The Borgias Is A Splendidly Overripe Morality Tale

Take TV's J.R. Ewing. Mix in a dash of Tony Soprano. Reset everything to 1492 --the year Columbus "discovered" America.
And you have the splendidly overripe new TV miniseries The Borgias.
It's a tale TV tried once before to tell only to fall flatly.
I remember in 1981 Masterpiece Theater executive Joan Wilson telling me she had plopped a bundle into a new-coproduction with the BBC of The Borgias to star Italian star Adolfo Celli.
But the first episode which I managed to see was shot with murky photography and a European cast who could not be understood.
Celli went around muttering what seemed to be "I need nipples" but he was actually saying "I need Naples".
That version never made it to video and PBS sold off all its rights and refused to run the miniseries.
It's vastly different with the sparkling new version of The Borgias starring Jeremy Irons.
Irish director Neil Jordan (Danny Boy) had long planned a movie of the Renaissance dynasty but couldn't get backing until he switched to TV.
After months of shooting in Budapest he's come up with nine hours of melodramatic sin and sex centered on Pope Alexander VI impersonated by Irons as a man caught up in his own mortal sins.
This Borgia patriarch, Rodrigo Borgia, a Spaniard, crassly bribes his way into the Papacy and keeps an enemies list of cardinals he must bring down to survive.
Joanne Whalley co-stars as his long suffering chief mistress and the mother of his illegitimate offspring who has always craved the finer things of life.
Their children include the impetuous oldest son Cesare played to the hilt by Canadian star Francois Arnaud and their beautiful and lusting daughter Lucretia by Holliday Grainger.
Canadian Colm Feore steals scenes as Borgia's arch enemy Cardinal Della Rovere who would eventually succeed him as pope.
The fact the drama stairs in 1492 is not accidental. The Borgias epitomized all that was crass about the papacy but here Jordan does not portray them as monsters. They were very much politicians of their particular era.
"Of course Neil could not shoot on actual locations," Feore told me on the phone --I'd last interviewed him on a LIberty ship in Toronto's harbour during shooting of 2005's miniseries Haven which starred Natasha Richardson and Ann Bancroft.
Instead huge standing sets were built at Budapest's Korda studios. "Take the scenes in the College of Cardinals. It's a tight space and everything would be cramped in the real article. So a set was needed --one where walls could come down so Neil could shoot from behind."
There's little if no Renaissance architecture in the Hungarian capital. Some real locations had to be redressed --"the Turkish bath scenes for example"--but others had to be meticulously constructed to look exactly like the era.
Jordan had a large budget of $45 million to play with and indeed all the principals look like they're wearing new clothes, Everyone is so very clean and neat which supports the look of the miniseries even if citizens rarely took baths in those days.
Irons does not at all look like the real Alexander VI who was fat and squat, Instead Irons aquiline features give his character a certain air of grace under pressure. Certainly he's quite a family man, this pope, always trying for the advancement of his family.
The real Alexander was one of the most notoriously squalid of popes but there have been recent attemots to rehabilitate his image: he carved up the new World for Portugal and spain and prevented war and was an anle if brutal administrator.
Feore as the main adversary Giuliano della Rovere (later Pope Julius II) looks every inch the dashing cardinal with his long, lean face. He is as expert as he was in that ancient TV saga Empire way back in 2005. Other actors who stand out include Sean Harris (Micheletto), Lotte Verbeek (Giula), Aidan Alexander (Joffre Borgia) and Canadioan Emmanuelle Chriqui as seductress Duchess Sancia.
And you'll certain spot veterans Derek Jacobi Cardinal Orsini) and Steven Berkoff (Savonarola).
Canadian Sheila Hockin (Queer As Folk) is among the executive producers and the Canadian contingent includes director Jeremy Podeswa, who directs the final three episodes, cinematographer Paul Sarossy and production designer Francois Seguin.
I watched the two-hour premiere and was completely enthralled, others with less liking for historical epics may flounder if they're unfamiliar with the era and its emotions.
Feore says he's on board for a second season should ratings warrant this.
It's certainly among the most expensive miniseries in some time, an indication producers are trying for the same balance of history that made The Tutors compulsively viewable.
THE BORGIAS PREMIERES SUND. APRIL 3 AT 10 P.M ON BRAVO!.
MY RATING: ***1/2.

Gulp! No New Mad Men This Year!

There's good news and bad news about Mad Men, arguably American TV's finest current series.
AMC which makes the show in Los Angeles has admitted the series will be stalled and won't return for Season Five until early 2012.
I've been hearing various stories which say there was an impasse between the brilliant creator and writer Matt Weiner and the cable network which was worried about spiraling costs.
Mad Men up to now has always debuted on AMC in August as a respite from summer's battery of reruns.
AMC sources have been quick to dispute recent news stories that the show is somehow finished,
"We are getting a later start than in years past due to ongoing, key non-cast negotiations. Mad Men will be back for a fifth season in early 2012."
Some industry analysts are saying the weblet will proceed with or without Weiner who certainly has always been the heart and soul of the brilliant drama.
One source says Weiner has been offered $30 million to stay with the series as show runner which would make him among the highest paid talents in the industry.
The series and Breaking Bad have made AMC a contender in the upscale cable TV drama sweepstakes and both series have the Emmy awards to provie that.
But ratings wise Mad Men gets very small numbers precisely because AMC is a discretionary weblet without the audience pull of a CBS or NBC.
Canadian viewers are already getting stymied because after CTV declined to renew the series up here there have been no other Canadian takers --I'm hearing the price per episode is considered too high for a show that debuts in the summer doldrums.
Anyhow I'll be missing Mad Men this August,
And I'm wondering how it will fare come 2012 when the competition at that midseason junction is already something fierce.

Chasing The Royals A Timely New Expose

Talk about timing! The new Canadian made documentary Chasing The Royals is perfectly positioned to take advantage of the upcoming nuptials between Prince William and Kate Middleton.
It was made by Gemini Award-winning Montreal filmmaker John Curtin who last season fashioned that intriguing TV biography Elizabeth II: Monarchy In Peril and this one is just as relevant.
Curtin sees the press and the shaky monarchy as needing each other but refusing to admit it.
And he's gathered a grand bunch of British press types who'll stop at nothing to get across their latest scoop.
Here's the guy who go into Buckingham Palace by posing as a footman. He duly reported back to his readers that Queen Elizabeth has her breakfast cereal delivered in plastic containers.
And when she ordered a plateful of upscale tea scones she crumpled them all up to feed to her ravenous corgis.
Another veteran says he followed Princess Diana to her tryst on the Mediterranean with her new toy boy and got the pictures that shocked a nation.
Days later Diana and her party took off at high speed to evade the snoopers. The Princess died in a Paris car crash and a nation mourned.
Curtin is spot on when he suggests this history of acrimony could prove deeply divisive to William and Kate's future happiness.
In key scenes we watch as William performs a royal duty and disappears into his car.
But Kate works the crowd and obviously enjoys this side of her job despite the scowls of her future husband who partly blames the media for his mother's untimely demise.
As Curtin says the press and the royals may hate each other but they need each other, too.
Some of the clips are amazing. Prince Charles is seen whispering "I hate that man" as he spots a press adversary at one function.
The attempt by some reporters to hack into royal phone lines shows how far the tabloid side will go.
But scenes of the Queen milling about during her last Canadian tour are positively sedate. The British reports who are accompanying her are furious there's so little real news.
As Curtin points out it was not always so predatory. The British public were startled by the abdication of Edward VIII because the press had completely blacked out stories of the king's infatuation with Mrs. Simpson.
To show how different the world is these days one reporter gives us the backstory on how he found the Duchess of York getting her toe nibbled on by an admirer in the South of France and how that splash ruined her career as a royal.
"The goal posts have been changed" --that just about sums it all up in this witty and sometimes wild take on royal manners and morals.
CHASING THE ROYALS PREMIERES ON DOC ZONE ON CBC-TV THURSD. MARCH 31 AT 9 P.M.
MY RATING: *** 1/2.

Remembering Roger Abbott

How many times did I interview Roger Abbott over the decades?
It all started way back in 1979 when I was TV critic at The Hamilton Spectator and met up with Abbott and his RCAF gang at Hamilton Place where they were putting on a CBC radio show.
At that time they were very much radio comics. CBC's then head of TV production Jack Craine told me they lacked the necessary visuals for TV success.
Which was just plain crazy.
Abbott who died yesterday of acute lymphocytic leukemia which he had been battling for 14 years was a sensitive, smart man.
He told me first off the troupe was performing in the Wayne and Shuster tradition of supposing fans knew what was happening in the news.
These days that would be a false assumption as Reality TV has dumbed down most comical TV series.
Born In England, Abbott grew up in Montreal and met close friend and co-worker Don Ferguson when both were high school students.
They formed RCAF in 1973 along with Dave Broadfoot, John Morgan and Lubay Goy and continued to delight Canadians until CBC pulled the plug two seasons back --the charge was RCAF catered to an increasingly older audience base which simply was not true.
I enjoyed the several times I sat in on rehearsals --this troupe had a ball during the writing of the sketches as well as during the performances. They would regularly fill a cavernous CBC soundstage with audiences who were deeply devoted to their peculiar form of satire.
I found Abbott in person to be pleasant and introspective. He shone in his impersonations of Jean Chretien and CBC's Peter Mansbrige and was very collegial in letting other members also shine in the spotlight.
When CBC closed down its expert makeup and costuming department Abbott told me his fear that the show was finished as far as CBC management was concerned. By contrast NBC's Satur
In the final seasons Jessica Holmes, Craig Lauzon, Alan Park and Penelope Corrin were added to great effect and Abbott mentored them with care.
Like Wayne and Shuster before them RCAF decided it was all important to remain resolutely Canadian --Abbott once turned down the firm offer to join the U.S. sitcom Taxi.
In my last long interview with him I decided to ask only questions he'd never been asked before --this was for the show's 15th anniversary on TV.
Abbott was ready and for several hours regaled me and staff in nearby CBC offices with choice anecdotes.
I simply can't think of a nicer guy deserving of stardom. Roger Abbott was 64.

Mildred Pierce Is Must-See TV

I visibly cringed when I read that TV was about to remake that classic film noir Mildred Pierce.
The 1945 classic got Joan Crawford her only Oscar and boosted the careers of its other stars: Zachary Scott, Ann Blyth, Eve Arden.
And it's been on the Late Show so often I almost know whole scenes from heart. And that thundering score by Max Steiner!
But it's not James M. Cain's story.
His 1941 novel bristles with the authenticity of Depression South California. Less noir and more an insightful character study of a determined working class woman, it certainly deserves a more modern, reverential treatment.
Director Todd Haynes who loves to recreate the American past --witness his study of the 1950s Far From Heaven--went back to the original source material and drained most of the melodrama that had been inserted in the Warners original.
This time out it's recent Academy Award winner Kate Winslet. Forget the Crawford shoulder pads and that pained aura of nobility.
Winslet is soft spoke, modulated --none of the grand gestures. She so sinks into this portrait she's hard to recognize --her hair is an unbecoming brunette, she wears little if any makeup save a slash of red lipstick.
In the original movie Crawford was a hard working mother and wife in Glendale who became a waitress when her husband deserted her and turned her ability at making pies into a money-making chain of restaurants.
The basic story is still there but fleshed out. Winslet is in fact so mousey that the character's masochistic tendencies become irritating at times.
And the character of her older, narcissistic daughter Veda is still unexplained..
Ann Blyth turned Veda into a little monster and was nominated as best supporting actress.
Here Veda is initially played (and very well) by Morgan Turner and as a grown up by Evan Rachel Wood.
But Haynes' recreation of Glendale and Hollywood circa 1931 is completely believable but never over blown.
The Crawford version inserted a killing to make the melodrama snap and crackle. Here a series of precise character studies is substituted --one scene where Mildred is interviewed about a housekeeping position by a grand lady does not advance the plot but expertly sums up the desperate nature of the early Depression.
The film's meticulousness might be misinterpreted as a certain slowness by viewers used to great blobs of emotion leading up to the next commercial break.
But this Mildred PIerce runs over 5 1/2 hours and five episodes. It's a viewing experience directly challenging the conventional TV way of story telling.
The production is chock full of memorable acting turns: Guy Pearce (the Zachary Scott role) as the drunken playboy lover, Evan Rachel Ward (replacing Ann Blyth) as the nasty older sister Veda, Mare Winnigham (replacing Eve Arden) as true friend Ida and recent Oscar winner Melissa Leo is well cast as Mildred's best buddy who lives next door.
The movie meanders its way through the story like a dream and reintroduces the subplot of Veda becoming an opera star that was dropped from the film.
In the end it all revolves around Winslet's portrayal of mother love.
Was Mildred something of a sucker for pandering to her daughter? Or did she just feel guilty and over compensate with lavish gifts? You'll be fascinated if you buy into Mildred's grand plan for remaking her family and discarding the past.
MILDRED PIERCE PREMIERES SUND. MARCH 27 ON HBO CANADA AT 9 P.M.
MY RATING: ****.

Remembering Dame Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor lived and died as a genuine screen goddess, perhaps the last of her kind.
But at the time of her death from congestive heart failure she had not been a major motion picture star for decades.
She "granted" a mass interview in 1989 to adoring TV critics for what would prove to be her last substantial role: as the aging screen queen in the TV movie remake of Sweet Bird Of Youth opposite Mark Harmon.
Up close she still looked dazzling. But her performance? She was quite dreadful.
The only thing I remember about the interview was her refusal to admit some of her eight marriages had been disasters.
"There was always a reason," she said. "Everybody at MGM got married young --Donna Reed, Lana Turner, Esther Williams. If you were married the dirty old men producers left you alone."
In Sweet Bird Of Youth Geraldine Page had done the original 1962 movie opposite Paul Newman and had been wonderful.
But Liz who was the real thing either couldn't or wouldn't simulate the ravages of encroaching old age.
And so she retreated from full blown stardom to a kind of nether world where she promoted her perfumes and cosmetics and made a few ill conceived cameos.
Like other divas of her ilk: Joan Crawford, Lana Turner, Rita Hayworth her body of work contains few genuine cinematic treasures.
But several directors could challenge her to acting greatness: George Stevens in A Place In The Sun and Giant (not not in The Only Game In Town), Richard Brooks in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Joe Mankiewicz in Suddenly, Last Summer (but not in Cleopatra) and Mike Nichols in Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?
She called Butterfield 8 which won her an Oscar "a piece of sh--t". And she was right. She basically won over worthier contenders because she'd almost died from pneumonia.
Watching her onstage in The Little Foxes was a strain --she was only in character when saying her lines. Sitting on a sofa in other scenes and she'd be looking around.
Her Cleopatra was one of the biggest bores of all time.
The only decent film she made with her fourth and fifth husband Richard Burton was Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf. She got a second Oscar and really deserved it.
But few of her other movies are worth sitting through.
Talking about her once Dame Anna Neagle told me Taylor did not recognize her actions often had dark comnsequences.
"Michael Wilding --her second husband --was my frequent co-star but as her husband he became a glorified valet and when she left him his career never recovered. The same thing happened to Eddie Fisher who deserted his wife and children for her and when she ditched him his career was never the same."
ERnest Lehman who wrote the screenplay for Woolf told me he was first enchanted by her child like qualities. " Then on set she demanded expensive jewels as presents and would pout when I couldn't deliver them. Basically her goldfish bowl existence made her will full --she never truly grew up."
Along with Rock Hudson and Audrey Hepburn she was among the last of the studio manufactured stars.
Others like Turner and Hayworth slipped into alcoholism when their careers floundered and for awhile Taylor battled her own addictions.
However, fighting for AIDS research gave her life a new purpose and she became famous all over again as a star emeritus.
She wasn't especially introspective and she really believed in the cinematic version of a happy ending said Hedda Hopper who visited her in her first apartment and noticed the only reading matter was movie mafazines..
Her movies are mostly nonsense like Rhapsody, The Girl Who Had Everything, The Last Time I Saw Paris, The V.I.P.s, The Sandpiper.
In 1984 I watched her act on the Toronto set of the TV flick Between Friends opposite Carol Burnett. Burnett was warm and accommodating but Liz really pulled the star trick. She was on Yorkville and had to cross a street to get to the next set. She refused to walk and the studio had to order up a limousine before she'd move.
She was married eight times --besting the record of Lana Turner.
Most of her husbands outside of Richard Burton were mere accoutrements.
She seemed wasted in last year's long interview with Larry King although he looked even more ravaged.
In the last 20 years she battled various ailments.
Her contemporary Debbie Reynolds --who lost husband Eddie Fisher to Liz in one daring 1958 scandal-- has by contrast continued robustly with her performance career.
So precarious was Liza's health over the past few years that The Toronto Star commissioned me to write the definitive obituary way back in 1985 when she had surgery for a brain tumor.
But it was never used --once again Liz Taylor bounced back again to live another 25 years

Yonge Street Is Must-See TV!

Simply stated the three-part music documentary Yonge St. is the kind of TV event worth staying home for.
I knew it was going to be something when I heard Bruce McDonald was going to direct it.
Bruce and I go as far back as the 1998 CBC TV comedy series Twitch City with Don McKellar --I hung around the set entranced with the conception and the presence pf such Canadians as Callum Keith Rennie and Molly Parker.
Later on I watched in awe as McDonald flawlessly directed episode after episode of the trend setting Toronto-made series Queer As Folk.
On Yonge Street McDonald told me everything "just seemed to come together. We've been shooting and editing it since October.
"A lot of it had to be done on the road --with Robbie Robertson at his L.A. office, to Nashville, Chicago, everywhere we could find survivors."
Yonge Street takes us on a giddy tour of the Toronto's downtown music scene during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
McDonald who is 51 says a lot of the stuff he'd just heard about. And getting to meet and interview the remaining legendary performers was "a dream come true."
Well, I did grow up in the staid Toronto of the 1950s and I read the entertainment pages of The Telegram every night. But some of the names are even new to me.
And this was all happening when Toronto had one local TV outlet --Channel 9's CBLT (it moved to Channel 6 in the Sixties).
Coverage of fringe musicians was not CBC's thing to begin with. There's one great clip from later on as CBC begins a kind of anthropological investigation into the growing phenomenon known as Yorkville.
"Some of the clips we use came from basements. Some even from crawlspaces. We'd be talking and the subject would suddenly remember there was some film somewhere."
One clip unseen for 50 years has Robbie Robertson, aged 16-17, performing in one of his very first gigs.
And there's color footage as the camera crawls up Yonge with all the neon signs flashing: the Edison hotel, Coq d'Or tavern, Blue Note, Sam The Record Man's. All have vanished save for the Zanzibar tavern.
"That's the surprise," says McDonald. "How vital the scene was. How many great perfprmers were all in Toronto in the Fifties. There was a lot of activity."
How was such a wealth of material discovered? "Jan Haust functioned as our archivist and he came up with incredible finds that make the series. The producer David Brady (The Grey Fox) and our creative consultant Duff Roman made similar contributions. WE got very lucky time and time again."
One high light for McDonald was getting Robertson to sit down and spew forth the most wonderful stories. "He'd just been recording and it was a good day for him and his stories were fantastic, his memory is so sharp about that specific period."
Equally compelling is Stompin' Ronnie Hawkins --every time the camera widens he's seen petting a different tiny dog."But his knowledge of the scene is very essential."
Layer on in Episode 2 on The Sixties there's Gordon Lightfoot in his home giving anecdotes about the growth of the Yorkville scene. "He was very gracious, offered us tea and as we walked in his guitars were lined up at the door. It was quite a moment for me."
If there's anyone most deserving of being rediscovered it's the black singer Jackie Shane who usually dressed as a woman. In the all white community of the time Shayne really stuck out and his musicality and way of selling a song is simply stunning.
There are stories he was later asked to return to the U.S. by Canadian immigration officials. Shayne today lives in complete onscurity and no one has recently contacted him.
"The only one I needed who couldn't make it was Joni Mitchell," McDonald says. "I was told she wasn't feeling up for it."
For the folk music segment in Episode 2 McDonald got both Ian and Sylvia (although separately). "Sylvia is naturally older. But she's still one of the sexiest singers around."
It seems to me that Episode 3 about the height of the "Toronto sound" and its inevitable decline is the sdaddest.
At first the scene is vibrant, filled with the likes of Neil Young, Rick James, John Kay and The Paupers.
But McDonald is correct in pointing out that the lack of sustained air time contributed to the exodus of prime talent to the U.S.
It's noted here that by the early 1970s strip clubs outnumbered music clubs and the Yonge strip was no more so far as first class music was cxoncerned.
"We shot for 30 days and we've got so much extra stuff a sequel would work," McDonald laughs. "
And many of the talent is at an age where McDonald was still able to capture them on good days when they could look back with pride at the era they were a part of.
YONGE STREET PREMIERES ON BRAVO! MOND. MARCH 21 AT 10 P.M.
PART TWO IS ON BRAVO! TUESD. MARCH 22 AT 10 P.M. AND PART 3 ON BRAVO! WED. MARCH 23 AT 10 P.M.
MY RATING: ****.