The Worst Ever TV Season

Believe me when I tell you this is turning out to be the worst ever TV season.
And I should know. This is my 40th anniversary as TV critic and of the hundreds of bad TV series I've so far previewed some of the very worst are popping up this year.
Believe you me it was so much easier in 1970-71 when there were only 10 channels to cover.
That year I made my first trip to L.A. and got on the sets of such instant classics as Mission: Impossible,The Brady Bunch, Here's Lucy and Emergency.
I remember the day an NBC publicist drove me out to Sherman Oaks for high tea with Julie London. Her beauty was dazzling up close, I can report.
I also had lunch in the Paramount Commissary with Peter Graves who remained a dear friend over the decades.
In 1972 I interviewed Bill Macy on the set of Maude just before it went on the air.
And CBS ace publicist Betty Lamm had me go to a Belgian restaurant on the Sunset Strip to interview Loretta Swit just before her new series M*A*S*H debuted to become an instant classic.
This year what's new and exciting and different? Beats me.
And what TV stars would I rush to interview in L.A. these days? Sorry, I can't think of a single name.
My conclusion: American network TV has lost it.
Canadian TV never had it. Let's be frank about that.
Now the American sources I talk to say the overnight ratings are pretty meaningless these days unless DVD viewers get factored in.
Don't get me wrong --dismal overnights for Lone Star were bad enough to sink that terrible series.
You see the overnights are tracking an audience that is disappearing. One day only old viewers like yours truly will sit down to watch network TV.
The rest, the significantly younger, will watch at their leisure because they've recorded it.
And don't forget something like Mad Men gets multiple viewings during its first week. That's why overnights for many trendy cable series from Mad Men to True Blood are so anemic. In some cases a majority of viewers watch later, in some cases weeks later.
One geek up the street has a device that gives a false internet address so he can tune into Hulu which so far is supposedly banned in Canada. Only it isn't if you now how to get in the back door.And Hulu is doubling its viewership every six months.
Does this explain why network TV is now so dog awful?
Not really. But the shift in audience to cable means old line networks take fewer risks. There are no more TV movies on U.S. network TV and a successful TV movie could be spun out into a series. No more --presentations are the norm meaning more bad series get on the air.
Now the rush is on to forecast the next new series to crash and burn.
Will it be ABC's My Generation --network sources hint it is toast.
Another ABC series The Whole Truth is going, I think, it lost half the audience of Cougar Town and Wednesday night faces off against NBC's new Law & Order: Los Angeles.
Others destined to collapse into the TV sink hole: Fox's Running Wilde, NBC's revamped The Apprentice, NBC's Outlaw, CW's Life Expected.
You'll notice not a single CBS title is out there. But CBS also has the oldest viewer base (average age is 57 years and counting).
Like I say, worst TV season ever.
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ABC'S No Ordinary Family Worth Catching

People don't believe me when I tell them it really doesn't matter if a new series is bad or good.
A series will succeed or fail based on its time slot.
Don't believe me? I have all the ammunition on my side.
Consider Seinfeld, one of the most successful ever TV situation comedies, right?
Wrong. Because Seinfeld in its first full season (1991) ran Wednesdays at 9:30 and was one huge rating flop.
The time spot was out of joint and NBC was about to cancel it but executive producer Rob Reiner begged for one more chance and so from April to July, 1991, Seinfeld was plopped into Thursdays at 9:30 and roared into ratings success.
It was a case of right night, right audience, get it?
Another example: In August, 1972, I was in the Warners office of Earl Hamner,creator of the new series The Waltons, and he was bemoaning his time period: Thursdays at 8 on CBS smack dab against ABC's The Mod Squad and NBC's Flip Wilson, then the number two rated series (All In The Family was number one)..
By season's end The Mod Squad got cancelled after its fifth season and Flip Wilson flipped out of solid ideas to land well down in the ratings
And The Waltons by September 1973 was number two and growing.
That's a long winded attempt to explain my uneasiness at the situation of the new ABC series No Ordinary Family debuting Tuesd. Sept. 28 at 8 p.m..
Over at CBS there's NCIS which just keeps on attracting huge numbers. And there's Fox's Glee which every critic around is big on.
So expectations for No Ordinary Family are hardly optimistic.
Yet, maybe, just maybe it might be the next Waltons and destroy all others ratings wise?
This is a family splintering apart. Jim (Michael Chilkis) is Jim Powell, a dedicated sketch artist for the police department, sees his family slipping away from him.
Wife Stephanie (Julie Benz from Dexter) is a dedicated scientist who spends every waking hour at her lab or so it seems.
Daughter Daphne (Kay Panabaker) can actually read minds which she feels is really weird.
And son JJ (Jimmy Bennett from Star Trek) is actually a genius but he scores very low on tests.
Then the family take quality time to the extreme by visiting the Brazilian rain forest where their plane crashes into a phosphorescent lake. They return, well, they've changed.
Jim thinks he can fly and jumps off a skyscraper to test his theories.
Wife Stephanie can outrun anything and starts speeding all over the place.
This pilot is chock full of possibilities but it's almost overstuffed with ideas. It never stops for a moment leaving viewers confused.
What kind of a show is this going to be? Stay tuned, the possibilities are endless.
And if enough viewers are tiring of NCIS or Glee, then maybe just maybe No Ordinary Family can make it.
NO ORDINARY FAMILY PREMIERES TUESD. SEPT. 28 AT 8 P.M. ON ABC, CTV.
MY RATING: ***.

Discovery Science Launches

Boutique TV: If you're wondering what that means tune in to Discovery Science which launches Monday Sept. 27.
Phone your local cable TV provider to find out the exact channel.
When I started writing on TV for The Hamilton Spectator in 1971 there were 10 regular network channels and no cable channels.
These days something like 959 channels are available if you have the money to pay for all of them --and the money.
Narrowcasting is now the rage.
For old movies it's Turner Classic Movies. For breaking Toronto news it's CP 24. For golf The Golf Channel.
And someday there may be The Bowling Channel, The Ferret Channel and The Curling Network.
Discovery Science is a new cable service operated under the umbrella of CTV and is a fact-based channel with a wide panorama.
It's the third of three new Discovery-branded channels. Discovery World HD and Investigation Discovery launched in August.
The first show sent to me on a preview DVD is Meteorite Men.
At first glance it's about these two guys who go around digging up meteorites.
At second glance it's an explanation on how our universe came together and why a rock that crashed into earth thousands of ytears ago may hold all kinds of answers about our planet's past and future.
Geoff Notkin and Steve Arenold are the well matched explorers and we watch them as the dig all over the place. In one Kansas farm field their equipment indicates something big and buried lies beneath the prairie soil.
But it turns out to be a rusted farm implement.
They demonstrate how their equipment works --many of the gadgets they had to build themselves.
And when they do hit it big the rocks are transported to an Arizonan university campus where scientists are able to tell us all kinds of things about the iron-rich meteor.
I found the hour went by in a fash and the ruminations of the intrepid explorers was thrilling at times.
Meteorite Men premieres Monday night at 9.
On Tuesday at 9 there's another new series Sci Fi Science Woth Michio Kaku. I found this onme less enthralling and a bit too technical for your truly.
Also debuting (and unseen by me) are Science Of The Movies (Monday), Popuylar Science's Future Of (Wednesdays at 9) and Humanology (Thursdays at 9).
For more information go to ScienceChannel.ca.
METEORITE MEN PREMIERES ON DISCOVERY SCIENCE MOND. SEPT. 27 AT 9 P.M.
MY RATING: ***1/2.

Heartland Returns To CBC

"Fine teatime drama!"
That's what one English TV critic said of the family saga The Campbells which ran on CTV way back when (1986 to 1990).
Teatime drama --it's a genre Canadian TV networks have always been making with some success.
Think The Beachcombers which seemed to run on CBC forever and a day (actually 1972 to 1990).
Think Road To Avonlea and Wind At My Back which Sullivan Films made for CBC.
Now it's the turn of Heartland which starts its fourth season on CBC Sunday night at 7.
The time period is perfect for a family saga --Road To Avonlea enjoyed success in exactly this spot.
And the saga mixes in the superb vistas of Alberta with a family story centered around a girl and her horse.
I have to admit I wasn't all that thrilled with Heartland when it first aired. I thought the teen angst on Falcon Beach was better realized.
But after a wobbly start Heartland has ambled into a pretty convincing demonstration of the strength of a rural family.
The log cabin home the members inhabit could have been furnished from a Lee Valley catalogue --all faux rustic like but still looking freshly painted with pictures up along the hall ways.
The cast of young actors are beautifully scrubbed and made up, dressed like they just shopped at Eddie Bauer and instead of country bumpkins they play caring, feeling twentysomethings --sort of a Dawson's Creek ensemble transferred west.
I talked for a couple of minutes to the two young stars at a CBC bash a few days back.'mber Marshall is drop dead gorgeous but very sincere about explaining her character, cowgal Amy Fleming.
And Graham Wardle has been described in one recent Calgary Herald profile as a Tiger Beat-type sex symbol.
Both seem astonished at the success of their show whose popularity has sort of snuck up on everyone. CBC is saying the third season averaged more than a million viewers a week.
In Season Three's last episode Wardle as Ty Borden decides to hit the road to try to find himself and after months away begins getting homesick.
And Amy was getting ready to ride in a series of championship competitions.
But what I wanted to ask Amber was how many horses are actually used --after all when I covered the series Katts And Dog it seemed there were more canines on set than people.
"A lot," she volunteered. "One horse for stunts, one for close ups, many more. And the main one has been doing it now for so long he starts acting the moment the director says action."
And, of course, horse actors never drink and carouse the night away and don't sport hangovers the next day. And they never ask the director what's the motivation in the next scene.
Amber told me she got the nod over the competition partly because she could already ride while Graham was a city slicker, Vancouver based when he won his role.
Am I giving away too much plot by revealing Ty returns in the first new episode but with a gal pal riding on the back of his Norton Commando?
And we'll also see Amber's older sister Lou (Michelle Morgan)who has been living in Dubai. Grandpa Jack (Shaun Johnston) is beginning to feel the creaks of advancing age.
And Amber's dad (Chris Potter) also gets home --when I told the two young actors I'd first interviewed him on the set of the CBC series Material World in 1982 they giggled. He was about their age then, I reckon.
The predominantly teen audience supporting Heartland can rest assured there'll be the usual quotient of puppy love and scenes with horses. That's why the series clicks, really.
HEARTLAND'S FOURTH SEASON PREMIERES ON CBC SUND. SEPT. 26 AT 7 P.M.
MY RATING: ***.

Tom Selleck Is Back On CBS

The good news for Tom Selleck fans is simply that the 65-year old actor is back on CBS in a new police series called Blue Bloods.
The bad news? CBS has plopped it down Friday nights at 10.
So why is this bad news?
Because Friday night has tanked as far as network TV is concerned.
Think of it --as long as I can remember Friday TV was chock full of hits everybody wanted to see.
In the Sixties I can remember rushing home to catch The Wild, Wild West.
The Seventies meant The Brady Bunch and Room 222 on ABC with NBC proffering up Sanford And Son and Dean Martin.
Now CBS is asking Selleck to save Friday nights all by himself and he just may do it.
Selleck has been saying in interviews that when CBS opened Magnum P.I. on Thursdays in 1980 the night was the lowest rated week night. Just like Fridays is now.
But Magnum started a renaissance on CBS. Simon And Simon joined the Thursday night line up in 1982, NBC counted with Cheers the same year and in 1985 NBC's Cosby debuted and by the end of the decade Thursday was the most watched night.
In recent years much of the Friday network fare has been inept. The networks contended families were out grocery shopping and the kids were out at the mall or watching DVDs.
Excuses, excuses.
Oh, the series is very good for network TV, very cagily cobbled together to attract the maximum audience and all of it centered around Selleck's considerable charm.
Behind it are the executive producers of The Sopranos (Robin Green, Mitchell Burgess) and it is all shot in New York city.
Selleck heads a family of cops --he plays police commissioner Frank Reagan who has risen up the ranks from cop on the beat.
Frank has a right wing son Danny, a veteran detective, who wants to circumvent the rule book to catch the baddies --Donnie Wahlberg plays with convincing intensity.
His daughter Erin (Bridget Moynahan from Six Degrees) has a different philosophy and wants to play by the rules at all times.
And son James (Will Estes from Reunion) has ditched a career at Harvard for the same life on the beat that characterized his dad.
And let's not forget Henry's retired dad who was also a cop, played winningly by Len Cariou who's only five years older than Selleck as his son.
It is always dangerous to prognosticate about a new series based on viewing the pilot.
The best pilot I've ever seen was Tenspeed And Brownshoe but it used up all the possible plot and the actual series lasted but a few weeks.
And some long running series sported dog awful pilots. Two examples I can think of: Welcome Back Kotter and Dukes Of Hazzard. The producers listened to the concerns of visiting TV critics and made appropriate adjustments. ensuring very long runs in both cases.
Of course the while set up about an Irish family of cops seems cliche ridden. Certainly the show is not as dark as Sopranos but this is network TV concerned with attracting the largest possible audiences.
We soon learn Frank has enemies in high places and there are those in power who want to bring him down when a diabetic young girl is kidnapped and son Danny has troubles finding her.
Look, the whole thing worked for me, as a melodramatic situation that kept me watching and appreciating the high level of acting.
So I'm ready to pronounce Blue Bloods would be a big hit no matter what night of the week CBS chooses to run it.
I just feel Blue Bloods could hep turn those TV sets back on Friday nights.
BLUE BLOODS PREMIERES ON CBS AND CTV FRIDAY SEPT. 24 AT 10 P.M.
MY RATING: *** 1/2.

TV's Oldies Are Back --Again

Who says the weekly grind of series TV is for youngsters?
Let those young' sprouts on Gossip Girl and 90210 step aside because this fall belongs to TV's oldsters.
Take the example of Bill Shatner who starts yet another series (actually his sixthg) on CBS Thursday night with S#*! My Dad Says.
Based on the strong best seller and Twitter feed created by Justin Halpern, this one has been turned into a shakey sitcom. Already Shatner's original co-star has been replaced with another young actor now popped into the role of a son returning to visit a father he never really knew.
Then there's Tom Selleck who'll return to series TV Friday night in a new police drama from The Sopranos team titled Blue Blood. Also in the cast is 70-year old Len Carious as his father.
Other golden oldies on the small screen this fall include Jon Voight , 73, in the new Fox TV series Lone Star.
And 79-years young Dabney Coleman has a choice part on the new cable series Boardwalk Empire.
And I guess Gerald McRaney at 64 also qualifies for golden years stardom in NBC's Undercovers.
But back to Shatner, a guy who never ceases to fascinate me.
I first interviewed him in 1973 when I was a very young TV critic at the Hamilton Spectator and he was guesting on CHCH's Party Game.
How low the might have fallen was how I thought about that strange gig --Star Trek had ceased but was not yet a cult hit and Shatner candidly said he had to pay the bills so there he was on the couch acting out words with Billy Van and Jack Duffy and Dinah Christie.
I guess I next interviewed him for the police drama T.J.Hooker in L.A.
And I spent a day with him on the Toronto set of a series Tek War that he actually wrote (but did not act in).
And decades later he had a huge TV comeback on Boston Legal.
So what to make of $#*! My Dad Says?
Well, I actually thought the original pilot was far funnier.
Shatner plays a reclusive, retired doctor who has had a strained long distant relationship with his younger son (played winningly by Jonathan Sadowski.
Also cast: Will Sasso as the older son and Nicole Sullivan as Vince's wife Bonnie.
Sorry,but there are precious few laughs. The show is shot in the old sitcom style, meaning it's one main set and played before a live audience. Old fashioned, yes, but even the studio audience sounds bored.
Incredibly enough Will & Grace's David Kohan and Max Mutchnick are listed as co-creators along with David Kohan and Patrick Schumaker.
Look, Shatner's Denny Crane on Boston Legal was funnier. This character is so far at least merely nasty and why would his very nice son want to be around such a basically depressing guy?
The real dad apparently was a scream with his twittering but none of that comes across so far.
But Shatner has The Big Bang Theory as his lead in and riding the coat tails of TV's best sitcom isn't such a bad thing after all.
In other years the terrible A Different World lasted for seasons behind top rated Cosby and later on Caroline In The City hitched a ratings ride behind top rated Seinfeld.
$#*! MY DAD SAYS PREMIERES ON CBS THURSD. DEC. 23 AT 8:30 P.M. AND ON CTV SUNDAY SEPT. 26 AT 8 P.M.
MY RATING: ** 1/2.

Tamzin Merchant Makes The Tudors Worth Watching

Get ready for the fourth and final season of The Tudors, the multilayered portrait of Henry VIII and his multiple wives and lovers.
But this season the naughty merrie monarch must cede space --at least in the first six episodes --to his fifth wife, the impossibly young and beauteous Catherine Howard.
Remember the rhyme "Divorced,beheaded,died/divorced,beheaded,survived?"
Season four examines the second wife to be beheaded, Catherine Howard, and the sixth wife, Catherine Parr, who actually survived Henry.
Catherine Howard may have been one of two wives ordered beheaded by Henry in a fit of jealousy but unlike her predecessor Anne Boleyn is not much remembered by history.
""I sent the producers an audition tape, waited around and nothing happened for months," reports British actress Tamzin Merchant who'll surely zoom to stardom based on her definitive portrait of the impetuous and free spirited young girl.
"I thought that was it. And then when I was on holiday in the States I was suddenly told to report to Ireland where filming was about to start."
Catherine was a mere 19-year-old when Henry proposed and quickly married her after the annulment of his bizarre marriage to Anne of Cleves --contrary to history Anne was not quite as ugly as Henry said she was but. Rather the monarch was experiemcing a bout of impotency and needed an even younger wife to produce a "spare heir" to his throne.
Although she could read and write --still rare for a female of the nobility--Catherine was brought up at the household of the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk where supervision was lax and started a sexual relationship with Henry Manox when she was around 16.
Merchant describes her as "free spirited. She thought going to court would be fun." Scenes in the TV series show her romping with her ladies in waiting and playing games. In another scene all the girls jump in a local river and roll around in the mud for fun.
"I think Catherine never knew what she was getting into to," says Merchant who had flown in from London (with her mother) to promote the series. CBC installed her at the Royal York hotel in an interview suite fit for a queen.
"She was a typical teenager, that was what attracted Henry. She knew nothing of court intrigue. A real breath of fresh air. And since she was so young he maybe felt she'd be an ideal mate for having another heir."
Henry was nearing 50 and weighed over 300 pounds. He suffered from a variety of ailments and had to have an ulcer on his leg drained every day. Certainly he was wearing out fast. What Catherine saw in him is problematic --he was nothing more than a dirty old man --but a powerful one.
I first noticed Merchant In 2005's Pride And Prejudice (nicely cast as Georgina Darcy) where she looked about 12."I was all of 16," she says with a laugh. Now I'm 23 but because my eyes are so wide apart I seem much younger."
You may have caught her in the 2007 American ensemble Radio Cape Cod or in 2009's Barbarian Princess.'
In the spring she graduated from Cambridge but is ambivalent about totally pursuing an acting career. Instead she has secured a spot as a writer at London's prestigious Royal Court theater. and is also writing radio plays.
Merchant praises Jonathan Rhys Mayer's charismatic portrayal of Henry VIII --Mayer lacks both the height and girth but has instead opted for capturing the essence of a man who was descending into madness as he aged --perhaps Henry's syphilis was affecting his brain. Mayer could have donned a fat suit but that would have been a caricature. But he has caught Henry's crazy tension --especially to women.
The production --I've previewed the first new episode --was shot in Ireland where the open vistas still prevail and where shooting is frankly cheaper than in England. Because The Tudors is classed as a Canadian-UK co-production two of the leads are Canadian: Lothair Bluteau as the French ambassador and newcomer Torrance Coombs as Catherine's suitor Thomas Culpepper. And one of the executive producers is the highly regarded Sheila Hockin (Queer As Folk).
Catherine's reign as queen was quickly over. Accused of adultery, she steadfastly denied any infidelities with Culpepper but later said she had been raped by Francis Dereham when only 16 which would have invalidated her royal marriage. No matter she was beheaded in 1542.
"I saw her as a Barbie doll," Merchant says. "Completely childlike. She thought being queen was like playing dress up ."
Meanwhile Merchant has already completed her next project --"It's a very Gothic version of Jane Eyre starring Mia Wasikowska which hopefully will get a release sometime this year. I have a small part as Mary Rivers."
THE FOURTH SEASON OF THE TUDORS PREMIERES WED. SEPT. 22 AT 9 P.M. ON CBC-TV.
MY RATING: ****.