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Preview: To Russia with Love focuses on LGBT community in Sochi’s shadow

There were a lot of headlines and TV broadcasts spotlighting the LGBT community leading up to the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia. The country makes no secret of the fact homosexuality is viewed as deviant behaviour and that one could be arrested just for protesting in favour of that life choice.

CBC focuses its documentary lens on the LGBT community leading up to—and during—the Games from several angles. Narrated by Glee’s Jane Lynch, To Russia with Love follows U.S. figure skating commentator Johnny Weir, Canadian speed skater Anastasia Buscis, New Zealand speed skater Blake Skjellerup and Australian snowboard cross racer Belle Brockhoff in the days preceding Olympic trials. With the UN renouncing Russia’s views on the LGBT community and Billie Jean King being named to the U.S. Olympic delegation, Buscis, Skjellerup and Brockhoff realized that if they did medal in Sochi they could be public spokespeople for their community on the world stage.

The well-rounded To Russia with Love includes interviews with LGBT activists in Russia who worry of reprisals after the cameras and eyes of the world turn away after Games are done and the challenge facing Konstantin Yablotskiy, who aims to host the gay-friendly Open Games just days after Olympic Games end.

Some of the most gripping footage is captured at Mark Tewksbury’s home in Calgary where he not only reflects back on his life post coming out and asks tough questions of Weir and the athletes over dinner. They may have high hopes of making a statement in Russia, but what would it cost them?

It’s a question they grapple with during their whole trip and reflect back on once they get home. Should they have staged a protest—as Tewksbury secretly hoped—or were the public discussions about the issue a big enough step?

To Russia with Love airs Thursday at 8 p.m. on CBC.

Check out this teaser for tonight’s broadcast:

 

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Letterkenny co-stars reprise standout roles for TV series

They may play a couple of dopey hockey players, but Andrew Herr and Dylan Playfair take their comedy seriously. The pair co-star in CraveTV and The Comedy Network’s upcoming Letterkenny as Jonesy and Reilly, two dunderheaded, expletive-spouting friends who share a distaste for hicks Wayne (Jared Keeso, 19-2) and Daryl (Nathan Dales, King & Maxwell), a love for hockey … and the same girlfriend.

First introduced in one episode of Keeso’s web series Letterkenny Problems—which was then picked up to series by Bell Media—the characters of Jonesy and Reilly had to be bulked up for the TV show’s six episodes.

“On the web series, there was just a few seconds of chirping,” Herr (Mr. Hockey: The Gordie Howe Story) says from an on-location shoot in Sudbury, Ont. “Now we see why these two are the way they are.” Both guys knew (or know) fellows who are a lot like their TV personas on hockey teams they’ve played on, so they relate to  the verbiage and actions. The scene Canadian TV critics saw being filmed that day included a riotous face-off between Jonesy, Reilly, Wayne and Daryl, with the former pair showcasing macho puffery and an urgency to “tarp off” (take off their shirts) and engage in a “donnybrook” (a fight) with the latter pair. Instead, Wayne and Daryl undressed the hockey players with a rapid-fire delivery of chirping that left Jonesy and Reilly befuddled. Herr says everyone sticks to the scripts written by series creator and executive producer Keeso and executive producer and director Jacob Tierney (The Trotsky), though Playfair’s scene-ending ad libs left Tierney and the crew crowding the monitors cackling several times.

Letterkenny spotlights three social groups—the Hicks, the Skids (Less Than Kind‘s Tyler Johnston is lead Skid, Stewart) and the Hockey Players—who are constantly at odds with each other. But when outside forces attack one faction, the other two come to their defence. Despite their differences, Letterkenny’s three social circles have a sense of community and family, something Playfair says was reflected in real-life by a promise Keeso made to he and Herr.

“Jared told us right away when he was pitching this, ‘You guys are going to be the guys,'” Playfair (Some Assembly Required) recalls. “Herrsie and I realized that we needed to take as many acting classes and get as much experience as we could so that [the network] would have to hire us. Fast forward a year and a half and here we are in Ontario filming Letterkenny with guys we were friends with before we became part of this project.”

Letterkenny will debut on CraveTV.

Check out Reilly and Jonesy in their Letterkenny Problems debut. Warning: expletives abound.

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TV, eh? podcast episode 185 – Suddenly Sudbury

Diane, Greg and Anthony discuss CBC’s summer comedy series Still Standing and Fool Canada and Global moving Rookie Blue to Wednesday nights. Also on the docket: Killjoys and Dark Matter score for Space, the Directors Guild of Canada nominations, Diane chatted with CBC boss Sally Catto, and the trio opine whether Canada is ready for another shot at the late-night talk show genre and who might host it.

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Will Sasso sets out to Fool Canada

The short answer is yes, Canadians are just a polite as we’re believed to be. That is the finding of Fool Canada, CBC’s televised social experiment where hidden cameras capture everyday folks plunged into outrageous situations and confronted with outlandish characters.

Debuting Tuesday night, Fool Canada stars Will Sasso (MADtv) as the king court jester, who along with Craig Lauzon, Sam Kalilieh and Sara Hennessey goof on everything from our love of street hockey to mistaken identity.

“I would feel bad,” Sasso says. “The producers would be talking in my ear, telling me to push it a little further and I wouldn’t want to. ‘This person is on their lunch break, they don’t need to deal with me in a wig!'” And yet deal with Sasso they do, whether he’s dressed up like a European tourist and testing the patience of a passerby by having a dozen pictures taken or portraying a traffic cop and pulling over a girl for “speeding” on her skateboard.” The B.C. native describes Fool Canada as longform improv he found scary and daunting … exactly the reasons he signed on.

Though Sasso admits not all of the bits he participated in were stellar, several in Tuesday’s debut are. The aforementioned tourist bit goes from awkward to amazing and a segment where a city staffer (played by Kalilieh) drops off raccoons for placement in city homes is snicker-worthy. The laugh-out loud moment of the half-hour show? Two dudes playing street hockey … with two dolls strapped to their chests dressed up like real babies. The look of horror on the folks who walk by to see pucks bouncing off the fake infants is worth tuning in for.

“These things don’t work unless I’m in the comfy bosom of my countrypeople,” Sasso admits. “There is this meter where you wonder how far you can push. And when you reach that spot on the meter it becomes fun.”

Fool Canada airs Tuesdays at 8:30 p.m. on CBC.

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He Said/She Said: Is Canada ready for another late-night talk show?

Join Greg and Diane every Monday as we debate what’s on our minds. This week: Is Canada ready for another late-night talk show?

He Said:

The late-night world is changing south of the border. Jon Stewart exits The Daily Show in a few months, David Letterman stepped down from The Late Show after decades on the air and Craig Ferguson has exited his gig too. The result is a late-night landscape very different from just a few years ago.

Is this the time that a Canadian network gives a late-night talk show another shot? Through Strombo has headed up The Hour and Tonight for several years, we haven’t had a late-night show with a monologue and guest since Ed’s Night Party from 1995 to 2008. The Mike Bullard Show signed off in 2004 after one year on Global; Bullard preceded that gig with Open Mike with Mike Bullard on CTV from 1997 to 2003. From what I recall at the time, the biggest complaint about Bullard’s program was a failure to score enough big names to sit on the couch next to him. (Not everyone got his sense of humour either; his best-ever guest was Tom Green, who came out and tossed a dead raccoon on Bullard’s desk.)

But times have changed, and unless networks ban each other’s stars from appearing on a rival’s program, there’s enough talent—homegrown and international—to fill seats whether a late-night program is based out of Toronto or Vancouver and broadcast on The Comedy Network. (Can you imagine the A-listers they could book during TIFF!?) The challenge, of course, is finding the right person for the job and what style the show might take. Rather than modelling the show after a traditional U.S. program, why not take the blueprint of someone like Graham Norton and mix comedy bits and musical acts in with interviews with up to three or four guests?

As for who might host it, there’s no lack of Canadian talent to do that. Norm Sousa, Gavin Crawford, Seán Cullen, Jon Dore, Debra DiGiovanni, Elvira Kurt, Norm Macdonald, Candy Palmater or Claire Brosseau would all be great choices.

I think it could be done; what do you think?

She Said:

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My most vivid memory of a Canadian late-night talk show was Friday Night! with Ralph Benmergui. The exclamation mark was of course to indicate the great excitement we should feel about having a Canadian late-night talk show. Just maybe not that particular show, as the dismal ratings indicated.

I was a huge Letterman fan back in the day, and while a day job means I don’t watch a lot of late night television anymore, I like what Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert did in a different version of the genre. Stroumboulopoulos seemed to do something in between the two, minus the comedic host. But I’ve always been puzzled by the late-night format and how rigid it is even with all its variations. Monologue, fluffy guest interviews, comedic bits. Do we need this many of that kind of show? Do we need a Canadian version to compete with the plethora of US versions in the same timeslots? I’d rather see the limited Canadian TV budgets put into primetime.

I feel like the Rick Mercer Report could easily slide into that late night timeslot, except it would lose a considerable amount of its audience in the move. In primetime, celebrity interviews are covered with the likes of Entertainment Tonight Canada and eTalk, and political satire in their own unique ways by Mercer and 22 Minutes.

So what I’d love to see, more than a late night talk show, is a year-round primetime Rick Mercer Report, so his commentary isn’t limited to the 18 weeks a year or so that his show is in production. Given that the number of Mercer episodes has shrunk in recent years, that doesn’t seem likely without some budget miracles happening. But I’d rather that miracle than the miracle of a successful Canadian late-night talk show.

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