Get Ready For TV's May Sweeps

Those seemingly endless reruns are finally over. It's time to celebrate TV's Sweeps.
The May Sweeps are the final bang of the U.S. TV season with reruns dominating the landscape until fall.
Some pretty big shows are  already lining up to say farewell.
House will diagnose his last patient on Monday May 1 --the series isn't the ratings power source it once was and FOX has simply decided to cancel while still ahead.
There'll be closure on One Tree Hill on Tuesday May 17 on The CW.
Desperate Housewives leaves on Sunday May 13 after eight seasons of mischief on ABC (and CTV).
I remember interviewing the girls when they trooped into Toronto for the CTV fall launch eight years ago.
CTV liked the show enough to buy it but initially plopped the show Sundays at 4 p.m. It was intended as an additional buy until another new show faltered in the ratings which happened within months.
May also means TV weddings which are always great for a ratings blast.
CBS is always big on weddings and this year we'll see them on NCIS, the Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, Mike And Molly and would you believe even on Criminal Minds.
And then there are the ever popular crossovers. Remember when Murder She Wrote and Magnum P.I. crossed over?
Then there was Marcus Welby and Owen Marshall--it was a great gimmick for awhile.
A crossover generally only happens to two series on the same network and made by the same studio.
This year it's Hawaii Five-0 crossing over with NCIS: Los Angeles and the crossover was necessary because Hawaii's Alexis O'Loughlin was in rehab and couldn't appear for the final episode.
Romance heats up on such series as Grey's Anatomy, 90210, Smash, New Girl, you name it. Getting all sweaty always gets viewers interested in coming back in September.
There'll be Prom Nights on both Glee and The Secret Circle if anybody cares.
This May Sweeps two shows actually start their seasons: ABC's Bachelorette and NBC's America's Got Talent and both on Monday May 14.
On American Idol, Dancing With The Stars and The Voice it's down to Winner Take All time.
Other shows filmed their last shows of the season and may still be cancelled such as ABC's Brothers And Sisters (on ABC Sunday May 8). CBS's CSI: NY departs Friday May 13 and is still "on the bubble" --if CBS discovers a better show among its new pilots then it will be toast.
NBC's Chuck lost ground this season and it's likely final ever episode is on Monday May 16.
May finales sometimes end with a bang. Remember the "Who Shot J.R?" finale of Dallas that was the beginning of the cliffhanger craze.
CBS ordered that cliffhanger when star Larry Hagman got obstreperous about salary demands. Had Hagman walked CBS was prepared to have the J.R. character's bandages removed and a new J.R.day May 16. emerge --played by Robert Culp!
This year there just has to be a cliffhanger or two. Possibilities abound on such shows as Blue Bloods, Private Practice, you name it.

Got all that?

Moonshiners Is A Reality TV Funfest

I don't know when I've laughed so much --I've just caught the first episode of the latest Reality TV outing called Moonshiners. This show filmed in the back woods of Appalachia examines a goood ole American tradition that goes back to the pre-Revolutionary days: making illegal likker.
And how could you not like a show with such colorful characters as moonshiner Tim Smith, his teenaged son and a real character nicknamed Ticker, all of them adept at turning corn mash into a highly potent drink.
Arrainged against this gang who couldn't shoot straight there's intrepid agent Jesse Tate from the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.
Let's just style this outing a variant on Feudin', Fightin' and A-Fussin' and be done with it.
Of course as with all "Unreality" shows there are times when one wonders why this gang is behaving illegal right right in front of the obliging camera crew.
If Jesse ever does get 'em will he also arrest the crew for aiding and abetting? Just wondering.
I always wondered how illegal whiskey was brewed. Now I know. It's a complicated process that begins with the boys trying to find some mountain stream that can produce the cold, fresh water so necessary for the great tasting whiskey.
And we watch them laboriously make the still which is complicated, brew the mash just so, and finally bottle the product.
All the while strange airplanes are spotted overhead --could it be the Virginia agents out to bust up the operation.
In the dead of night dogs barking in the distance are another indication the long arm of the law may be advancing.
Best darned character by far is fabled moonshiner Popcorn Sutton who avers he's been drinkin' and smokin' since he was six and it doesn't seem to have affected him save that he's plumb crazy as a fox.
Am I giving something away by telling you that Popcorn committed suicide a whole back rather than serve a 18-year sentence for making the illegal brew.
Popcorn is a true Reality original just like Pa Kettle --his overalls, scruffy appearance, his drawl. I'm missing him already.
In the next generation only Tickle could supply such magnificent characterizations mainly because he never appears to be sober if he can help it. Heck, Popcorn and Tickle could only happen in the land of the free and the home of the gun.
Like all Reality outings everything seems suspiciously set up --and it is. The state of Virginia has even claimed it was all film flammury and no actual moonshine was brewed.
Is Virginia saying Dog The Bounty Hunter or Keeping Up With The Kardashians or Real Housewives is sometimes staged? Oh the effrontery!
Best scene in the first hour had Smith stopped on a narrow road by a suspicious farmer and his large wife who was totting the rifle and wearing the pants in that family. The fact it was a public highway made no difference to this couple. Smith obligingly turned his truck around and vamoosed as fast as he could.
And that scene was scary, hardly staged I'm imagining.

MOONSHINERS PREMIERES ON DISCOVERY CHANNEL MOND. APRIL 30 AT 9 P.M.
MY RATING: ***.

Remembering Jonathan Frid

It was big news when I interviewed Jonathan Frid and Grayson Hall the two big stars of the MGM movie House Of Dark Shadows as a fledgling entertainment writer at The Globe And Mail in 1970.
A few years later there I was the TV critic at the Hamilton Spectator working in the big new newspaper plant on --gulp --Frid Street.
When I told Frid all about it in a subsequent telephone interview he roared with laughter.
You see "Frid Street" was named after his father the notable construction company executive Herbert Percival "H.P." Frid.
"I avoided that fate as best I could," joked Jonathan. "I went right into acting."
So there you have it --TV's most famous vampire was actually a proud Hamiltonian joining a long line of entertainment luminaries that included Douglass Duumbrille, one of the movies' greatest ever villains, Boris Karloff who raised onions on a farm near Caledonia for years, Florence Lawrence, the first female to get her name in lights over a movie marquee, Robert Beatty, the Hamilton born British movie heartthrob right up to such contemporary contenders as Wendy Crewson and Paul Popowich.

In person Frid was what you might call theatrical, an odd cross between Vincent Price and Charles Nelson Reilly.
Born in Hamilton in 1924 he graduated from McMaster University in 1948 and the next year began studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.
He moved to the U.S. in 1954 to receive a MFA from Yale University in 1954. In 1962 he began using the stage name Jonathan Frid --up to then he'd been known as John Herbert Frid.
With his classical training Frid spent the next three decades working mainly in the theatre with a occasional foray into TV work to pay the bills.
In 1966 he had decided to move to the West Coast and teach directing when the call came to play the vampire in a new ABC daytime Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows to star old time movie star Joan Bennett.
"I was told it wouldn't last long and I could save up some money," he giggled on the phone.
Did he ever mind that he was typecast for life? "Mercy no! It's been my identification marker wherever I go."
Dark Shadows ran on ABC for five years from 1966 to 1971 and attracted a cult audience who marveled at the tacky sets and the atrocious dialogue.
"I never camped it up, you see. I tried to be as serious as I could. And it made me famous and wealthy beyond measure."
In 1973 Frid co-starred with Shelley Winters in the TV flick The Devil's Daughter and even directed a movie himself --the little seen Seizure.
In the 1980s he performed one man readings at Dark Shadows conventions that sprang up across North America and played the part in a revival of Arsenic And Old Lace that ran across the continent.
In 1994, aged 70, he retired to Canada but continued to tour in one man shows and in 2000 co-starred in a revival of Mass Appeal that ran in his native Hamilton.
Frid continued to attend Dark Shadows conventions in 2007 and 2008 and last June spent three days filming a cameo with fellow series mates Lara Parker, David Selby and Kathryn Leigh Scott in the new Tim Burton remake. So he died bjust before release of the completed new movie.
Frid died April 14 in Hamilton, aged 87.
But we all know Barnabas will never die, don't we?

New Design Series Is A Winner

It's always a pleasant shock to discover a new Canadian TV series that's resolutely Canadian and not heavily disguised for resale to the American market.
It's called Great Minds Of Design and premieres on CBC's documentary channel Monday night at 8.
"Our pitch was to profile six major and minor Canadian designers," says director-producer Ian Toews.
"We learned about them from various sources and actually had a long list. These six made the cut and if we're successful we'd like to profile six more."
The idea was to be as eclectic as possible and to look at both industrial designers and urban street artists based on the theory that design is everything these days.
"We shot from eight to ten days per subject," Toews says. "And very deliberately there's no narration. We let the subjects speak for themselves. In some cases that meant getting them used to speaking on camera--we also edited rather heavily. We wanted their enthusiasms to shine through."
The first half hour is pretty terrific as three Toronto street artists show how they cleverly redesign their city landscape. Sean Martindale reuses planter boxes in deep disrepair while Eric Cheung uses ice sculptures of hands which are frozen to buildings. And "Posterchild"  hangs tomato "art" from buildings.
They're fully aware their art won't last long which adds to the charm of the conceit.
In Episode Two Canadian designer Sarah Hall works in Germany on modern stain glass designs.
What makes her work unusual is this is solar energy collecting glass so far unavailable in Canada. She says she couldn't have gone as far in Canada where we're behind the times in renewable energy sources.
Episode Three looks at Canadian designer Patty Johnson's work in Haiti encouraging indigenous art products which can be exported to produce wealth. She says people don't normally expert Haiti to be such a bastion of art.
Episode Four has young architect Trevor McIvor and his designer homes literally built into the landscape so they are virtually one with nature. He wants design to be a part of the landscape and his houses are insulated with natural materials, cool in the summer and toasty in the winter.
Episode Five is my favorite one --thirtysomething Nicholas Kennedy uses the hand presses of the past to use the techniques of the past to produce books of starling beauty showing that letterpress deserves to exist in a computer age.
Episode Six profiles New York based urban designer Helen Kerr and her efforts to design the perfect modular chair.

Toews set up his boutique production firm 291 Film Company in 1998 shortly after graduating from University of Regina's film course. He's best known for his long running national arts series Landscape As Muse. Here he functioned as cinematographer, director and writer along with Mark Bradley who also created the concept and Jason Nielsen who edited and wrote segments and Cam Koroluk who directed the fifth episode.
The series works on several levels as food for thought but also a dazzling pictorial display.
However, Toews says the company is moving from its longtime Regina base because funding from the provincial Tory government has dried up . They'll relocate to British Columbia by the end of the year, a real blow for Regina film making.
GREAT MINDS OF DESIGN PREMIERES ON CBC'S DOCUMENTARY CHANNEL MOND. APRIL 23 AT 8 P.M.
MY RATING: ****.

CBC Fall 2012: Less Of The Same

Not much will change on CBC this fall despite the federal government cutbacks of over $110 million.
In fact the CBC schedule had already been hammered into place weeks before the announcements by Heritage Minister James Moore.
Almost all CBC series are coming back although the exact number of episodes to be cut will be announced later.
CBC will have a grand premiere on May 14 from its Toronto Broadcasting Centre.
As expected Heartland, Republic Of Doyle, The Ron James Show, Rick Mercer, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Dragons' Den, the fifth estate, the low rated George Stroumboulopoulos, Nature Of Things, Doc Zone, Dragons' Den are all back.
And talk about cut backs: the cost efficient Marketplace gets double its episodes this fall with 24 new shows.
As expected Being Erica, Michael Tuesdays And Thursdays, InSecurity, Little Mosque On The Prairie, Redemption Inc. have all vanished to rerunland. But the omission of Battle Of The Blades is a huge surprise.
New shows Arctic Air and Mr. D got coveted pickups.
The crime drama Cracked is a pick up and Over The Rainbow is a reality outing about the search for the new Dorothy. There's a period drama Titanic: Blood And Steel which seems a bit tardy considering the centennial celebrations are over.
CBC rarely if ever picks up shows from rival networks but CBC has picked up Murdoch Mysteries which Citytv dropped after five seasons.
Missing in action are any concessions to patrons of the high arts and there's no mention of any TV movies once a staple of the CBC drama department.

Remembering Dick Clark

The thing about Dick Clark was this: He was always on, always promoting his next gig.
I must have met him a dozen times in my 38 years on the TV Critics' L.A. tours.
He was always friendly, personable, well turned out but oddly distant and disengaged. He was TV's ultimate pitch man and he fronted a lot of TV shows in his time.
After all he sold his TV production company in 2007 for upwards of $175 million.
His success as a packager was unrivaled --I first caught him as the host of American Bandstand that ran weekdays around 4 to 5 p..m. on ABC's Buffalo affiliate, WKBW. I'd come home from high school and watch the live daily show which focused on the music teenagers craved.
Clark was then in his thirties and looking preppy to the core as he introduced rock acts, zeroed in on teens in the studio audience.
He was always polite never sarcastic and the fact he treated the youngsters so nicely was a great touch.
American Bandstand was so very innocent --Philadelphia high schoolers dancing to records and then rating the new record releases of the week.
At first the daily hour was heavily segregated --this was a vanilla program until organized protests forced a change. When Clark interviewed singer Sam Cooke that was big news. It broke down as many racial barriers as the protests at Selma.
I remember interviewing Clark decades later and he said he really made few friends with the groups who trooped through the studio. Annette was a favorite, he said, but others he introduced and that was that --he never saw many of them again.
And Clark later branched out as daily host of The $10,000 Pyramid on CBS. Then came TV's Bloopers And Practical Jokes on both NBC and ABC in the 1970s.
Once I asked him about his acting and he blushed mightily --but he'd taken a stab at it in such films as 1961's The Young Doctors in a subsidiary role.
He also revived the scandal plagued Golden Globes and produced the American Music Awards for ABC when that network lost its contract to telecast the Grammys.
And here's one for you trivia buffs --he once hosted a Canadian content talk show from Vancouver that was heavily syndicated in the U.S. before expiring.
It was George Burns who said he'd been watching the perennially youthful Clark since childhood. But Clark was a fitness buff who ran on the sand dunes at Malilbu every weekend --that did not explain his unnatural brunette coiffure.
Likability was Clark's key to longevity. He peddled light entertainment and never though he'd last as long as he did.
He survived the payola scandal--he was always on the go. Courtly in his relationship with the press he took care never to divulge much about himself. Perhaps after such a long time in the spotlight the real and the fictional Dick Clark had meshed into one.
Incapacitated since a 2004 stroke his death at 82 takes one of the last surviving creators of American TV from all of us.


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Saving The CBC: Open Those Archives Now!

It happened this way according to my long time friend Harry Rasky.
The Emmy winning CBC producer was walking through Sam The Record Man's when he spied a familiar title: Tennessee Williams's South.
And it was in a boxed DVD set of BBC specials devoted to Williams.
Then he looked at the next rack and saw his greatish documentary on George Bernard Shaw all boxed up with BBC Shaw specials.
Now I should add that at that time five years ago Rasky had been trying his darndest to get CBC to come out with a boxed DVD set of some of his sparkling profiles on such titans as Chris Plummer, Raymond Massey, Marc Chagall, Arthur Miller, Leonard Cohen, Teresa Stratas --award winning specials that often defined our Canadianness.
CBC would not respond even when Rasky went all the way to the then president Robert Rabinovitch.
Rasky passed in 2007 --all the more reason for celebrating the man's talent.
Why this lethargy is all I'm asking. Why?
The "because" part makes me sad. Because there's nobody at the CBC these days who cares.
Put out in sets and this kind of stuff would make a small fortune for CBC.
But nobody there cares. They're interested in promoting themselves and not the CBC.
I was recently in Sunrise Video on Toronto's Yonge Street listening in as a woman asked for the third season of the positively brilliant CBC drama series This Is Wonderland.
She was told CBC had put out the first two seasons which sold briskly but never the third.
Why? Nobody at CBC knew. Or cared.
I'm remembering about eight years back when some CBC researcher discovered in mint condition a 1961 CBC drama special in beautiful black and white --Macbeth starring a very young and virile Sean Connery with a staggering performance by Zoe Caldwell as Lady Macbeth.
Back in 1961 CBC-TV had been so rich there actually was a Schools Department which commissioned the production directed by Paul Almond --it was made in five half hour segments and only telecast once in a weekday slot in late afternoon so Grade 13 students could watch as they studied Macbeth for their finals.
It was never shown whole until some enterprising soul thought it a perfect match for Opening Night where it was introduced by Paul Gross. Opening Night was cancelled by CBC the very next year because it was a big hit with egg heads, less so with the masses hooked on American TV fare.
Talking to the brilliant TV professor at Brock University, Mary Jane Miller, who has written the only good books on CBC-TV drama and I was told dozens of other gems exist deep in the vaults.
Like all of William Shatner's early TV work long before he crossed the border to stardom as Captain Kirk.
What about the only time the great British actress Edith Evans appeared on TV as doughty Lady Bracknell in The Importance Of Being Earnest.
She did so not at the CBC but at CBC's Studio 7 in Toronto in a live production --the kinescope still exists, I've been told.
Dozens of great actors passed through CBC-TV in the Fifties in productions seen one and then moth balled: Basil Rathbone, Constance Cummings, Dame Wendy Huller plus such young up and coming Canadian stars as Kate Reid, Bill Hutt and Chris Plummer.
But CBC apparently can find no dollar value in releasing any of these productions to DVD let alone rerunning them on TV.
It's strange but in the early Eighties CBC had such a TV series called Rearview Mirror --the best of ballets directed by Norman Campbell, music specials starring Anne Murray, you name it.
The show hosted by Veronica Tennant ran Sunday afternoons but was if anything too popular.'Viewers kept asking why CBC was so great back then and less so these days so CBC quietly let it lapse.
Other networks have made small fortunes in the TV nostalgia boom. But nobody at CBC gives a hoot about culture in any form.
CBC filmed series similarly get short shrift --I'd like to buy a set of Gordon Pinsent's terrific 1978 series A Gift To Last to hive to a ex-Mountie friend of mine. It's never been released on VHS or DVD.
I'm convinced that DVD compilations on Don Messer and Juliette would sell as much as the ones CBC has put put starring Wayne and Shuster.
If CBC doesn't want anything to do with its glorious past why not auction off all this stuff to others with greater entrepreneurial skills?
And use that money to help CBC mount some new shows which aren't reality things geared to the lowest common denominator.