All posts by Greg David

Prior to becoming a television critic and owner of TV, Eh?, Greg David was a critic for TV Guide Canada, the country's most trusted source for TV news. He has interviewed television actors, actresses and behind-the-scenes folks from hundreds of television series from Canada, the U.S. and internationally. He is a podcaster, public speaker, weekly radio guest and educator, and past member of the Television Critics Association.

Just for Laughs Gags celebrates 15 years with special

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From a media release:

Just For Laughs (JFL) and CBC team up to celebrate fifteen years of Gags with the anniversary special JUST FOR LAUGHS GAGS: 15 YEARS, airing Tuesday, January 6 at 9 p.m. (9:30 NT) on CBC-TV. Hosted by comedian Mark Critch (This Hour Has 22 Minutes), this outrageously funny one-hour special features a compilation of all the most popular and iconic Gags in history, showcasing 15 years of pranks by pant-less policemen, saucy nuns, car-crashing steamroller operators, and more.

One of the most successful comedy series in the world, Gags boasts hundreds of millions of viewers in over 160 countries, on just about every airline in the free world, and a YouTube channel boasting a staggering 2 billion hits. Just For Laughs: Gags is far and away Canada’s biggest cultural export and a guilty pleasure that even the most discerning comedy snobs can’t help but giggle about.

Gags was created by Just For Laughs in 2000. By 2002 Gags’ popularity had exploded and it was available in five airlines and 40 countries worldwide. By 2004, Gags was broadcast on four channels across Canada and had more than doubled their international television and airline sales. Gags is now seen everywhere from Russia to Indonesia to Brazil and boasts a spin-off series entitled Just Kidding (focused on kids pranking adults), which has also achieved international success.

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Interview: Susan Kent talks 22 Minutes and metal music

Who knew Susan Kent was a metal head? I certainly didn’t when she and I started to chat about the 22nd anniversary of This Hour Has 22 Minutes. That was just part of our conversation about the behind-the-scenes preparation that goes on during a whirlwind week on the set of the veteran CBC parody program.

The Corner Brook, Newfoundland, native describes a collaborative writing squad that churns out a shocking amount of content that never sees the light of day and the breakneck speed needed to create a skit like last week’s parody of Meghan Trainor’s “All About that Bass,” repurposed as a PC attack ad about Justin Trudeau called “Just a Pretty Face.”

Congratulations on the show’s milestone.
Susan Kent: Thanks, it’s great to be involved in something that I had nothing to do with! I totally lucked out.

Do you still feel like you’re the newbie on the cast?
Not so much anymore. I feel pretty integrated now. Every now and again I’ll get one of those twinges that I used to get. ‘Oh my God, what am I doing? Why do I think I can do this?! This is the big leagues!’ And then I’m like, ‘It’s just me and these people having a good time.’

How does the writing process work for 22 Minutes? Do you all come up with ideas and then bring it to the table? Walk me through a typical production week.
Monday is the live show, so we do all of our prep stuff throughout the day. Sometimes Mark will do a satellite interview with a politician during the day. Monday nights we do the desk stuff and show everything we’ve shot the previous week and that morning to the audience.

We come in Tuesday morning for the next week’s pitch meeting. It’s all of us together and we just go around the table and pitch ideas and riff on each others’ ideas. And then [executive producer] Peter McBain either says, ‘Yeah, go ahead,’ or ‘No, don’t waste your time,’ and we all go away and write as much as we can. I write for myself and for other people as well. We all do that. We all like to write for each other. We do all that until early-ish on Wednesday and then Peter makes the choices for what sketches will be read out of the book and that’s usually about 40. And then everyone who works on the show gathers together in the studio and we read all of those sketches. Out of that read and based on the response and hearing things aloud he decides what will be shot. We get the rundown for Thursday and Friday and everybody starts sewing costumes and hitting Walmarts to make things.

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We shoot all day Thursday and all day Friday. Oftentimes Mark Critch will go on road trips to do interviews on the Wednesday or sometimes on the weekends. He doesn’t stop. He is insane. Our director and our editors start work on Friday, editing stuff. And then Monday is the live show all over again.

Do you work the weekend too, or do you just sit and worry for two days?
Yeah, I sit and drink wine and worry about what’s going to happen!

How many writers are in the room besides the core four?
There are about eight writers right now and out of that crew there are a few who work from home because they have new babies and stuff like that. They call in during the pitch meeting and write from home.

You guys are creating a ton of content every week.
Oh God, it’s insane. It’s insane the amount of stuff that gets written. Let’s say each writer writes six sketches and each sketch has three or four jokes. Once those jokes don’t make it to the read, those jokes are burned and can’t be used again. The jokes that make it into the read but don’t make it to what gets taped are burned too. And the jokes that are shown in front of the audience but don’t make it to air are burned too. You can only imagine the amount of really quality stuff that never sees the light of day. For all of the desk jokes that you see on TV, we’re written double that for the show. Those guys are pumping out an insane amount of stuff, yeah.

On top of all that you have to be timely.
When all the bananas stuff was happening with Rob Ford last year, oftentimes we’d arrive on Monday and something we were going to do for the live show was trumped by something that had to do with him. That happens quite a bit.

This past week’s episode featured the PC attack song. Whose idea was that?
Well, Meghan Trainor gets the all the props for that. I think that idea was an idea between Peter and Mike Allison, the guy who wrote it. Mike has a really extensive history with music and he’s really good at it and he’s very good at parody songs.

Were you really singing it?
Yeah, that was me singing. I did all the back-ups and everything. It was cool. We have this music genius named Mike Farrington that comes in and does all of the music for the show. I didn’t know that song–I listed to more metal and punk rock–so I listened to it a bunch of times before the read. It was the first time I had listened to the song all the way through and we learned we’d be shooting it the next day. That meant recording it that night. I listened to it a whack of times and then Mike and I worked on my phrasing. Mike Farrington found out at 5 o’clock that we were doing it and was in the studio by 6. By 6:05 we were laying it down. It goes fast and luckily the two Mikes are so talented.

 

As a fellow metalhead, I have to ask: who do you listen to?
Right now I’m into this band named Midnight. They’re like an awesome cross between Venom and Motorhead.

Oh jeez, when you say metal, you mean thrash metal.
Oh yeah, thrash metal is probably my fave. I love metal hybrids. Zeke is one for my favourite bands.

When you said metal I was thinking of Van Halen and Poison. Now I sound like a wimp because I was thinking of hair metal.
I love hair metal! I love party metal. It’s just so fun. Some if it is garbage and but then again some thrash is garbage.

This Hour Has 22 Minutes’ retrospective special This Hour Has 22 Years airs Tuesday at 8 p.m. on CBC.

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Review: Heartland ends with double cliffhanger

The mark of a good cliffhanger episode leaves a viewer stunned, shocked–and in the best of cases–yelling “No!” at the television screen. Sunday’s episode of Heartland was certainly that in a couple of cases, especially when it came to Ty and Amy being arrested. I was a little surprised by the kiss they shared moments after liberating the wild horses from the corral Matt constructed, but I didn’t expect them to be collared by the local RCMP.

I think part of the reason for my surprise was that they were nabbed so quickly. It seemed like they’d only just minutes before stopped riding and suddenly the local police were there. I was glad to see the show’s fave couple reunited–there has been a great slow burn between Amy and Ty over the last several weeks–in the spot that meant so much to the couple: Pike River.

“The Pike River Cull,” written by Heather Conkie, brought back the show’s second-best curmudgeon–after Jack– in Will (Nicholas Campbell) and his daughter, Joanna (Hélène Joy). With business on the wane and wanting to move closer to her son, Joanna put the restaurant and hotel up for sale and was hoping Will would move closer to Calgary with her. No dice; he was staying put and close to the wild horses last seen in “A Heartland Christmas.” The fact that a local farmer named Matt was plotting to cull some of those wonderful beasts only cemented Will’s resolve.

Jack, Tim, Ty and Amy all headed to Pike River to try to talk some sense into Will, and it didn’t take long for the former lovebirds to recall their time in front of the hotel fireplace, snuggled under a blanket (and Ty’s shocking long mane of hair). Ty may have started out that first night sleeping in Tim’s truck to avoid Amy, but once he saw her in that tank top, his emotions had come rushing back. Good thing too, because they certainly made for a great team by calling out Matt on his evil plans to kill off some of the horses and then loosing the proud animals from his trap.

The cliffhanger, of course, is whether or not Amy and Ty are actually going to be arrested or whether they’re able to talk themselves out of it. I can see this going either way within the first few minutes of the first episode back in January. Will the RCMP officer stuff the two into the back seat of his truck? Will the two explain that Will is hurt and needs attention back at the corral? We’ll have to see.

The other cliffhanger on Sunday was the state of Lou and Peter’s marriage. He’d spent so much time away from the family on business that Lou finally blew her top when she found out he’d delayed his return to Heartland because he wanted one night to relax. (Raise your hand if you thought perhaps he’d had a dalliance.) Their bitter back and forth certainly put a damper on their staycation at the dude ranch, though there was a nice moment when Georgie caught that fish. But that wasn’t enough to solve the couple’s deep problems, and it appeared Peter was about to ask for a trial separation on the road to divorce when a lawyer showed up to present them with papers: Georgie’s aunt Crystal had made a complaint that her niece wasn’t growing up in a safe environment. I knew Crystal was up to no good when she left Heartland!

Heartland returns Sunday, Jan. 11, at 7 p.m. on CBC.

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Link: Saying goodbye to Lost Girl

From Eleni Armenakis:

The stakes were certainly raised by Lost Girl‘s fourth season with the loss of two very important members of Bo’s family, including her best friend and “heart” Kenzi (Ksenia Solo is thankfully living on with Orphan Black), setting the series up for a stunning fifth and final season. The TV Junkieswas lucky enough to meet up with the cast as they were filming the expanded season this summer in Toronto, and got to check out a super-cool location while getting the low down on some of the big, massively huge answers coming for Bo before the end, which we’ll be sharing with you throughout the season. Continue reading:

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Food Network Canada’s Chef in Your Ear casting call

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From a media release:

Food Network Canada and HLP are pleased to announce that the exciting new series Chef In Your Ear has been given a green light. This innovative original format for Food Network Canada is a fresh take on adrenaline-pumping, culinary competition programming, with a twist. Production begins March 2015.

In Chef In Your Ear, some of Canada’s best chefs must create mouth-watering dishes that top their competitors. Standing between victory and defeat for these chefs are some of the country’s most clueless cooks – and they have to do all the cooking. Isolated away from the kitchen, the professional chefs guide their novice cooks through every step of a dish using only an earpiece and television monitor. With reputations on the line in this edge-of-your-seat culinary series, the winning chef decides the loser’s fate and the loser must oblige.

Casting is now open for brave souls who fear the kitchen. Individuals who want to laugh, learn and brush up on their cooking skills are invited to apply at thecastinggroup.com.

Chef In Your Ear is an original idea by Justin Scroggie, developed by Ricardo Larrivee, Justin Scroggie, Daniel Gelfant, Henry Less and Lee Herberman, produced by HLP for Food Network Canada. Series Producer is Daniel Gelfant. Co-Series Producer is LeAnne Armano. Supervising Producer is Angela Donald. International distribution is by The Format People.

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