A Royal Feast

On the surface John Curtin's latest documentary on the Royal family, Serving the Royals, plays nicely as a bright splash of naughty tales told out of school.
But this is more than a scissors and paste pastiche of some of the scandals which have played the House of Windsor in recent years.
Already the Montreal based Curtin has become a sort of unofficial biographer of what ails the monarchy in two previous TV outings: After Elizabeth II: Monarchy In Peril (2010) and Chasing The Royals: The Media & The Monarchy (2011).
But Curtin's thesis remains constant --either the royals must change and rapidly or they risk becoming obsolete.
This time out he looks at the servants to Queen Elizabeth and her troubled children all of whom are now deep in middle age.
And he starts off by showing that when it comes to social behavior this brood are rather like the toffs in Downton Abbey.
Of course I knew the Queen had scores of attendants at her beck and call but I wasn't aware the staff was anywhere near 1,200.
They are poorly paid and forced to sign confidentiality agreements. One who did not was the Queen's original
They are called upon to perform such tasks as drawing her bath every morning --the water must be tepid and there's even a temperature reading --and the water must be exactly seven inches.
Thankfully Queen is relatively civil to her servants. One remembered waking Prince Andrew up at the required time and being told to "Fuck off!".
When Prince Charles mistakenly tossed a letter into the waste basket he ordered a lackey to come over and fetch it for him.
That excess of servants has resulted in offspring who are to the Palace born and seemingly indolent about every detail of real life. There's a telling news shot of Charles kidding son Harry for polishing his own boots.
The docu really works because Curtin has gotten  Paul Burrell to sit down and chat about his years with the Queen followed by years as personal assistant to Princess Diana..
He talks about arranging assignations for Diana and having her driven home discreetly.
There was a stand off with the family after Diana's tragic death that resulted in a trial called off when the Queen suddenly remembered he had told her he had been given some of Diana's possessions for safe keeping.
The sad story of the Queen Mother's head butler William Talon is also told. He covered up for the old queen for decades but when he allowed an ailing Princess Margaret to make an appearance in public shortly before her death he incurred the wrath of Elizabeth and was promptly retired.
What is most interesting is the struggle of the latest royal couple, William and Kate to maintain a near normal existence. In Wales they have a small house and just one housekeeper.
As they move into their own spacious country house all that must certainly change. Kate cannot do the washing up and increase her royal appearances but William is determined to break free from past traditions.
Or will they wind up like the Dutch royals pedaling around on bikes to show they're just plain folks?
SERVING THE ROYALS PREMIERES ON CBC-TV'S DOC ZONE THURSDAY JANUARY 17 AT 9 P.M.
MY RATING: ***1/2.

Hooray For The Golden Globes!

We're awash in the silly season of dubious awards shows. It's been said that Hollywood's "B" list celebrities will even attend the opening of a new parking lot just to collect an award, any award.
The Golden Globe Awards are in that category.
They're set up by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. All 93 members, that's what I said 93. A waiter at the Century Plaza hotel once told me he was a voting member.
So did a taxi driver in Burbank.
The GG members vote all kinds of awards and are considered the low trash alternative to the high and mighty Oscars.
I mean these awards are beyond hilarious --they're simply fun of a wild and crazy kind.
First of all there's the setting as celebs sit around tables and dwink and dwink. Some look smashed on air. Others totter up to the mike and totter off.
And as for the awards.
Remember Pia Zadora once won one of these as best newcomer. And whatever happened to her?
Other past winners include Esther Williams (for best Australian crawl I wonder), Jayne Mansfield, Karen Sharpe, Tippi Hedren, Marianne McAndrew, Carrie Snodgress, Stathis Giallelis, Desi Arnaz Jr.,  Joseph Bottoms and John Kerr.
Whew! You see what I'm getting at.
Then there's the "scandal" that erupted when it turned out you had to attend to win or somebody else would step forth to nab the statue.
From 1968 to 1974 NBC refused to telecast the event  --I was then at the Hamilton Spectator and remembered CHCH used to show the event weeks later after midnight (the tapes were literally bicycled around).
And then there are the winners. One of my all time faves Rosalind Russell won five of them although she never garnered an Oscar.
 Another perennial Oscar loser Angela Lansbury has six wins while Barbra Streisand has nine of them (and only one Oscar).
One good point about the Globes: acting nominations are divided into comedy/musical and drama.
So in 1983 Ben Kingsley won for drama (Gandhi) against Dustin Hoffman for comedy (Tootsie) while Metyl Streep won for drama (French Lieutenant's Woman) while Julie Andrews won for comedy/musical (Victor/Victoria).
But the real reason I watch is because viewers can get up close and personal with the stars whereas at the Oscars we can only see the first few rows in the cavernous Eastman theater.
Here we see them joking around, looking lost, desperately searching for a way to get out. In other words behaving more or less like ordinary people.
And by the next day you'll have totally forgotten who won or lost anyway.
THE GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS ARE ON NBC AND CTV SUNDAY JANUARY 13 AT 8 P.M.

CBC's Arctic Air: Back For A Second Season

Quietly, insidiously, CBC has been re-establishing itself as the place to go to for Canadian TV drama.
For years it was a stretch because of multiple budget cuts but this season CBC's top programmer Kirstine Stewart (head of English services)  has finally cobbled forth a drama sries schedule she can be proud of.
At the midseason mark CBC has been unveiling a new season of Republic Of Doyle, a new cop show Cracked starring David Sutcliffe, Murdoch Mysteries grabbed from Citytv and finally the second season of Arctic Air which returns Wednesday January 9 at 9 p.m.
Missing, of course, are the challenging Canadian TV movies which have become too expensive to make in any quantity.
And completely gone is any attempt to recognize that the high arts from ballet to opera need TV exposure too --for that you'll have to turn to PBS.
May I here offer Ms. Stewart a convenient out: when CBC-TV was in a similarly financial challenge in the 1970s it came up with a Sunday afternoon show called Rear View Mirror.
Classdic ballets and musicals from the CBC archives were telecast complete with a pert hostess in Veronica Tennant and high arts patrons were satisfied.
Why not revive Rear View Mirror next season?
As far as drama goes Arctic Air falls so very much within CBC's mandate to promote regional programming.  Doyle is made in Newfoundland, Cracked  and Murdoch in Toronto and Arctic Air looks to the Canadian north, the first successful Canadian series to do so since North Of 60.
Adam Beach (Law&Order SVU) came "home" to star in it as Bobby Martin, a crack venture capitalist from Vancouver searching for the meaning of life as a pilot for a struggling regional airline.
I spend some time at the CBC fall launch chatting up the always amiable Beach.
I reminded him when I interviewed him by phone during his Law And Order run he was less than enthusiastic about that series.
For one thing the situations seemed similar week after week, hardly the challenge a young actor needs.
Beach also said going through a divorce was also weighing on his mind.
Here Beach is nicely paired with Pascale Hutton who is Bobby's childhood friend and romantic interest  --as Beach explains it their fathers originally founded the airline, Arctic Air and then he went away and became fabulously successful in high finance.
Beach says the series shows Canadians parts of their country few will be unfamiliar with.
Beach says inhabitants of the far North are a diverse group not just First Nations and whites.
Kevin McNulty co-stars as the feisty old codger running the airline and if Adam DiMarco looks familiar as young mechanic Kirby Nystoruk --well, he co-stars in those Rogers cable TV commercials.
Added to the mix there's Stephen Lobo (Godiva's) as Indian flight school graduate DevPanwar, Timothy Webber as Nova Scotian geaerhead Cece Cooper and Kandyse Mcclure as former U.S. Air Force pilot Shontal Hicks.
Beach says bigger social issues do get explored but "This is not a documentary. We have to get people wanting to tune in every week. The stories have to interest everybody."
The first new episode is of the cliffhanger sort with a raging forest fire threatening lives and making an air rescue next to impossible. It's all fast paced and exciting and should keep you on the edge of your seats. And ready to tune back next week.
Arctic Air is well made --and it's completely undisguised all-Canadian.
ARCTIC AIR's SECOND SEASON PREMIERES ON CBC JANUARY 9 AT 9 P.M.
MY RATING: ***.

CBC Nabs Murdoch Mysteries

The rule on Canadian TV used to be so certain.
When a TV series got cancelled its chances of bouncing to the opposition were considered a long shot at best.
OK, so it did happen to Don Messer's Jubilee when CBC-TV cancelled the series in 1969 after 12 season. It was promptly picked  up for four more seasons by Hamilton's feisty CHCH.
And CHCH also revived the old Nathan Cohen CBC show Fighting Words in 1970 and after Cohen's sudden death the next year kept it going with a new host, Peter Gzowski.
But I remember in 1972 when the new TV network Global suddenly collapsed and all its big new shows were cancelled.  CBC would have nothing to do with  any of them.
The same thing happened when Citytv killed off its lively series about twenty somethings called Godiva's in 2006. No other Canadian network would touch it.
So three cheers to CBC for promptly picking up The Murdoch Mysteries for a sixth season after it got dumped by Citytv.
You can judge for yourself by watching the first new episode Monday at 9 p.m. on CBC.
The star is Yannick Bisson who is now a strong enough actor he can carry a series as demanding as this and all with seemingly effortless ease.
I first interviewed him in 1984 when he was a callow 15-year-old who got the slot opposite Megan Follows in the Canadian TV movie. He played a character named Spear Kozak and was pretty terrific. It was his quietness on and off camera that impressed me.
Unlike other teen heart throbs I've interviewed over the decades Bisson persevered. He wisely built up a block of credits and simply kept at it.
There was the TV movie Brothers By Choice (1986), the weird wrestling sitcom Learning The Ropes (1989), another series called High Tide (1994-97) opposite Rick Springfield, the western show Nothing Too Good For A Cowboy (1999) replacing Chad Willett who pulled out after doing the TV movie, Undergrads (2001), Soul Food (2004), Sue Thomas FB Eye (2005).
Then Bisson replaced Peter Outerbridge when Murdoch Mysteries morphed from occasional TV movies to series form in 2008.
Whew! And the guy's still only 43 with a great acting future ahead of him.
In fact I was the first TV critic on the set when MM was still shooting in its original east end studios--the TV movies were done in Winnipeg.
I came to marvel at the huge set for the police station but also hang out for the umpteenth time with Bisson who is always the hardest worker any set he's on.
In fact I still can't figure out why CBC didn't snap this one up originally --except that the original TV movies were running on CTV.(made by Shaftesbury Films).
I also met Maureen Jennings who wrote the original novels --weeks later while vacationing in Florida she was swept out to sea and barely survived.
Now I'm watching the first new CBC  episode which zings right along.
Part of its success is due to the seasoned cast: Bisson, Thomas Craig (Inspector Brackenreid), Jonny Harris (Constable George Crabtree), Helene Joy (Dr. Julia Ogden).
The yarn concerns a flying machine built to compete in an upcoming air show with one made by the Wright brothers. Remember --this is supposed to be 899!
And the subplot looks at the strands of patriotism for the British Empire with the Boer War raging in South Africa.
 I can't divulge plot details but the special effects at the end involving flight over Niagara Falls are terrific.
Period dramas are often musty things where the decor threatens to overwhelm the story.  Here the story zips right along aided by such guest villains as Peter Keleghan. And tying the whole thing together is Bisson 29 years after his acting debut in Hockey Night and still going strong.

Republic Of Doyle Is Finally Back

I seemed to spend last fall fielding questions from readers of this column about the sad and sorry state of Canadian TV.
"I just don't see much Canadian TV on Canadian TV," wailed one elderly lady behind me in the grocery line.
And she was right: Global had zero scripted Canadian series and CTV had but one --the series finale of Flashpoint.
But be of good cheer for 2013. Help is on the way.
First up there was the return of the very fine all Canadian series Bomb Girls starring Meg Tilly --on Global.
And CBC retorts with a bevy of watchable Canadian hour dramas starting Sunday night at 9 with the fourth season premiere of Republic Of Doyle.
Let's see how this good hearted Newfoundlander show fares smack dab against PBS's heavily hyped return of Masterpiece Theater's Downton Abbey.
For years CBC had this thing of trying to jump start a show from Newfoundland --all justified because of its national mandate.
Sometimes the results were painful --I'm thinking back to Hatching, Matching And Dispatching.
But Republic Of Doyle is never less than watchable.
Allan Hawco is very winnable as private eye Jake Doyle and the plots exploit the eccentricities of living on the rock.
I had a chance to chat up Hawco at last fall's CBC launch and he's very personable as well as multi-talented --he co-created the show and was then involved heavily in writing this season's episodes.
In content the show sports the same insidious humor evident in Due South and such U.S. shows as Simon And Simon and Harry-O. Meaning it doesn't take the sometimes convoluted plots seriously at all.
And while Hawco is winning he often yields the spotlight to his equally personable co-stars including Sean McGinley (Malachy Doyle), Mark O'Brien (Des Courtney), Lynda Boyd (Rose Miller).
The accents are all there and completely unfaked and the writing plays up the geniality of these folk without turning them into obnoxious caricatures.
The pacing is right on and never was St. John's presented as beautifully starting with the rolling introductory shots of those colorfully painted row houses and winding streets.
Last season there even was the guest appearance in the first  new episode of Robin Hood's Russell Crowe, Kevin Durand and Scott Grimes.
There's just no way Hawco can come up with another lively threesome like these guys.
Hawco was telling me he'd had this idea along with writing partner Perry Chafe for more than a decade and the model was always a kind of Rockford Files set in St. John's.
Hawko says he wrote Jake to show his great confidence --"it's something that I really lack which is why it's such a joy to play him."
In the first new episode Sgt. Leslie Bennett (Krystin Pellerin) goes missing from headquarters--she gone undercover and Jake must try to find her.
Also Tinny Doyle (Marhe Bernard) enrolls in the RNC cadet program --she's still coming to grips with the knowledge Kevin Crocker (Paul Gross) is her father.
And there's a new face in Officer Monica Hayward (Patricia Isaac)--other new faces include Angus Macfayden, Erin Karpluk and Robert Joy as guests.
And if the first new episode (titled From Dublin With Love) plays so effortlessly remember the director is respected veteran Stefan Scaini.
REPUBLIC OF DOYLE RETURNS TO CBC SUNDAY JANUARY 6 AT 9 P.M.
MY RATING: ***1/2.







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Massive Moves: A Massive Hit

I started watching Massive Moves on HGTV in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep.
After an episode of seeing an entire house get moved across a busy city or over a giant body of water and I really was awake.
It's good news Massive Moves is now back for a second season of massive moving --there are 26 new episodes packaged as two half hours every Sunday night at 10 on HGTV.
"We've really been startled by the reception so far," Clare Fisher of London-based Windfall Films is saying on the phone. "It all started with a previous series called Monster Moves which entailed moving an entire library or the last great batch of Spitfires.
"And then we wondered about humanizing the project. Why not the excitement and the sheer fear of moving one's own house. And all seen through the eyes of the owners. That added a different element, I feel, and the only problem seemed to be finding enough owners in this situation."
Fisher says the culture of moving a house is unique to certain sections of North America and Europe and  not to others. She lives outside London where it simply is not done much.
But the first three episodes which I've screened all take place in western Canada where that kind of super human project doesn't seem to faze people.
I mean why wouldn't someone simply build a new home from scratch?
Fisher points out in some situations it actually is cheaper to move an existing home.
Take the first new episode titled Lottery Home. An Albertan farmer has won the lottery and wants to build his family a new home.
Trouble is there's nothing actually wrong with his rambling home so he sells it for $25,000 to a charming young couple, the McKeens, who have been living in a trailer on a 20 acre spread a fair distance away.
Every hiccup along the way gets laboriously documented --you'll be on the edge of your seat with every lurch and unanticipated twist. And all the while CGI animation  from Fluid Pictures is showing the conceivable ways the house could be smashed to smithereens.
By the time the house's foundation has been dug up, the entire building placed on a lumbering truck bed and carted across the province and gently deposited on the new foundation the total bill is still only $130,000, far less than it would cost this family to build from scratch.
In the second episode, Titanic Townhouse, a 3,200 square feet home has to get trucked across Calgary because the previous owners have built a newer structure next door and need the land for a garden!
Think busy city traffic, agonizingly low power lines, tight city streets where the room for maneuvering is at a minimum. And watching tensely all along the way there's the nice couple hoping their new dream home doesn't wind up as a patch of match sticks.
Aren't viewers secretly hoping for that great catastrophe? Fisher says her four-year-old nephew claps when the animated shots of destruction come popping up.
The third episode, Coastal Cruise, takes a 100-year own beautifully crafted cottage and sees movers transport it through Vancouver and out over the water to Vancouver Island. The ferry captain has three located homes on his barge that day and he's fighting a huge wind problem from the get go.
Fisher says the first season one mover bet the owners he could place a glass of water in their kitchen and after the move it would still be standing. "And it was!" In another home the builder said to leave the cats inside and "they were fine except a bit put out by the motion."
Fisher says she wound up with a data base of 700 movers to rely on and it's ever growing. "They are telling me they can even move brick homes provided the foundation is strong."
This season MM will also follow the meanderings of a church and a historic house.
You want human inters?
 In Episode 3 a vigilant old doll stands by her twisted tree on her lawn and just dares the movers to cut it down --the moving home needs a few more feet of space to ease down the street.  Finally there's a compromise: some branches are sawed off but the tree and its protector are still standing.
The project is a Windfall Films/ Cineflix (Massive Moves 2) international co-production with Shaw Media.
Already a hit in Canada, Australia and France, Fisher says MM has "so far" has eight offers from U.S. networks. British TV prefers massive episodes--with the number now at 26 there might be movement.
"We get to know the movers, they are certainly characters, nothing fazes them. Their language is something else.
"Basically these are stories of how to overcome great obstacles. My background was nature series. Here I am dealing with a different form of wildlife."
MASSIVE MOVES RETURNS TO HGTV SUNDAY JANUARY 6 AT 10 P.M.
MY RATING: *** 1/2.

Supervolcano Uncorks A Hit

I've been so enthralled previewing TV's midseason shows that I almost forgot to screen Supervolcano, the new and very scary "what if" documentary premiering on CBC-TV's Doc Zone Thursday January 3 at 9 p.m.
Maybe it's just that time of the year when I begin to worry about all the possible scenarios that could go wrong. Heck, being a confirmed pessimist I even watched the U.S. Congress lurch toward a fiscal cliff with some trepidation.
But Supervolcano: Yellowstone's Fury (the full title) is extremely chilling because it is all so very true. And there's nothing much anybody can do except wait and prepare for the worst.
Yeah, I know the thought of Old Faithful bubbling forth into a killer volcano seems rather silly.
But there are signs the volcano rumbling deep inside Yellowstone National Park could erupt --or it could still send out earthquakes for thousands of more years before another world shattering eruption.
The volcano erupts every 600,000 years or so --the last one hit well before recorded civilization but that could have been about 620,000. years back.
But there have been signs of late: bison suddenly dying from gasses percolating up from the underground crater, an increase in seismic activity.
What is certain is that when it does erupt it will be a very big one.
By contrast the April 2010 volcano on Iceland was a relatively small affair. However, it disrupted air travel for weeks with its flow of ash over western Europe.
In 1980 Mount Saint Helen's erupted and blew a mountain top off and was considered relatively minor to what Yellowstone is capable of producing.
This time scientists are fearlessly predicting an eruption with the capacity of 100 nuclear bombs. The crater alone would build to about 2/3 the size of Prince Edward Island.
Not only would the American Mid-west be affected so would such Canadian cities including Regina and Calgary and even Toronto.
The ash would stifle food production for up to six years and cause a lowering in temperature by as much as 10 degrees Celsius.
Producer -writer Dave Brady  and writer-director Maryanne Alton have done a superlative job of assembling the experts and marshaling their clips to build the case in an entirely persuasive manner. One survivor of the 1959 Yellowstone quake says he wakened up to see a gigantic boulder flatten the tent where his parents were sleeping.
One big plus: cinematographer Damir Chytil's gorgeous photography which captures the sheer beauty of the park --underneath there lurks this incredible force of energy that one day will surely blow sky high again.
If you believe the possible scenario outlined here you should immediately begin stockpiling food for the anticipated six years of famine. Or you could pray the quake doesn't hit until the time of your great grandchildren,
SUPERVOLCANO PREMIERES ON CBC-S DOC ZONE THURSDAY JANUARY 3 AT 10 P.M.
MY RATING: ***1/2.