From Sonya Bell of Maclean’s Magazine:
Why you should care about ‘Orphan Black’
Canadian television’s critical darling, Orphan Black, wraps up its third season on Saturday—and thank goodness, because, between a talking scorpion and killer boy clones, our brains could use a breather. Continue reading.
From Bill Harris of Postmedia Network:
k.d. lang gives voice to CBC special ‘Balletlujah’
As kindred sports fans, k.d. lang and I shared the same fear. So you have ballet dancers performing to lang’s music in the new TV special Balletlujah, which debuts Thursday, June 18 on CBC. Fair enough. But in more than one scene, the performances are taking place in Prairie fields. My God, don’t those dancers need a flawlessly flat surface? Isn’t that dangerous? Continue reading.
From network episode descriptions:
Escape or Die!, OLN -Â Â “The Viper Tomb Escape (Malaysia)”
World Famous Escape Artist Dean Gunnarson has only one big fear…snakes. Now, he’s been challenged to face it. The Snake Temple in Malaysia has invited Dean to a Viper Escape. Dean will be in a glass box, restrained and handcuffed with deadly, poisonous vipers crawling all over him…he must break free before he gets bitten.
Illusions of Grandeur, OLN – “Las Vegas”
Zack Mirza visits America’s modern day magic Mecca in search of sleight-of-hand secrets from magicians and gamblers alike. He meets not one, but two legendary sleight masters – R. Paul Wilson and Jason England. But in spite of their warnings, Zack blows his money and gets hustled by an up-and-coming entertainer named “Piff†The Magic Dragon. Still, he decides to lay it all on the line, gambling his most valuable asset as a magician – his hands.
Having spent the last many years as a writer and producer on Rookie Blue, Remedy, and Flashpoint, Adam Barken’s name will once more be splashed across the screen this summer in the new Space series Killjoys.
Killjoys follows a trio of reclamation agents as they chase deadly warrants throughout the Quad, a distant planetary system on the brink of a bloody class war. The three Killjoys form a highly accomplished team of bounty hunters, each with distinct and valuable specialties to offer as they navigate the culturally rich, politically complex, and economically polarized worlds of The Quad.
You’ll hear all about Killjoys, plus some stories from previous shows he’s worked on, and an impending revenge plot against Romper Room.
Listen or download below, or subscribe via iTunes or any other podcast catcher with the TV, eh? podcast feed.
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Originally published in Reel West Magazine
My last time at what’s now the Banff World Media Festival — my fourth time in five years — I’d had enough. The TV festival had just merged with NextMedia, the digital add-on in previous years, and was suddenly treating online media as not just the poor cousin of mainstream media, but as the poor cousin twice removed. Besides, I felt like I’d heard all the pontificating before and I was no longer covering US shows, which represented the bulk of the programming.
Why was I no longer covering American shows? Because my first time at Banff had inspired me to create a website called TV, eh? to cover exclusively Canadian series.
That first time, I resembled one of the Rocky Mountains’ ubiquitous deer, and the other attendees were like so many headlights. It was 2006 and I’d been writing about TV and movies online for a few years. I’d come for David Shore, since I’d been covering House regularly, along with Paul Haggis and some other great speakers.
That my inspirations for attending were Canadian – both from London, Ontario, seriously? — was incidental. In my recent quest to understand how television was made, stumbling onto blogs by Canadian TV writers, I’d had the epiphany that homegrown shows would come and go without me even noticing.
I lived in Canada, I covered television, I was getting news releases and access to screeners and interviews from US networks, but I hadn’t even heard of some of the Canadian shows mentioned on Dead Things on Sticks, uninflected images juxtaposed, and The Legion of Decency, to name a few of those blogs (may the first two rest in peace).
Then in Banff, that first time, I sat in a giant conference room at the Fairmont and listened to a lot of Canadian television executives talk about the future of Canadian TV, and how its survival depending on making shows that would appeal to international audiences. Someone mentioned Corner Gas – one of the biggest homegrown successes — as an example of the kind of show that didn’t work globally.
And I thought of Robson Arms and Alice, I Think and Godiva’s and other shows I didn’t know existed until long after their premieres – often long after their cancellations – and wondered why these Canadian television executives weren’t more concerned with making shows that Canadian audiences want to watch. Or at least know exist so they can choose to watch or not.
I wrote companion pieces called “The Invisible Networks” and then “The Invisible Audience” about this new-to-me attitude in the industry. I’d lamented the lack of a Futon Critic or TV Tattle for our local industry and I’d been challenged in the comments to do something about it, if I saw this need. My reply was why would I? Not my circus, not my monkeys.
But what I heard at Banff swirled in my brain and I decided to float a test balloon. I started a crude WordPress site and when I felt like I might continue, I started letting the people whose blogs I’d been commenting on for the past year know about it. And they told other people, and I had a naming contest and bought a domain and tv-eh.com was born.
I’m sure other babies have come out of Banff liaisons, but hopefully none from the kind of frustration and anger I felt listening to the people who greenlight shows in Canada dismiss Canadian audiences.
