Chris Potter : Canadian TV's Busiest Actor

Hard to believe but the promising young actor I first interviewed on the set of Material World has matured over 19 years to become Canadian TV's most productive actor.

The way Chris Potter figures it he's done hundreds of hours of episodic TV on both sides of the border including seven series beginning with Material World (1990-92) and continuing through Top Cops (1990-92), Kung Fu: The Legend Continues (1993-97), Silk Stalkings (1993-07), Queer As Folk (2001), Wild Card (2003-05) and now Heartland which begins its third season on CBC-TV Sunday night at 8.

Plus he's guest starred on everything from One Tree Hill (2005) and Law & Order: SVU (2004-95) to such TV flicks as Sex TRaffic (2004) and two Hallmark TV flicks The Good Witch (2008) and a sequel.

"My secret is I like to work," he laughs on the phone --when we talked he was doing preproduction on an episode of Heartland which he'll also direct.

"But I also have to work --I have four kids."

And when I ask why I didn't see him at the CBC fall TV launch he jokes "I guess I wasn't inmvited!" The CBC family drama is stressing the teenagers on the show to rachet up ratings with young femaler viewers.

"I did the Heartland pilot --I was in an extended cameo and I thought it just might fly. Adults tell me they can watch it with their teens and not fall asleep. I'm the dad this time but the role feels right and it's grown in the story."

And CBC feels so strongly about the show as a bridge to younger viewers who normally are not attracted to this networks fare that 18 episodes have been ordered this season.

Does Potter remember much about our first interview in 1990? At that time he was still living in London, Ontario, unsure about continuing his acting career, worried it wouldn't provide steady employment.

I remind him he proudly showed off his first dressing room which was the size of a cubbyhole and he says "That I remember."

Silk Stalkings was up next and shot in San Diegfo where he relocated his growing family. He thought he might stay south but an offer came to play David Carradine's son in the Toronto sequel to Kung Fu.

"It was quite a ride. I phoned him from Calgary two days before he passed --he was in Bangkok. David was a magnificent eccentric. When he died I mourned him and went to his funeral attended by 500 friends. Three ex-wives were there, grandchildren were there, we all went back to Jane Seymour's Malibu pad to pay our respects. He had hundreds of friends."

Initially Potter was signed for only six episodes of groundbreaking Queer as Folk shot in Toronto and nicely casting him as gay chiropractor.

"They asked me to stay the season which I did but I was commuting back to San Diego and the money was very poor. So I asked for more the second season and they declined so I left ."But he received his best acting notices to date and made several pilots including Astronauts (2002) that never sold.

Back in Toronto he co-starred with Joely Fisher in Wild Card. He agrees with me the first year was pretty good but a change of producers meant a dumbing down of story lines and viewer decline.

"But one of the original producers got me on Tge Young And The Restless for 12 episodes. She told me she wouldn't kill off my character (Ewan Owen) but put me into a coma. So I'm still in that coma, I guess because I never went back!"

Potter started directing on the set of Silk Stalking, says he wants to do more of it in the future.

But he'll continue acting, too. "In November I'll do the third installment of the Good Witch TV movies for Hallmark. They say they will be getting out of the TV movie making game after that because costs are so high."

But he'll also hopefully continue at least a few more years on Heartland. "The stories are still fresh, the scenery is magnificent and these kids have great energy. What's not to like about this family saga?"

HEAERTLAND RETURNS TO CBC SUNDAY NIGHT OCT. 5 AT 7 P.M.

The Hills Are Alive

Big news of the TV season was the return Mondfay night on MTV of The Hills but without star Lauren Conrad.

Everybody over the age of 25 must be asking "What the hell is the Hills?"

Well, it's the reality epic on MTV which is so watched by preteens and teens that these same viewers ignore such fictional fare as This Beautiful Life and even Gossip Girl.

The Hills is for voyeurs of the young in heart. Every week teens pine over theantics of a bunch of twentysomething living loving and laughing in modern day L.A.

Lauren Conrad as herself played a high school grad who was soon adviser to a top fashion designer and lived in a million dollar mansion with two best buds.

Lauren's penchant for bad boy lovers was documented in absorbing detail. But Conrad who became herself a millionaire off the show which supposedly does not have a script got bored with playing herself and left.

This season she's been replaced by an old adversary from her previous reality series Laguna Beach, Kristin Cavallari. Where Lauren was sweet and demure, Kris seems foul mouthed and sexually aufacious.

Is this going to go over with its predominantly teen audience. I'm thinking no way.

Girls don't like to see themselves portrayed as sexual predators. I just get the feeling this season is it for The Hills.

With puppy love gone, the formula has been stretched too much., that's it.

Back For A Seventh Season

Had a chance to chat up Rick Mercer at the CBC fall launch weeks ago. Mercer returns for his seventh season on CBC. Unlike RCAF which unceremoniously got the boot because its audience was considered too mature, Mercer's ratings which hover just under 1 million weekly are high among the twentysomethings CBC needs to attract sponsors.

But the question remains how long Mercer will stick with this show after walking away from his first two --This Hour Has 30 Minutes and Made In Canada.

So far he reports he isn't bored. "Maybe it's the opposite. With Made In Canada the challenge was in writing the scripts and I still do have nightmares about that process. Here the challenge is to react to the headlines and get out and do the show on the road every week. Physically this one is very strenuous.

And he's thinking about the segments already filmed including an arduous bout of bungee jumping with Rick Hanson.

"That's right he's in a wheelchair and we dangle over a precipice. It was --scarey."

Mercer is also scheduled to visit Mississauga's feisty mayor Hazel McCallion and join Simon Fraser University's Frosh Week celebrations. But most of the rest of the season isn't firm as yet because he likes to react to the headlines.

Also returning is This Hour has 22 Minutes with Geri Hall, Gavin Crawford, last original Cathy Jones and Kathleen Phillips.

Rick Mercer returns to CBC Tuesday night at 8 with This Hour Has 22 Minutes at 8:30 and the second installment of Being Erica at 9. Got that?

Nuggets Of Truth About The New TV Season

From the cluttered files of your friendly, neighbourhood TV critic come four select pearls of wisdom about the new TV season:

1. It seems Ron James just might make it after all as the replacement for the venerable RCAF Friday nights on CBC. His debut half hour grabbed 803,000 viewers which is perfectly acceptable. Hopefully, he'll build on that number.

2. My favorite reality series The Hills comes back on MTV next week. Ever wonder what the stars of that epic are making these days for not memorizing scripts but instead ad libbing scenes from their lives? I hear Audrina makes $100,000 a pop, the hated Spencer Pratt takes home $65,000 just to be nasty and newcomer Kristin Cavallari pockets $90,000.So there.

3. For several seasons the whisper has been that CBS's power house Sunday lineup was in need of a fix. Yet its debut Sept. 27 saw the venerable 60 Minutes notch up its best ratings in years while The Amazing Race which CBS once considered canceling because of declining interest showed 7% increases over last year. However TAR still placed fourth in intense competition which isn't the place any network likes to be.

4. Last season viewers stuck with the tried and true. This year new series are being sampled. CBS's says its NCIS spin off is already considered a hit and right behind is The Good Wife. ABC says Cougar Town and Modern Family are the network's biggest half hour premieres in years. Biggest worry at CBS is the continual drooping away of CSI which began when star Bill Peterson took a hike.

In a category all its own: the quick flop of The Beautiful Life.

Got all that?

A New Season For Little Mosque

Let's see, I was on the Toronto set of Little Mosque On The Prairie a month before it actually premiered on CBC-TV.

I remember that day well because creator Zarqa Nawaz had just concluded via satellite TV an interview with TV right winger Glen Beck that wound up with Beck being awfully nice to this talented writer-producer.

The most daring thing about this charming little sitcom was always its name.

Deep down it's alaways been a saga of love thy neighbours even if they are darker and of a different religion than you.

The unexpected success of LHOTP was a welcome boon to CBC-TV and all of a sudden the sprightly comedy is about to launch its fourth season. Time sure flies for successful series.

Me? I thought the third year flagged a bit and became a tad complaisant and self-congratulatory.

But I'm happen to report cast and writers thought so. too.

A little creative tinkering never hurt a show. And if Little Mosque's ratings no longer hit the million mark that was to be expected in the 300-channel TV universe of today.

"Changes are being made," reports Zaib Shaikh who plays Iman Amaar, the Toronto-bred lawyer who gave it all up for his religion.

"More comedy tension was needed so the premise is getting opened up."

The trick is to make enough changes to attract new viewers but not damage the core fans.

And so talented and very tall Brandon Firla (Billable Hours) is being imported as the new Anglican minister in Mercy, Saskatchewan.

"Is he manipulative?" chuckles Firla. "Very much so but in a broad comedy way."

First off the new reverend is shocked to find the dwindling band of parishioners sharing quarters with a flock of Muslims.

In Billable Hours the contrast between Firla and co-star Fab Fillippo who is short was part of the fun. And here Shaikh always seems to be looking up at the minister.

This season Shaikh reports the sitcom has 18 episodes and thus escaped the ruthless paring of episodes on other CBC series.

When Rev. Thorne arrives he asks how far it is into the town of Mercy?

"This is the town," says the Iman (Shaikh).

And later the reverend says "I just love our little brown Muslims" with great condescension. He plands every trick to evict them.

Shaikh says his TV presence helps boost his other life as a stage actor and director. Some fans remember him from the OMNI serial Metropia which is still running late nights and gave him the most ever exposure --all the cast had nude scenes.

At the CBC TV launch I also saw other cast regulars Sheila McCarthy, Carlo Rota and Debra McGrath who is noticeably missing from the last season of Paradise Falls.

In LMOTP's first new episode Jayne Eastwood is the guest star as a busy body who serves treats to the Muslims who praise the taste but spit out the contents when she says it's the lard she uses in each cookie.

So yes, Little Mosque, is back as irreverent as usual.

LMOTP's fourth season debuts on CBC-TV Monday night Sept. 28 at 8:30 P.M.

First Casualty Of The New TV Season

And my annual Stinker Of The Year award goes to --The Beautiful Life which turned out not to be beautiful at all but actually quite squalid.

The CW has confirmed production shut down Friday of the hourlong new drama making it the first of the new TV season to get the axe. On its second and final night TBL notched just 1.1 million viewers for the entire U.S.A.

Based on Ashton Kutcher's experiences as a model, it was made by CBS Studios and starred Mischa Barton, Corbin Bleu, Benjamin Hollingswoth and Elle MacPherson.

Barton had been receiving bad publicity for months including a public breakdown in L.A. she blamed on a rotting wisdom tooth and scary appearances on the set where her beauty was not to be seen at all.

The former star of The O.C. wasn't forceful enough in her role and looked perpetually dazed.

And in related news A&E has cancelled the series The Cleaner with Benjamin Bratt after two seasons of so-so ratings.

The Fall TV Race Heats Up

The battle for the hearts and minds of Canadian viewers is once again being won by American series.

On Wednesday night the return of Criminal Minds at 9 p.m. on CTV (simulcast with CBS) took in 2.97 million viewers which the network says is its best ever rating.

CSI:NY at 10 on CTV took in 2.64 million viewers and bested Global's Melrose Place by 146 per cent or so CTV says.

And nobody's talking about Jay Leno these days, right? CTV says America's Next Top Model with 1.27 million viewers bested Bones over on Global in the all important teens and the 12-34 demographics.

And Thursday night CTV's season premiere of Grey's Anatomy took in 3.3 million viewers, a surge of 38% over last year.

Got that?