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.
Children's Programming, Featured

Eric Leclerc plays magical pranks in YTV’s Tricked

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Eric Leclerc had me totally befuddled. He performed two magic tricks less than two feet away from where I was sitting, and I still have no clue how he pulled them off. (You can check out the video below.) I was still talking about his performance days after he’d done them, and you’ll feel that way after tuning into YTV’s new hidden camera show.

Debuting Monday on the network, Tricked stars Leclerc—a two-time Canadian Magic Championship winner—as he messes with the minds of everyday Canadians going about their business in and around Vancouver. Monday’s bow tracks the energetic Leclerc while he approaches folks in Granville Public Market. There, he pulls off several food-related head-scratchers, correctly producing favourite snacks, fruits and a wedding ring from the most unlikely of places and using a cell phone to make juice. I don’t want to give away the tricks themselves, but Leclerc’s targets were as amazed and confused as I was. How does he pull off intricate magic that involves, well, possibly reading one’s mind?

Tricked

“We spent five months in Vancouver filming, and performed 300 tricks,” Leclerc says during a press day in Toronto. “It was the first time in my career where I was doing magic that I wasn’t choosing to be put out there.” Adapted from a series in the UK, Force Four Entertainment auditioned hundreds of magicians before picking the Ottawa-based Leclerc. He and a team of magicians came up with all-original tricks, created and worked with him to perfect them before unleashing the brain-twisters on the public in 20 episodes. Having your angles covered is an important feature of magic, and Leclerc reveals well-placed production assistants and TV camera coordination blocked off key sight lines to keep the magic intact.

And yet, with all of that said, I still don’t know how Leclerc pulled off the trick he performed with a woman’s wedding ring at the end of Episode 1.

“When you experience magic in front of you, you know it’s not a trick,” Leclerc says. “Her reaction was real and that’s what this show is all about. It’s about their reaction when they trust a total stranger who says, ‘Lend me your wedding ring and let’s try something cool.'”

Tricked airs Monday to Thursday at 7:30 p.m. ET/PT on YTV.

Images courtesy of Corus.

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Killjoys

Link: Killjoys’ Luke Macfarlane reflects on D’Avin’s growth this season

From Bridget Liszewski of The TV Junkies:

Link: Killjoys’ Luke Macfarlane reflects on D’Avin’s growth this season
“D’avin has been able to be there for Dutch, not in the way Johnny is there for Dutch, but there’s this funny thing called love that makes us go off in on different courses. D’avin is definitely there for Dutch in the finale with her larger mission. She experiences something pretty intense and D’avin happens to be the first person to be there for her. Johnny is still there with us too, though, it’s not like he’s off solo.” Continue reading. 

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Featured, Reality, Lifestyle & Documentary

Rick McCrank explores empty lots in Viceland’s Abandoned

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Growing up in Brantford, Ont., there were lots of abandoned places to check out. There was one just a short bike ride away from my house, a crumbling house hidden in a forest and purportedly haunted. My friends and I stayed well away from the place—even during the day—more because it was tumbledown and disused than reports of ghosts. (That came years later, in an empty sanitarium next to the Trailer Park Boys set.)

In Abandoned, debuting Friday on Viceland, Vancouver skateboard legend Rick McCrank boogies right on into empty places to check them out. In the first episode of 10 of the Canadian original, “Ghost Mall,” McCrank enters what used to be Randall Park Mall in Cleveland. As McCrank explains, the area the mall was in used to enjoy strong economic times, but those are long gone.

McCrank doesn’t just shuffle through darkened hallways filled with dusty old benches and broken glass; he gives a nice history on the modern shopping mall, a creation born in 1950s America, gleaming, convenient spots where families could spend hours dropping money on clothes, electronics, housewares, food—the sky was the limit—all under one roof. Shopping malls hit their stride in the 80s, a ubiquitous sight in cities. But the good times ended when online shopping became more popular, and the sprawling complexes began to close.

Accompanied by photographer Seph Lawless, who captured images inside for his book Black Friday—The Collapse of the America Shopping Mall, McCrank wanders around Randall Park Mall, observing not only the decay but how quickly nature is reclaiming the land with life.

Two things struck me as I watched “Ghost Mall.” The first was how misty-eyed folks got remembering the time they spent in these now-shuttered behemoths. The second? How I totally related to what they felt. Growing up as a child of the 80s, I spent copious time in my local Lynden Park Mall, poking around Coles bookstore, Sunrise Records or sitting in the food court hanging out with friends. Lynden Park Mall is still there—it’s changed a lot on the inside—but I still get that pull in my heart when I drive by.

I guess that’s the point of a show like Abandoned. McCrank tours defunct properties around Canada and the U.S., showing how life rolls on while milestones of the past crumble. Upcoming episodes find McCrank in east coast fishing towns, empty schools in St. Louis and flooded missile silos in the Pacific Northwest.

Abandoned airs Fridays at 9 p.m. ET on Viceland.

Image courtesy of Rogers.

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Industry News

DGC disappointed with CRTC’s decisions to reduce Canadian participation in CIPF-funded productions

From a media release:

CRTC’s Epiphany: Canada will win on the world stage by becoming America

The DGC is profoundly dismayed by the CRTC’s decision to reduce the participation of Canadian talent in productions supported by the Certified Independent Production Funds.

Last year with the Let’s Talk TV decisions and now with revisions to the policy that governs Certified Independent Production Funds like Shaw Rocket Fund, Harold Greenberg Fund, Rogers Fund, Canadian talent continues to be a vanishing species. The Commission’s approach for creating a robust, successful domestic production sector is to divert Canadian citizen’s money to pay American writers, directors and actors to make generic programming which tells the world nothing about who we are as a nation or as a people. Once again Canada misses a chance to shine at home and on the world stage by proposing to eliminate all that is unique in what we make.

There is no evidence that reducing Canadian creative involvement will make these shows more successful.  In the current Canadian landscape of risk adverse decision makers the DGC has time after time sought the resources necessary for Canada’s storytellers to create innovative, original compelling content. Instead, the Commission once again proposes the elimination of Canadian writers, directors and performers – the very elements which make niche television from countries outside the USA so compelling to audiences everywhere.

The CRTC’s decisions reflect an outdated approach that is a legacy from the former Harper government.  Success in the Golden Age of Television rests on distinctiveness and originality. In a word: voice.

It is time to change the channel; the path to a greater diversity of high quality made-in-Canada content begins with promoting, not diminishing, opportunities for Canadian talent.

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