of HGTV and McGillivray's show also sells well in Europe and Asia (but not in Btritain where networks must have 65 episodes or they won't buy into a series).
McGillivray reports HI has just been picked up for two more seasons. Making only 13 new episodes a year is the lot of cable shows --he might have a bigger budget and more episodes on a mainstream networtk. "But there's always the threat of cancellation." With HGTV the fans are used to watching a lot of reruns.
McGillivray says he'll usually be working on at least two episodes at once. "Once we had four going at once and that was too much. We have to have cameras there for every stage and we have to factor in the possibility of unpleasant surprises."
In the first new episode one of the basement walls has a moisture problem meaning the outside foundation has to be dug up and weeping tiles installed at additional cost to thehome owners.
Although McGillivray usually gives the clients two sets of designs there have been times when he'll step in and refuse to let them chose the more expensive option. "I very carefully check their finances. If they're planning to put it on credit cards, well, I won't go that way because they could wind up in additional financial trouble. My job after all is helping them pay down their debts."
In the first year the finished product magically appeared all built to perfection. But the team now understands fans want to see the host right in there banging down walls and generally mucking about.
"I've stayed most of the night on some projects just because I felt I had to for the job to be done right. And there's only been one complaint so far --a lady who had already gone through 17 contractors. We knew we were in trouble when she came with a chair and just sat and watched all day."
Whereas the team had to search for first year distressed home owners "now we get thousands of emails. And this year we go outside Toronto--we were in Texas last week. Those we chose get a 35 per cent discount which is one incentive for getting on the show."
First up is a visit with Jeremy and Angie in Newmarket --they need to fix up their dilapidated basement which they've unsuccessfully been trying to rent for months. If they can't make it Angie will have to go back to work instead of looking after their new baby. And after Scott's team have finished --the apartment is rented for $950 a month.
The day I chatted with MacGillivray he'd been doing press since dawn (on Canada AM). About the onset of celebritydom he remains ambivalent. There's a downside to being recognized wherever he goes.
"Even in Europe people noticed me. I know what I sound like in Spanish but I guess all that comes with the territory."
INCOME PROPERTY'S THIRD SEASON DEBUTS MONDAY SEPT. 6 AT 9 P.M. ON HGTV
MY RATING: *** 1/2.