Explaining The Experts.

It's unfortunate Josh Freed's latest documentary The Trouble With Experts is coming on CBC TV's Doc Zone so early in the season.
Viewers frantically trying to sample all the new series shouldn't overlook this entertaining look at how we seek out self styled experts in almost every walk of life.
I was thinking of this the other night when I watched a 1968 Walter Cronkie news broadcast that originally ran on CBS.
It seemed so weird --it was wall to wall news with no opinionators whatever. Until the end when Cronkite offered his opinion that the War In Vietnam was not winnable.
Contrast this with Anderson Cooper who uses banks of experts in faux fights every night of the week.
At one point we're told there are so many TV experts these days because TV has expanded to all day news and experts are needed to fill up the air time because they're cheap to hire.
And maybe the real problem isn't with all these confident experts who frequently dole out information that's just plain wrong.
The fault may be with ourselves --we're trying too darned hard in today's rush of a society that we try to get experts to tell us what to do. And sometimes it just doesn't work.
Freed's response is light hearted. He's got a knack for making us laugh uneasily at our foibles. And here he's got a lot of ammunition to work with --I think he could have tackled TV's political experts as a separate subject.
These pontificators analyze everything and they're on all day. I was watching a pair go at each other onCNN in the mid afternoon. Then at night I caught one of the guys ranting again on Cooper.
In fact Freed even uses other experts to grade the experts he's profiling particularly science writer David Freedman author of the book WRONG.
One of the best segments is on talented painter John Myatt who began replicating paintings by famous master painters and doing so well he sold them as authentic works to the great museums of the world.
These days he still does forgeries but only on commission and with the understanding the buyer knows he's getting a bogus painting.
Most pompous are the incredibly snobbish wine experts who in one test couldn't even tell red wine from white wine that was dyed red.
I liked the work of Berkeley professor Phillip Tetlock who studied 300 experts in politics over a rwo decade period and studied over 82,000 predictions for a 2005 study. He found their prognostications only slightly better than random guesses.
On TV shows one expert says that verbal battles are encouraged because it makes for exciting TV.
That segues into a great bit at a college where experts are trained in the art of seeming authoritative --how to dress, talk slowly and deeply. There's a course that takes several days of training."
The Oxford doctor Ben Goldacre tells us about the bad scientific information being dispensed on TV health shows.
But the real kicker is a look at a prison expert who counsels white collar criminals who are entering jail about what to expect behind bars.
If anything The Trouble With Experts suffers from a bit of information overload. It's so jam packed with necessary stuff you really should tape it to watch again a few months from now when TV experts are getting on your nerves.
THE TROUBLE WITH EXPERTS PREMIERES ON CBC-TV'S DOC ZONETHURSD. SEPT. 29 AT 9 P.M.
MY RATING: *** 1/2.

I'll Watch A "New" 1943 Movie

I'm going to play hokey Wednesday night for a few hours.
Starting at 8 p.m. I'll be watching an old movie that's new again.
I've watched enough of those bad new series currently flooding TV networks.
The film is The Constant Nymph and it hasn't been seen since its release in 1943.
Nobody has seen it because the author of the book Margaret Kennedy insisted that upon her death the film could only play in museums and libraries.
The one time I interviewed its star Joan Fontaine she said she hadn't viewed it either since 1943.
Well, Turner Classic Movies which owns the rights later arranged a private screening for Miss Fontaine.
She told the press she staggered out into the light and felt she needed a drink.
The Constant Nymph was directed by Edmund Goulding and besides Fontaine the cast includes Charles Boyer, Alexis Smith, Dame May Whitty and Charles Coburn.
What a cast! Miss Fontaine garnered an Oscar nomination, she was that good.
And she journeyed to sister Olivia de Havilland's home studio Warners to make it. Could that have been the start of a sisterly feud that sizzles and crackles to this day?
"It certainly didn't help," laughed Fontaine with glee.
The one time I was at Alexis Smith's Hollywood home I asked her about the film and she shrugged.
"I was 22 playing a sophisticated 35-year old and it was my best performance. But nobody but nobody has seen it in decades."
Smith has passed but Fontaine, now a feisty 94-year old, must be in heaven about this coup.
But The Constant Nymph is only one of a number of long lost films TCM is trying to find.
Sunday night I watched the 1941 version of Back Street styarring Margaret Sullavan and Charles Boyer --it hasn't been on any Canadian TV station since 1970.
The one phone interview I ever had with TCM's master historian Robert Osborne I asked what other forgotten films he was hoping to re-discover,
One title he gave me was the all star 1933 drama Night Flight.
WEll, Here's the cast: Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, Helen Hayes, John Barrymore, Robert Montgomery.
Warners has just released it on DVD for the first time after years of negotiating over the rights..
TCM owns the TV rights.
So how about it TCM?
POST SCRIPT: I saw the film which was a box office failure in 1943 although Joan Fontaine received an Oscar nomination. It's of a high style of glossy film making that passed from the scene a long time ago. The accoutrements are lavish including a town home in London overstuffed with antiques. Being out of view for 70 years means the film has a reputation it can't really live up to. But it's a lot of fun rev-siting such stars as Alexis Smith, Charles Boyer, Dame May Whitty, Charles Coburn all of whom have passed in the intervening decades. Only Fontaine at 94 is still with us.

Some things just don't mix.
Like Steven Spielberg and American TV.
Way back in 1984 the world's most successful movie director (in box office terms) decided he'd conquer TV in the form of an ultra expensive series Amazing Stories which he made for NBC.
The drumbeat of publicity was so huge that CBS got scared and suddenly imported Angela Lansbury into its fall preview sessions with visiting TV critics held that year in Phoenix.
Because Spielberg was confident he'd take Lansbury's time slot away from her --Sunday nights at 8 p.m.
But he couldn't budge Lansbury and her series Murder She Wrote,
Because Lansbury had a character viewers took to and wanted to watch week safter week.
And while some of Spielberg's episodes were OK others were just a little too precious for the vast TV audience.
And NBC blinked and twice moved the show in its second season before finally canceling the whole misjudged experiment.
It took almost a decade but an unbowed Spielberg was at it again with the simply silly sci fi show SeaQuest DSV which ran for two shaky seasons on NBC starting in 1993.
Once again the special effects were supreme and the story lines so dorky assembled TV critics laughed in all the wrong places at the special preview.
And once again the show flopped in the ratings --and what was the CBS series that sank this leaky vessel?
You guessed it --once again it was Murder She Wrote with Angela Lansbury.
Spielberg must be happy that his third series encounter comes after Lansbury's retirement from series TV work.
Instead of actors to basically deal with Spielberg has his computer generated dinosaurs --at least they won't talk back.
I never heard of a family sitting around the TV set to watch the special effects.
the story line here is so rudimentary it makes the screenplay Avatar look like Pulitzer Prize material.
The premise borrows liberally from that old hit Lost In Space and adds a mixture of Lost.
I remember interviewing the star Jason O'Mara when he was in Toronto promoting an earlier flop series In Justice (actually it was pretty good dramatically). He then made another flop, the U.S. version of Life On Mars.
Every nuance on Terra Nova gets telegraphed with such obvious dialogue that watching made me squirm at times.
And so much dough was tossed at the two-hour premiere I'm betting subsequent hours will not be half as dinosaur friendly.

Pan Am Still Might Make It

What I'm hearing from friends is that the premiere episode of Pan Am just didn't make it for them.
Call it Mad Men Lite so far.
The new ABC series has a bad time slot --it runs Sundays at 10 p.m. opposite CBS's venerable but still potent CSI:Miami and NBC's powerhouse NFL football.
I met the four actresses playing the stewardesses during the CTV fall launch.
Best know is Christina Ricci but the others are just as talented: Margot Robbie, Karine Vanesse, Kelli Gardner.
Set like Mad Men in 1963 the serial follows the lives of the four girls in the Golden Age of travel.
"It was when people actually dressed up to travel in an airplane. It was very exclusive and glamourous," Robbie told the TV critics that day.
All the accoutrements of life almost 50 years get developed --this a very expensive series to make.
But unlike Mad Men it can only go so far --remember this is network TV.
CTV has gone all out to promote the new show even going as far as to send me a PAN AM flight bag complete with all sorts of goodies.
And this is the one TV critics everywhere have been hailing as among the season's best new shows.
The pilot failed on most counts --it was disjointed and diffuse but that often happens when a new series debuts. It should improve over the next few weeks.
Pan Am gals back there had to be educated and very beautiful. One gets demoted for not living up to the wardrobe standards. Another has her girdle snapped by a superior --girdles were part of the look back then.
I can see this one developing as a bout of escapism but it needs a lot of work to get up to scratch.
Since the 1960s terrorism and the high price of oil have made air travel less an adventure than a strenuous ride filled with problems.
Mad Men was a dazzlng recreation of a past time but it was filled with nuance and blistering criticisms of its characters. Pan Am is all surface cuteness. It's not at all compelling --so far.
So far it's more Charlie's Angels than anything else.
However on the first night out Pan Am did OK in the ratings bolstered by the overrun of CBS football.

MY RATIONG: **1/2.

The New TV Season: Flops And Hits

Some of the brightest new series are already on life support.
NBC's Playboy Club is a huge stinker but NBC doesn't have anything else waiting in the bull pen so this one might simply sink slowly over the next month or so.
Playboy Club comes across as a particularly bad reworking of Mad Men.
Also dead is NBC's comedy Free Agents but again it's a case of nothing available as a back up.
That excellent drama Harry's Law is already in trouble I've been told. and may be moved to another night.
Law & Order: SVU was third in its time slot first week back and NBC sources confirm this is its final season.
But The Office held up well with a new boss which is good news for NBC.
Three CBS vets How I Met Your Mother, NCIS and NCIS:LA all bounced back with higher ratings than last season. Go figure.
And the huge numbers for Two And A Half Men was astonishing --but how many viewers will tune in for the second new episode?
Huge expectations were dashed when The X Factor limped forth with extremely anemic ratings. But Night Two held on to almost all of the original viewers.
My conclusion? Simon Cowell's schtick is getting tougher to stomach.
But this is one reality series that's very expensive to make and probably can't long continue after one season.
Young viewers weren't having anything to do with Charlie's Angels which is a very ineptly made show any way you look at it.
But oldies can be golden: Ted Danson was very low keyed but effective on the revamped CSI and guarantees this venerable show at least one more full season, perhaps even two.
And Hawaii FIVE-0 debuted for its second season behind Castle meaning brand awareness doesn't sell if the product in this case is so humdrum.
I'm told the mood at CBC was one of astonishment that the ambitious new comedy series Michael got creamed by The X Family
and quickly repositioned the show to Tuesdays.
But why did CBC open its big shows against such juggernauts as the Emmy Awards and with minimal publicity?

Boardwalk Empire Comes Roaring Back

Last Sunday night the wonderful new TV series Boardwalk Empire which had 18 Emmy nominations walked off with eight wins including best director (Martin Scorsese).
And boy am I one lucky TV critic.
I've just watched the first two new episodes of this great series on a preview DVD and it's every bit as great and as dark as the first year's episodes.
To get it in Canada you must subscribe to HBOCanada but believe me there's nothing else quite like it anywhere else.
At the end of Season One Atlantic City's honcho and City Treasurer Nucky (Steve Buscemi) was battling a coalition of forces against him although his companion Margaret (Kelly Macdonald) did decide to return to him.
Battling him all the way is the Commodore (Dabney Coleman) who is arraigning all his enemies into a super force.
Season Two starts with real force as a gang of black bootleggers are involved in a pitched battle with a gang of Klu Klux Khan --and there are deaths on both sides. The scene is horrific with bodies piling up, blood spattering and the white supremacists even taking hits as they run away from the carnage.
Charismatic. That's the only word to describe these characters. There's the proud black criminal Chalky played in marvellous fashion by Kenneth Williams.
If the series looks like no other that's because each hour episode costs more than $5 million to make. And all the period details are just right from the lavish Atlantic City mansions to the classy whorehouse with the pianist languidly playing favorites of the clientele.
The very rich women sport all the appertances from the furs to the giant limousines. The men who are very rich have three piece suits and gorgeous tie. All the faux glamour of the era is well presented but peel that back and it's a sordid saga of the rise of big time crime due to Prohibition and the free sexuality that few writers of the time dared write about.
Themes continue to percolate: the racism of the time contrasted with the sudden freedom and the power that Prohibition gave outcast blacks. And there's the continuing corruption of municipal and state government and the culture of kickbacks that dictated huge payouts to politicians in power.
Real characters drift in and out of the sprawling narrative--Al Capone was the young, vicious punk the first season and early this year Arnold Rothstein makes his intentions clear.
The big theme is how much the Volstead Act which made the selling of any liquor illegal (including beer) totally totally unsettled American society. But it wasn't just booze, in the second new episode Michael Pitt's character is advised by the Rothstein gang to move into heroin.
Performances are unifiormly excellent. In the first few new shows we'll learn about the strange marriage of Agent Nelson Van Alden (played by Nelson Van Alden). Then there's the bold decision of Great War veteran Jimmy Darmody (Michael Pitt). And Sheriff Elias (Shea Wigham) is ambivalent about loyalty to older brother Nucky.
I also like Vincent Piazza as Lucky Luciano, Michael Stuhlbarg as Arnold Rothstein, Stephen Graham as Al Capone. And Steve Buscemi has the role of a lifetime and is showing how great character acting can be endlessly fascinating.
In a tepid new TV season filled with remakes and clones of clones Boardwalk Stands alone as a must-see.
BOARDWALK EMPIRE'S SECOND SEASON PREMIERES ON HBO CANADA SUND. SEPT. 25 AT 9 P.M.
MY RATING: ****.

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A Farewell To All My Children

Here's the truly big news of the week.
Forget those terrible new prime time TV series currently spewing forth. Most will be toast by season's end.
The biggest TV story out there is the demise of All My Children Friday on ABC.
Did it have to happen? No way. ABC is killing off one of the staples of daytime TV to make way for cheap lifestyle programming.
Take a look at how CBC has been putting new life into its evergreen British import Coronation Street.
CBC runs a new episode every weeknight (except Friday) at 7:30 to jump start its prime time programming. And that same episode is on late nights and at 2 p.m.
Then the four episodes are packaged for Sunday mornings as Sunday brunch with Coronation Street and different audiences watch every time.
ABC could be doing the same thing --re-building the audience base eroded by the multiplicity of choices. Instead the network has sold off the rights and a new version will debut in January on the internet although key cast members will be missing.
What happened to daytime soaps?
Well, first of all more and more women are working these days so the base of traditional support is no longer there.
I remember taking tea once with Agnes Nixon in her New York hotel suite and she was one of those who energized the genre by creating Another World and then One Life To Live.
Soap companies including Procter And Gamble owned the original TV shows outright.
When ratings started to topple these were the vulnerable soaps --CBS has kept on the air soaps it owned outright.
ABC had a controlling interest in the U.S. cable network SOAPnet but has divested itself of that cable web. Thus it no longer needs All My Children.
in the 1950s I'd watch two soaps every afternoon before heading back to school: Search For Tomorrow at 12:30 and The Guiding Light at 1 p.m.
Both were live and each ran 15 minutes (including the commercials which were filmed).
The day I spent with Nixon she explained the fight to get All My Children up and running. It debuted Jan 5 1970--originally Nixon and husband Bob owned it outright but sold all rights to ABC in 1975.
When I visited the set in 1974 it was taped at ABC Television studios at 101 West 67th Street which is now a 50-story apartment complex.
Nixon told me that day the audience was over 30 per cent male and it also attracted a huge audience of college kids.
Lunch on set with grande dame Ruth Warrick was fun especially when she said "I started out in Citizen Kane, the greatest film ever made, and now I'm in a soap. I see no diminution of my status. In fact I've got a lot more fans these days."
The final episode was taped in L.A. on August 11. Its not known when the first Internet episode will run.
But one thing is clear: a phenomenon of American culture has departed from TV forever.