From Quill & Quire:
Q&A: Gordon Korman on the TV-movie adaptation of his Macdonald Hall series
It’s been 40 years since the publication of Gordon Korman’s first novel for young readers (written when he was just 12 years old), This Can’t be Happening at Macdonald Hall. Who would have thought it would take that long for Korman’s stories about a couple of lovable troublemakers at a prestigious boy’s school to make it to the screen? Continue reading.
From a media release:
Record-breaking documentary series Emergency Room: Life + Death at VGH returns to B.C.’s Knowledge Network with second season
The highly-anticipated season two of Emergency Room: Life + Death at VGH delves deeper into the province’s most pressing health and social issues. The new season premieres on Tuesday, April 12, 2016 at 9 p.m. PT on British Columbia’s Knowledge Network. Episodes will be simulcast on the series’ interactive companion website at knowledge.ca/er, which will also feature 49 web shorts, and interactive surveys to spark debate and conversation around critical health topics impacting our province today.
Filmed at Vancouver General Hospital (VGH)’s emergency department, Emergency Room: Life + Death at VGH gives viewers a look into one of British Columbia’s busiest emergency departments and the only accredited Level 1 Trauma Centre in the province. Season one broke viewership records with more than 1.2 million TV and online viewers. It was also critically acclaimed as Best Television Show and Best Documentary at the 2014 Leo Awards and earned two Canadian Screen Award nominations.
The second season of Emergency Room: Life + Death at VGH continues to examine the high-intensity, life-and-death stakes of emergency medicine, and the important issues that arise. It also takes a closer look at the patient’s medical journey, at times following their story with medical specialists beyond the walls of the emergency room.
To create the new season, Knowledge Network again partnered with Vancouver Coastal Health and B.C.-based Lark Productions for almost 80 days of shooting, with unrestricted access to all areas of the VGH emergency department. The second season features returning familiar faces and introduces viewers to new staff and care providers. Among the timely and thought-provoking issues explored in the six-episode second season are the unique problems created by an aging population, the impact of common accidents, and the life-saving role of new technology. There will also be an entire episode dedicated to nurses and the vital role they play in the emergency department. With registered nurses representing the majority of VGH’s emergency department staff (81 per cent), and often the frontline of care, it’s a tribute that will engage audiences across the province. In watching the series as well as the web shorts, viewers will come to know the patient stories, as well as the established faces of emergency medicine professionals at VGH, and the next generation who are being trained and mentored in saving lives and in providing critical health support in the most difficult of circumstances.
From a media release:
History greenlights Vikings for a fifth seasonÂ
HISTORY announced today that it has renewed a 20-episode fifth season of Canada’s #1 specialty entertainment series Vikings[1]. Golden Globe® Award winner Jonathan Rhys Meyers (The Tudors, Roots) joins the cast for season five.
Since its inaugural premiere in 2013, Vikings has maintained its reign as the #1 specialty entertainment program across multiple demos[1]. With three weeks of confirmed data for season four, the blockbuster series is currently averaging 437.1 AMA (A25-54) and 859.2 AMA (Ind2+)[2]. In its three years on air, Vikings has earned six Canadian Screen Awards including Best International Drama two years in a row and Best Visual Effects for three consecutive years.
Season five of Vikings will begin production this summer to air in 2017.
From creator and sole writer Michael Hirst (Academy Award® winning film Elizabeth and the Emmy® and Golden Globe® nominated series The Tudors), Vikings is a family saga that tells the remarkable tales of the lives and epic adventures of the raiders and explorers of the Dark Ages.
New episodes of season four of Vikings currently air every Thursday at 10pm ET/PT, with an additional ten episodes scheduled to air later this year. In Thursday’s upcoming episode, Ragnar confides in Yidu his darkest secret. In Wessex, Ecbert agrees to support Kwenthrith in Mercia, but is Ecbert a true ally? Pregnancy brings happiness to Lagertha and Kalf and a marriage is arranged. Watch a sneak peek of the episode here: bit.ly/1Va1mFu.
Fans can catch up on the exciting first three seasons of Vikings on shomi and iTunes, and the third season is available on HISTORY on Demand, history.ca, and the HISTORY Go app. The first four episodes of season four are available on history.ca and the HISTORY Go app, where new episodes will be available the day after broadcast.
Hirst serves as executive producer along with Morgan O’Sullivan of World 2000 (The Count of Monte Cristo; The Tudors), Sheila Hockin (Penny Dreadful, The Tudors, The Borgias), John Weber of Take 5 Productions (The Tudors, The Borgias), Sherry Marsh, Alan Gasmer and James Flynn (The Tudors, The Borgias).
Vikings is an international Irish/Canadian co-production by World 2000 and Take 5 Productions. HISTORY broadcasts both domestically in Canada and in the U.S. MGM Television is the worldwide distributor outside of Ireland and Canada. Vikings is produced in association with Shaw Media.
[1] Source: Numeris PPM Confirmed Data. 3+ airings. (2/25/13-3/6/16). Total Canada.* Adults 18-49 & 25-54, Males 18-49 & 25-54 (excluding sports).
[2] Source: Numeris PPM Confirmed Data. (2/18/16-3/6/16). Thurs 10p-11p. Total Canada
When we last saw Some Assembly Required’s Jarvis (Kolton Stewart), the young toy company CEO had finally declared his love for Piper (Charlie Storwick). The third season of the YTV series premieres tonight and the stars promise even more romance and laughs.
Piper had moved on from what she thought was unrequited love to pursue her music career and “the love situation ends not how you’d expect,” is the only hint Storwick will offer. “Make of that what you will.”
“It’s a switch,” she says of Jarvis’s cliffhanger declaration. “Usually I’m falling all over his character. I have the power now. All the tables have turned.”
Stewart says the show has evolved to show more of Jarvis’s friendships now that his work life has been more established. He taps into the similarities between the teen CEO and himself as a teen actor: “We both have the same work ethic.”
Both Storwick and Stewart were musicians before pursuing acting — Some Assembly Required was Storwick’s first acting role — and both find filming in front of a live studio audience to  be the best of both worlds, creating a TV show while performing on stage.
“It doesn’t ever feel like I’m working, but throw in an audience with genuine joy, laughter and fun and I never want to leave,” says Storwick.
They each marvel at the international audience the show, which airs on U.S. Netflix, has attracted, after getting messages from fans in Brazil, Australia and Finland, to name a few.
With her single Ghosts getting radio play and plans to record an EP and pursue a film career at some point, she says: “I’m setting crazy goals for myself but if you don’t set them you never know. I might as well put them out there.”
Stewart has Justin Timberlake-like ambitions for his future, with similar music and acting plans. “He is so talented it actually makes me sad,” Storwick laughed. “You can give him an instrument and literally in five minutes he’ll kill it.”
Some Assembly Required season three premieres tonight on YTV.Â
Written by Mark Farrell
Imagine a world, much like our own, one in which there was a hugely popular hockey league in Canada, separate from a larger more popular hockey league in the USA (far-fetched but just go with it for a second), and there was an awards show for this Canadian hockey league that celebrated its participants. This award show was actually broadcast on television.
Now imagine that there was also a Canadian lacrosse league, not as popular in Canada as the hockey league but there was a belief in the highest offices of the land that lacrosse was much more important to our national identity than hockey. Hockey is fine, but lacrosse is CULTURAL. Canada couldn’t be a country if we weren’t accomplished at lacrosse. No matter how good, or popular our hockey players and games were.
But even though many people — often good, well-intentioned people — tried, lacrosse never caught on in a mainstream way. Oh there were great lacrosse players, but we couldn’t compete with the American lacrosse players for a bunch of reasons, not in the purview of this silly self-indulgent exercise.
So there was a hockey awards show and also a lacrosse awards show, separate, both broadcast in Canada. The hockey one, while sometimes cheesy and sometimes not very good, was always watched, mostly because people cared about Canadian hockey. Just for the sake of keeping the numbers simple let’s say it always got at least one million viewers. It also attracted all the big name Canadian hockey players.
Sadly, the lacrosse awards, no one watched ever, despite how important Canadians were told lacrosse was.
So then the elite of the elite, those lacrosse owners and some hockey owners who dared to dream about being lacrosse owners, decided to move the hockey awards from its normal time in March when it was being watched, to an asinine time in September. People stopped watching the hockey awards. Let’s say for the sake of the simplicity that it had 300,000 viewers.
So the Illuminati said let’s move the hockey awards back to its original time in March. But wait: let’s combine it with the lacrosse awards. Oh and let’s add soccer, because soccer is the future. And let’s call it the Canadian Score Awards because you are trying to score in each of the games.
Some simple-minded people asked: but won’t that water down the hockey awards? The elite folks smiled at the benign naivete of the question. No, they answered, in fact it will be great because people are getting awards show fatigue. And even if it did water down the hockey awards, lacrosse is much more important to the fabric of the country. We’ll mix popular hockey players with unknown lacrosse players and tell everyone it’s just like the Golden Globes, except you can find out the winners an hour before in 95% of the country if you have something called the internet.
Well some people still thought this wouldn’t work; that hockey would be dragged down. These people were quickly dismissed as unpatriotic lacrosse haters.
So the awards were moved back to March and some great people produced and worked on the show. The show was good, hiring hosts known for their work in hockey and writers who had also worked in hockey. But half the show was given to lacrosse and its celebration.
The first Canadian Score Awards got 700,000 viewers, and was trumpeted across the land as a huge success even though that was less than the hockey awards used to get. In fact the only knock from the lacrosse people was that the award for Best Lacrosse Game is the most important and should have been last. The next year the awards show got 500,000. But the award for Best Lacrosse Award, the award really that no one in the actual audience on television gives a shit about, was last.
So that’s how the Canadian Score Awards, or the CSAs, came to be.
