From Jesse Ferreras of Huffington Post:
21 Canadian TV Shows That Are Overdue For A Comeback
Are You Afraid of the Dark?
An occasionally frightening series about a group of teens who told scary stories by campfire, like “The Tale of the Ghastly Grinner.” Guest stars included Ryan Gosling, Neve Campbell and Tia and Tamera Mowry.
Why it should come back:Â Because it was PG-rated horror that still managed to scare the wits out of young Canadians of the 1990s. Continue reading.
Sketch comedy is enjoying a TV renaissance of sorts thanks to the major Canadian broadcasters. CBC has Punchline, where comedy fans can go online to check out original material, Bell’s Comedy Network offers up Letterkenny Problems and stand-up specials, and City has Sunnyside.
Now Shaw is getting in on the action with The Second City Project, an online entity that grabs the primetime spotlight on Sunday at 8:30 p.m. ET/PT. The TV project celebrates the long-running sketch troupe with never-before-seen sketches and comedy pieces from the company’s cast—alumni writer-performers Marty Adams, Tim Baltz, Caitlin Howden, Sam Richardson, Kayla Lorette and Steve Waltien, along with showrunner Bob Martin—in a half-hour special.
The Second City Project has a companion piece in a YouTube channel (check out one of the segments below) that embraces all things out-there while skewering social mores. Online clips include a wheelchair-bound werewolf—played by Adams—who finds it hard to hunt down victims because he can’t gain access to buildings, and a skewering of network executives who tell Martin one of the girls on the cast has to dye her hair blonde.
“The one about the hair was actually a real conversation we had with the network,” Martin says with a laugh. “They did come up and say, ‘One of them has to change their hair because they look too much alike.’ We had this whole awkward conversation and I had to go up to  Caitlin and Kayla and say, ‘The network would like one of you to become a blonde.'”
Martin is a hot property right now. In addition to The Second City Project, he’s begun work on the second season of HBO Canada’s Sensitive Skin with Kim Cattrall and Don McKellar, and CBC’s reboot of Michael: Tuesdays and Thursdays. But he jumped at the chance to flex his sketch writing muscles alongside comedy veterans like Adams, who sees Canadian networks committing to online content as a backdoor to getting funny stuff on TV.
“I think the only way to get on TV as a sketch production is to have already done stuff online,” Adams says. “You have to go on YouTube and get a million or 2 million hits to prove it can be successful. Sketch series have been a hard sell for a long time. You have Saturday Night Live, but now with shows like Key & Peele, it’s booming now. But you have to prove yourself to the network. They won’t sink money into a project just because they liked your showcase.”
Adams and Martin note sketch has advanced in the way it looks thematically, with Martin explaining the goal for The Second City Project was to make all of the content looks great online and on TV. Martin also wanted the sketches to be standalone vignettes with no through lines or characters recurring between segments.
“I love Portlandia, but I don’t want to play the same characters,” Adams says. “Unless it’s a rich character that you can mine, you can beat it to death.”
The Second City Project airs Sunday, April 19, at 8:30 p.m. ET/PT on Global.
From Daniel Otis of the Toronto Star:
Canada’s smartest men have a few words of advice
Canada’s smartest people, Peter Dyakowski and Braden Lauer, are on the phone, offering words of wisdom for the next crop of contestants vying for the title. Both are past winners of CBC’s Canada’s Smartest Person, a game show currently casting for its fall season. Just being a trivia troll won’t cut it, though: the CBC is after people with well-rounded smarts — that is, folks who exhibit a combination of logical, visual, physical, linguistic, musical and social intelligence. Continue reading.
From Eric Deggans of NPR:
Clone Drama ‘Orphan Black’ Returns As Complex And Complicated As Ever
For fans of BBC America’s majestically complicated drama Orphan Black, it might be the toughest task they face all year: Explaining to newbies what the heck is going on just before the new season starts on Saturday. (Spoiler Alert: several plot points from the new season are discussed below). Continue reading.
From Alan Sepinwall of Hitfix:
‘Orphan Black’ co-creator on season 3: ‘Our sisters are teamed up a little bit more’
In its second season, “Orphan Black” came perilously close to collapsing under the weight of its many interlocking conspiracies. The BBC America sci-fi drama still had Tatiana Maslany’s remarkable performance(s) as a series of clones on the run from their makers, and it had turned each clone into a fully-realized character, many of whom could potentially carry their own show without the others. But the mythology got so dense, and forced so many abrupt changes in loyalty among both the clones and their various enemies and allies, that at a certain point I resolved to just pay attention to the character work, the comedy, and the episode-by-episode thriller material and not focus much brainpower on trying to keep track of who’s in charge and what their agenda is. Continue reading.
From Maureen Ryan of Huffington Post:
‘Orphan Black’ Returns With Boy Clones And More Mysteries
We know Maslany will inhabit each clone identity so thoroughly that we’ll forget one woman is playing half the cast. We know each clone will have a male friend or lover — think Alison’s husband Donnie, Sarah’s hunky boyfriend Cal, Cosima’s science pal Scott — who will be simultaneously impressed and a little afraid of each woman’s boldness and bravery. One of the smallest but most welcome subtexts of this energetic BBC America show centers on the idea that men find the sisters, who stick by each other and fight hard for their autonomy, attractive as either friends or lovers. “Empowerment is sexy†isn’t the show’s tagline, but it could be. Continue reading.
From Amber Dowling of TV Junkies:
Tatiana Maslany: Tony, cages and Orphan Black season 3
To gather more Season 3 intel, The TV Junkies caught up with Ms. Clones herself, Tatiana Maslany. Here she talks about last season’s introduction of trans clone Tony, filming scenes in a box and Orphan Black‘s ongoing gender identity debates. Continue reading.
From Caroline Siede of AV Club:
Orphan Black’s third season almost devolves into chaos before finding its feet
Throughout its excellent second season, Orphan Black was always in danger of tossing one too many balls in the air. In addition to exploring female identity through five clones (Tatiana Maslany as Sarah Manning, Alison Hendrix, Cosima Niehaus, Rachel Duncan, and Helena), the ever-expanding show introduced multiple shadowy corporations, corrupt religious institutions, scientific mysteries, conspiracies-within-conspiracies, and uneasy alliances. The season finale added yet another factor: a line of male clones known as Project Castor who were developed for, and controlled by, the military. The third-season premiere struggles to keep all those elements in the air as it reintroduces major players and key plots, but once the show settles into familiar patterns, it’s as good as it’s ever been. Continue reading.
From John Doyle of The Globe & Mail:
Orphan Black veers from terrific to trite and back
It’s back – the phenomenon that is Tatiana Maslany marches back to amaze us, again.
Orphan Black (Saturday, CTV, Space, MTV Canada, 9 p.m.) starts its third season with an idyllic scene. Maslany, as several of the show’s clones, and other characters are in a pleasant outdoor party situation. The music on the soundtrack is a version of the Beach Boys’ Wouldn’t It Be Nice. “Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray it might come true …†Continue reading.
From Dalton Ross of Entertainment Weekly:
Orphan Black creator promises ‘bold moves’ in season 3
Orphan Black will be doubling down—pun intended—when season 3 kicks off this Saturday with the addition of a whole new batch of male clones (played by Ari Millen). Who are they? What do they want? And how will they affect the female clones we know and love, played by Tatiana Maslany? We traveled north of the border to the Orphan Blackset to put co-creator Graeme Manson in the hot seat. (Actually, it was pretty damn cold up there.) Here’s what he told us. Continue reading.
When Anthony talked to Ari Millen in September, it had just been announced that he would be the next set of clones on Orphan Black. In case you missed it, here’s their conversation that’s no “cloning” around.
Discussions about growing up in Kingston and transitioning to Toronto, how dreams of a glorious Orphan Black death led to an unexpected “splice” of life, learning by watching on set, and JUST wrapping the film Hunter’s Moon. Plus a little obligatory talk about growing up goalie and grasping for a lost Italian word… chinotto!
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