From Ken MacQueen of Maclean’s:
Chris Haddock is back from Boardwalk Empire
Veteran show-runner Chris Haddock is holding back while holding forth about Romeo Section, his latest series for CBC, which premieres Oct. 14. He’s clearly enjoying the air of mystery he’s spun around his espionage-inspired tale of Romeo and Juliet spies, whose tradecraft includes honeytraps, seduction and betrayal rather than the usual fare of bullets, bombs and bedlam. Continue reading.
From Heather M. of The Televixen:
Andrew Airlie talks about The Romeo Section
“You’ll see that he has been a past working operative in Canadian intelligence, and now he’s a contractor. He works as a freelance intelligence spymaster, if you will,†he says. “His primary career is as an academic, but he has stayed in the intelligence game because he needs the access to that world to complete his magnum opus in academia. Hopefully that will be clear to everyone. Yes, he’s a professor by day, and not that he’s a spy by night, but yes, he does have a second career that has kept going.†Continue reading.
I’m a sucker for nature documentaries, and CBC’s The Nature of Things broadcasts some of the best. Returning Thursday for Season 55 is “Moose: A Year in the Life of a Twig Eater” and it’s terrific stuff.
Directed and produced by Susan Fleming—whose previous “Meet the Coywolf,” “Raccoon Nation” and “A Murder of Crows” have all aired on TNOT—”Moose” is the result of over a year of naturalist Hugo Kitching recording a mother moose and her calf in Jasper National Park.
The reclusive beasts seek out hard-to-get-to locations to give birth so that predators don’t attack, and the show’s story begins in June, when, after a 21-day search, Kitching locates a cow and her calf. The little one is cute as heck, ungainly and all spindly legs and oversized ears. But with moose numbers plummeting because babies aren’t surviving their first year the youngster has a touch road ahead of it. Highlighted by stunning views of Jasper National Park, its peaks and valleys “Moose” tracks the pair—and a second cow and baby—through spring and summer when food in plentiful. Of particular importance is the ingestion of sodium-rich pond plants that moose store to help them survive during lean times.
Those lean periods arrive in the winter, when five feet of snow means no greenery to eat … and tough going for both animal and man. (How Kitching filmed the project could be a documentary on its own.) This being a nature documentary, the life cycle of the moose is recorded regardless of whether the news is good or bad. Not every animal survives such a harsh climate and, sadly, the moose are no exception.
Regardless, “Moose: A Year in the Life of a Twig Eater” is an entertaining peek into the life of an elusive mammal few get a chance to see, and is well worth tuning in to.
Check out more moose facts on TNOT website.
The Nature of Things airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. on CBC.
From Eric Volmers of the Calgary Herald:
Banff actor Juan Riedinger plays both sides of the law in CBC’s The Romeo Section and Netflix’s Narcos
It’s a series about a clandestine group of spies and informants that use sex to get information, so its perhaps not too surprising that The Romeo Section depicts people having sex. But it may be surprising, at least to those of a certain vintage, that a series so full of sex takes place in Canada and is being shown on the CBC, our venerable public broadcaster. Home to This Hour has 22 Minutes, Peter Mansbridge and Canada’s Smartest Person, the Mother Corp. is generally not known for letting loose in that particular direction. Continue reading.
From John Doyle of The Globe and Mail:
The Romeo Section is a subtly sexy thriller for grown-ups
Welcome to The Romeo Section (CBC, 9 p.m.), an expertly made and deftly engrossing cerebral thriller. Eight years after CBC cancelled Intelligence, creator Chris Haddock is back with this, an espionage drama that is John le Carré-esque in its depiction of spies under pressure. Less dark and less densely plotted than Intelligence, it is, nevertheless, serious-minded on the matter of differentiating ethical decisions. And those decisions, influenced by vanity and ego, are often life-and-death decisions. Continue reading.
