CBC announced its safe 2013-14 schedule and Diane and Anthony are less than impressed (Anthony’s more impressed by the Gordie Howe movie). Never Ever Do This At Home premieres May 6, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is in production, Vikings and Match Game were picked up for a second season, Storage Wars Canada is coming to OLN, Jonathan Torrens celebrates 25 years in Canadian TV, and the way we’re watching TV is changing thanks to HBO and Aereo.
Then, we get into the rage think piece of the week, more ranting on the Canadian media industry’s latest attempt to pat themselves on the back. And then Diane needed even more to drink.
Episode 130: Listen or download here or subscribe via iTunes or with any other program via the TV, Eh? feed.
Your hosts
- Anthony Marco can be found at anthonymarco.com, and on Twitter here and here.
- Diane Wild can be found here at TV, eh? and on Twitter here and here.
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These days, I tend to start conversations about shows on GetGlue. It gets seen by a lot more people than on Twitter alone. It’s New York based app, but there are Canadian shows. Of the national networks, only CBC and CTV original programming are represented. CITY is more active on traditional social media.
And Get Glue is definitely not a place to share facts about the economic impact of the Canadian TV industry :)
I guess I’m one of the few that will watch a show because it’s Canadian, or at least give it a chance because of its nation of origin. However, if I find the show boring or annoying I won’t watch past a couple of episodes. As for CBC’s lineup, I don’t watch Cracked (I hate procedurals) and I find The Ron James Show boring and Mr. D annoying. I continue to watch Republic of Doyle although it’s always remained a bubble show for me. I do watch Heartland for sentimental reasons (I was raised a farm girl on the prairies), although I find the writing, at times, rather corny or pathetic. I get the impression that certain episode writers for Heartland have not connected well with the setting, story and characters they are writing for (that’s what happens when Torontonians try writing scripts set in rural Alberta without understanding it or when writers think a “family” drama is below them) and it shows badly while certain episode writers hit it out of the park and you can tell they’ve embraced the story, setting, characters and genre fully.
As for Arctic Air, I agree with you Diane, that the show keeps using the dangerous event unfolding on a plane storyline too much. Those storylines are often the show’s weakest and I wish they’d tone it down a bit and focus on more character-driven storylines instead. Arctic Air reminds me of North of 60 (for many obvious reasons) and North of 60 was great at creating storylines revolving around characters rather than big events. Arctic Air has such a good cast and ensemble of great characters that they should focus more on those great characters rather than on the airplanes. When they do this, the show is one of my favourite on TV to watch. The last episode, in particular, titled “Blood is Thicker Than Water”, was the show’s best to date and contained no major disasters–it was just pure character-driven drama, the kind I like. It was no surprise to me when I later checked to find out who the writer for that episode was and found it was Susin Nielson who has written for countless Canadian shows, including some of the better episodes of the aforementioned Heartland (in a side note, I remember reading books from the original Degrassi series back in the day written by her, right around the time I was watching Street Cents on TV). I am thrilled that Arctic Air is coming back next year but I hope they stop with the major disaster almost every episode. The show may have lost a lot of viewers in between seasons 1 and 2, but I think it deserves another season to try and get some of those viewers back. If they can’t get to above the 750,000 viewers mark next season and stay there, then they can cancel it and I will accept it.
Perhaps I don’t hold Canadian shows to as high of standards as I do American ones because I have this belief that I need to be supportive of the Canadian television industry. There are certain Canadians shows I will keep watching that I would likely not if they were American, including Seed, Republic of Doyle, and Saving Hope. However, there are two Canadian shows I watch which I would watch no matter which side of the border they were made on. Those two are Continuum and Orphan Black, both of which I find friggin awesome. I can’t wait for Continuum to return in a couple weeks and as long as Orphan Black continues going in the direction it’s going, it will also remain on my must-see list.
As for Vikings. Give it a chance. It’s actually very good.
They should want to talk to people like you Ally – champions of homegrown shows who can help influence people who aren’t aware of the shows. But they don’t :)
They don’t — but people who actually create the shows and write them do. I remember Ally was one of the most interesting commenters when I was doing the daily Canadian TV blog. More.
Lol. I’m surprised you remembered me from when I used to post comments on Dead Things with Sticks. I’ve always been a big believer in Canadian storytelling and I find it interesting to hear other peoples’ perspectives about the industry. I live in rural Saskatchewan now (formerly I was in Winnipeg) and we don’t have so much American influence here as in other parts of the country like say Toronto (we are very much like a Newfoundland of the prairies with our crazy friendly protective-of-all-things-saskatchewan ways) and it’s difficult for people in my neck of the woods to figure out what people in Toronto (who make up the most important demo when it comes to television ratings) are thinking when they choose what show to watch. Out here if I tell someone a show is Canadian they’ll think that’s a plus but in Toronto they’ll think it’s a minus.