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Featured, Reality, Lifestyle & Documentary

Comments and queries for the week of February 22

Where, when, how can I see Blown Away in the U.S.? —KJ

Hi KJ, Blown Away will be available worldwide on Netflix soon.

A stunning [Murdoch Mysteries] episode with an unusual detective story. Harmoniously included in the storyline were fragments of episodes from previous seasons of the show. Nice to see the return of the previous characters. It is good that the book of William and Julia became popular, but it is a pity that this was preceded by tragic events. The unexpected ending of the episode—it seems that a new antagonist character appears. I wonder what will happen next?
It is a pity that only two episodes are left before the end of the Season 12. My family loves Murdoch Mysteries very much! —Lilia

“Because (McAvoy) was calling it in a little sometimes. Just like with anything else you do for a while…” I’ve seen Roger Cross for decades on TV and he is one actor who has never called it in. He always brings something different to each character he plays. On Continuum, I felt sorry for his character but on Dark Matter I never trusted Six completely, even during Season 1. Well done! —John

Got a question or comment about Canadian TV? Email greg.david@ami.ca or via Twitter @tv_eh.

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Cardinal, Featured

Cardinal: Writer Aaron Bala dissects “Mama”

Aaron Bala’s journey into writing television is an interesting one. His first gig after attending Humber College for writing and production was managing the social media account for CTV’s sitcom, Satisfaction.

“It was really awesome,” Bala recalls. “I got to be on set all the time and I got to help them shoot some videos and edit some stuff for all of their web content.” Attending the Bell Media Diverse Screenwriter Program was followed by internships at 19-2 and Saving Hope. The latter put him under the mentorship of Patrick Tarr. So, when Cardinal was greenlit for a third season, Tarr called on Bala to join him. And what an episode for Bala to be credited with. In addition to giving us some background on Mama, it propelled the story towards its conclusion next week.

Here’s what Aaron Bala had to say about “Mama.”

Congratulations on joining the Cardinal team and being a part of the franchise. With it airing not only here in Canada but sold around the world, you must be pretty excited to be a part of it.
Aaron Bala: Oh for sure. I saw the first season and I fell in love with it. And getting to be a part of it is probably one of, if not the greatest writing experience I have ever had in my career so far.

A quick question about the writing credit on ‘Mama.’ The story idea came from Noelle Carbone. And then it says teleplay from yourself and Patrick Tarr. Can you explain how that all worked out?
AB: When I got hired it wasn’t a given that I was going to get to write anything. But, Patrick was outfitting for me to get something and Noelle Carbone was originally supposed to write this episode, which was the preface to the finale. And then what happened was she wrote the outline for it. Hence the story by credit, and then she had to go. And so, it kind of fell into our laps and Patrick was like, ‘Here, you’re up on deck. Let’s go do this.’ It was great to have these two great writers that I got to work off of, Noelle who had the outline. To look at and build off that, then hand off to Patrick to finalize it. And, then hit it out of the park.

This was a big episode. We were getting a little bit more background into Mama and her affect on this family that she has. Was this daunting at all for you? A bit of jitters? 
AB: Oh, for sure. Always. Writing is always daunting. It is never not daunting. But you know, I think the great thing about the show is, it’s six episodes in and we can really build it so that you are left with mysteries with characters that we can start closing those mysteries sooner rather than later. And, as much as it can be terrifying, it’s also really gratifying when you get to write those scenes that explain what the audiences have been wondering for so long. And, especially, when you can write some scenes that are explaining things that audience doesn’t realize it yet that’s going to get explained in the finale, and some of that stuff is super cool too.

One of the scenes that struck me in this episode was the ghost of Catherine, and Cardinal saying, ‘I don’t want to see you anymore.’ I thought that was a beautifully shot scene. 
AB: That is certainly the brilliance of this show, is saying as little as possible and yet saying so much. I remember that scene. That is something Patrick really, really pushed for and just this moment where [Cardinal] has been pushing this case for so long and you know, he finally finds the guy who has been sending the letters. And it is over. But she’s still here. And, I think it is a meditation on what grief is like for all of us and still stuck with seeing people that have passed on and moved on from us. I think it is also potentially in the back of his mind like maybe this case isn’t over yet.

Maybe there is a little more to this. But he is still broken and he doesn’t want to push anymore. You see him get so angry and I think it is great because you have that scene with his daughter just before and see how their grief is manifesting in different ways.

We also got more insight into what Dr. Bell is like and the control he has had over his patients over the years. That verbal chess match back and forth at Dr. Bell’s house … Cardinal walking forward and then he’s walking back. Man, just so well done. 
AB: I think that is probably my favourite scene in the entire episode. I just love it, love it, love it so much. In the books, Dr. Bell was always my favourite character.

I just thought he was so different than the other books had and he was a real cerebral character and I really liked that. It was funny because we left the room one day and were talking about our favourite characters and we all had someone different we really liked. And I thought that was so emblematic of what you want in a writer’s room. So for me, that scene is just so beautifully acted and written. You said, ‘chess match’ and I think that is the perfect word because you come off that scene with the woman that has been talking to Catherine on her computer. You walk out of that scene and you say, ‘Dr Bell did this, he is responsible.’ Then you walk into this Dr. Bell scene and Cardinal is coming with fire and fury. But, Dr. Bell, he almost prepared in a way.

But not in a, ‘I know I am guilty’ but, in a way that he knows that anyone commits suicide that he knows someone is going to come and believe it is him in the end no matter what. He just diffuses all of Cardinal’s beliefs that Dr. Bell is the guilty party and Cardinal leaves that scene and I’m like, ‘Yeah no, Cardinal is chasing ghosts. Dr. Bell didn’t do this, he needs to move on.’ Then you have the whole tag scene with his wife at the end and we kind of just pulled the rug just a little bit out.

I would agree with you about being a favourite character because nothing scarier than a guy who is in your mind and messing around. 
AB: And yeah, we’ve seen a lot of the characters who have guns and we happen to this season as well. I also just like the appeal of this character who may be just as menacing as those other characters but from a totally different way. You know, bullet wounds can heal sometimes, but some of the mental scars don’t.

What have you learned about yourself as a writer? Again, you from Saving Hope to Cardinal now, what have you learned about the whole writing thing and yourself? Have you figured out what your strengths are?
AB: I think I am starting to learn where some of my strengths are, and I am leaning towards structure and themes. I think as the more shows I work on the more that is revealed, and the more you see others do it as well as you, you learn from them. I think what Saving Hope and Cardinal have really pushed me towards is finding the emotional cords of the characters and pushing them emotionally in ways. It is easy for me to say, ‘and then they do this crazy thing at the end.’ But, it is harder for me to say, ‘and then this thing effects them so deeply to their core.’ But, that is what television is. We don’t watch television for what happens. We watch for how it happens to our characters.

Anything you are working on that you can tell me about?
AB: I am on Private Eyes, which I think is on my resumé. Which, you know, has been a great fabulous show. I like staying in the crime space.

Cardinal airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on CTV.

Images courtesy of Bell Media.

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Featured, Web series

The Communist’s Daughter seeks glorious support to reach its Kickstarter goal

A lot has happened since I last spoke to Leah Cameron and Natalie Novak.

The pair is the brains behind The Communist’s Daughter, a web series set in 1980s Canada that spotlights Dunyasha McDougald, the daughter of two Communists who struggles with fitting in at high school and supporting her family’s beliefs. Last March, they applied for Independent Production Fund support. Last April, they were one of 30 projects awarded funding to help get The Communist’s Daughter off the ground. In July, the series took the title at the CBC Comedy Originals Pitch Competition at Just for Laughs.

Now the duo, along with executive producer Lauren Corber, has one more goal before cameras roll: public support. A Kickstarter campaign kicked off a few days ago, and it’s chockfull of the humour and ingenuity that accompanied their IPF pitch campaign last year. And, as Cameron believes, those looking for IPF funding should take note of.

“Think of social media,” Cameron, the project’s writer, creator and director, says during a recent phone call. “If you can, try to find a voice or something that can be tangential to the project itself, but it’s sort of like an extension of it, so that you’re not just re-posting behind the scenes photos, but you’re doing something new and interesting for people.” Take advantage of social media’s strengths, she says, whether it’s images and video on Instagram or longer form posts on Facebook and making the word count work to your advantage on Twitter.

“I think that the seedling of that idea in and of itself, too, is also how timely the project is, to begin with, but that timeliness doesn’t live on its own,” producer Novak says. “It’s the mining of the Internet that we did to bring relevance to something that already felt relevant.” Cameron and Novak took full advantage of the current political climate during the past year, using #TrumpRussia in their posts alongside Cold War references and specific language (“Comrades,” “Everythink,” “Sayink”) to promote The Communist’s Daughter. The duo has likened their Kickstarter campaign to a PBS pledge drive, and have reached back to the 80s to make accompanying videos—where Cameron, Novak and Jim Butkovitch are decked out in that decade’s finery—look like they were filmed on VHS tapes.

The writing is done on all eight episodes, penned last November by Cameron, Waneta Storms, Peter D. Murphy, Kaveh Mohebbi, Clara Altimas, Jim Gorrie and Spencer Thompson. Now it’s up to fans, friends and family to make that final push and make The Communist’s Daughter a reality.

I beseech you to help them out.

Support The Communist’s Daughter through their Kickstarter campaign.

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Featured, Hard Rock Medical, Murdoch Mysteries, Remedy

Murdoch Mysteries: Patrick McKenna reveals Slorach’s past and future

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Spoiler alert! Do not continue reading until you have watched the latest episode of Murdoch Mysteries, “Manual for Murder.”

Patrick McKenna truly is a Canadian television “that guy.” His IMDB page boasts roles on award-winning and notable projects from Traders to RoboCop, The Red Green Show to Crash Canyon, Remedy to Hard Rock Medical.

And, for a four-episode stint so far, Murdoch Mysteries. On Monday night, McKenna’s Inspector Hamish Slorach dropped by Station House No. 4 with an announcement—he was retiring—and a request: would Inspector Brackenreid deliver a speech? Unfortunately, the celebration was marred when an attempt on Hamish’s life was made with a mechanized gun. Thankfully, Hamish survived the attack.

We spoke to Patrick McKenna about how the memorable role came about and his upcoming TV project with Colin Mochrie.

In tonight’s episode of Murdoch Mysteries, “Manual for Murder,” we catch up with Hamish Slorach. Before we get into the storyline itself, though, it seems as though it’s a rite of passage if you’re in Canadian television to be part of the Murdoch Mysteries family, and you’re no different. How did the role come up in the first place for you?
Patrick McKenna: Well, I think I was quite lucky that the showrunner now is Peter Mitchell. I met Peter when he was the showrunner when I was doing Traders. We’ve known each probably since about ’95, ’96, I guess. We’ve just been friends. When he went over and did that show, he thought this Hamish character they created might fit me well so they offered me the role. It’s been a sporadic gig ever since.

And a beloved character. He’s a little bit different from everybody else in the station house. Did the way to play him, did that character jump off the script at you? Was it something that you worked with Peter on, or did you come with it on yourself? 
PK: It was interesting. The first two writers, who are no longer involved in the show, they called me and they gave me an outline. They said, basically, it’s John Wayne meets Columbo. I thought, ‘Well, that’s kind of a fun description.’ I kind of went with that, but he’s a manly guy, but he’s just kind of in his own way.

He’s aloof. He’s laid back. He likes to have fun and has made a career out of being a copper.
PK: It was nice because [Thomas Craig] sort of set the tone that way. It was always great playing off him because I knew it to be … I mean, it’s their show and it’s their tones so I didn’t want to come in too strong. If I’m supposed to be a friend of Brackenreid, then I guess I’m going to be his energy, his age, things he likes, so I went off his rhythms a lot of how we were going to form this character. It just kind of fell into place. Often times, the scripts demand that you step up, and other times you lay back, just trying to be that … anybody but Murdoch in the first [episode I was on] because that’s who I was replacing. It was like they have the expectation of this guy walks straight line and very thorough, whereas Hamish Slorach kind of serpentines around line and stumbles into answers, and so on.

What attracts you to a role, Patrick? In the case of Murdoch, they reached out to you. But when you’re looking for a gig, what excites you?
PK: When the opportunity to try something new, to combine a couple of different energies that audiences haven’t seen before. I always look for the sense of humour in a character, even if he’s evil, just to find out what makes that person smile and tick. I mean, that’s how I look at things normally so I thought I’ll just apply that to my characters usually. It seems I can bath into that segment of a character and play that. Even the mean people I play, I know they laugh sometimes.

What’s it been like to be part of Murdoch? At this point, is it like old home week, showing up there on the set and talking to everybody again?
PK: It really is because it’s so nice because the CBC, which I’ve had such an affiliation with, so often times, the crew are people that I’ve worked with on other shows. When you walk in, it’s like with the crew I know, and, of course, the cast I know really well by now. Hamish Slorach is such a fun character for them to have in the show because then you know you’re going to have a couple of silly things happen. It’s not blood and gore all the time. You know it’s going to be a smile. It’s always really nice to go back. It’s such a smooth machine, that show, that set. They’ve been doing it for so long, they know exactly how to dance every week so you just kind of got to get in there and find the rhythm without stepping on too many toes.

You just spoke of the blood and gore. Now, in tonight’s episode, Hamish dodges a bullet. Well, I guess he takes one in the head, but it doesn’t end up being lethal. What were your thoughts when you read that in the script and was informed that an attempt was going be made on his life, at his retirement party no less?
PK: All that information completely unfolded to me like, ‘Oh, OK. I’m retiring. I guess I’m out of the series. I’m almost dead. Now I’m definitely out of the series. Oh, I’m only wounded. I could come back.’ I went through a lot of emotions there, like, ‘Well, OK. I guess this is their way of someone finalizing Hamish.’ But the nice thing about a retired policeman is you can always come back in some form.

That’s true. Now, I don’t know if you remember, but when they’re carting Hamish off, he’s talking about seeing an angel. I wondered if that was something that was in the script or whether you ad-libbed that?
PK: A bit of both. It just said I see angels and then they said, ‘Can you just have fun with that as you’re going out the door?’ It was like, ‘OK, I can do that.’ The nice thing, again, I worked with Warren Sonoda on a film so I knew Warren really well and it was very comfortable. He knew my comfort zone as well, to say he would allow me to play here. Then other times, he’d say, ‘You know what, I need to get this covered so if you can pull back on that a little bit, that’ll allow me this ….’ the vocabulary’s so great. Plus, between Colin Mochrie being on set, who’s one of my best friends for over 30 years, it was like this is the easiest room to walk into, and we all get to wear funny costumes. It was just like grown ups playing. It’s so much fun.

You mentioned being friends with Colin for so many years. Is there a lot of stuff left on the cutting room floor that we’re never gonna see?
PK: Not a lot because both Colin and I, when we step onto a set that has a script, we try and respect it as much as possible, as well as the timeframe they have available to shoot things like that. But you just say what’s on the script, and if they find there’s a little lacking, you can do that. I mean, just by our very presence, there’s an energy to that, especially when Colin walks in. You know there’s gonna be something happening. Sometimes you don’t have to add too much. Some shows you really do, but when somethings been as consistent as Murdoch, sometimes you don’t know a lot of the backstory, so if you drop a line, it’s like, ‘No, we need to hear that because two episodes ago this was mentioned.’ So on and so on. You really just got to walk the map that they’ve laid out there. If there’s any room for some shading of colour, they’re pretty goods about letting you do that. That’s usually why they invite you to the party. It’s like, ‘You can do something with this character.’

As you said, he’s not dead so Hamish could always come back. He could just drop in, mix things up, and go on an adventure with Thomas, or something like that.
PK: That’s what I’m really hoping is that something in his personal life will force him to come back into the precinct.

Is there anything that you’re working on, writing, directing, producing, or anything like that, that you can talk about?
PK: I’m doing all of the above. Colin Mochrie and I are hopefully going to be making a series up in North Bay. Right now, it’d potentially be called The Colin Mochrie Show. I’m writing, and directing, and producing, a lot of that. We’re just getting started and that’s sort of what’s been filling my time since the new year. Everyone’s very aware of it and everyone’s moving forward with it so we hope that it’ll be something that will be in production. It’s tentatively going to be called Chef Colin.

What’s the elevator pitch for Chef Colin?
PK: It’s basically a celebrity chef who falls from grace, and he’s forced to take a job at his daughter’s college.

Murdoch Mysteries airs Mondays at 8 p.m. on CBC and streams on CBC Gem.

Images courtesy of CBC.

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Featured, Reality, Lifestyle & Documentary

Preview: Makeful’s Blown Away celebrates gorgeous glass creations

There are a plethora of competition shows on television. Some involve folks racing around Canada, while others feature people cooking intricate recipes. Even more spotlight everyday Canadians making clothing or living together in the same abode for weeks on end. I thought I had seen everything the competition genre had to offer.

And then came Blown Away.

Debuting Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Makeful—during the specialty network’s free preview—Blown Away pits 10 professional glass blowers against one another. The grand prize? A residency at the world-renowned Corning Museum of Glass in upstate New York. It’s one heck of an interesting twist on the reality genre and, from the get-go, a lot of fun to watch.

According to Blown Away‘s host, YouTube star Nick Uhas, glass blowing dates back to Roman times. Not a lot has changed since then: a furnace is heated to thousands of degrees and a gob of molten glass is attached to a tube. Once affixed, air is blown into the blob, which expands. But Blown Away isn’t about who makes the roundest sphere of glass. It’s about intricacy and creativity. The set—called “The Hot Shop”—is expansive and there are obvious safety issues here. High temperatures and working with glass means there is always a chance someone could get hurt. I imagine the producers, marblemedia, had cartons and Band-Aids and pump bottles of Polysporin at the ready.

The 10 competitors vying for the title, and $60,000 US, are a mixture of glass artists, visual artists, sculptural artists and people who worked in the medium in their pasts. Aside from the competition itself, Blown Away is an education into the glass blowing industry for a newbie like me. The job of different tools, punties, annealers and—ahem—personal glory holes are all explained along the way, as is the science and timing involved in adding colour to glass and the myriad ways to shape it. Gravity, heat and cold all play important parts too.

In Wednesdays debut, the competitors are tasked with using six hours to create something that is a snapshot of who they are. For 22-year-old Edgar, that means showing how small we really are in this world. For Kevin, it’s recreating a surfing experience and the calm he feels doing that. For Momo, it’s thanking those who have helped her on her life journey with a classic glass piece. With renowned glass blower Katherine Gray as the show’s resident judge, alongside guest judge Chris Taylor, executive director at Pilchuck Glass School, the 10 present their creations.

The direction, camera work and cinematography is top-notch on Blown Away. Glowing furnaces and dancing sparks are contrasted by the inner glow of molten glass, and the gleam of a sweaty arm or a finished piece of art. It’s a truly visual, educational and inspiring series I can’t wait to see more of.

Blown Away airs Wednesdays t 9 p.m. ET/PT on Makeful.

Images courtesy of Blue Ant Media.

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