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Dramas and Comedies, Featured

TV, eh? Rewind: The Littlest Hobo

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By Dexter Brown

If dogs are man’s best friend, then The Littlest Hobo is Canada’s best friend. This week Rewind looks back at Canada’s favourite dog, The Littlest Hobo.

The Littlest Hobo (CTV 1979-1985) is a rarity of sorts. Not only is it one of the few half-hour dramas out there, it’s also sill airing on network television despite ending production over 25 years ago. It’s clearly the odd one out of the bunch when it shows up in a seemingly random bonanza of Cancon programming on both CTV and CTV Two.

In a typical episode of The Littlest Hobo, some obnoxious blowhard or con artist bullies, cheats or mistreats some ordinary Joe in some way. An astoundingly intelligent dog, “The Littlest Hobo,” stumbles across the two conflicting parties and helps them resolve whatever problems may arise. This is usually in an indirect way by stealing people’s things (such as teddy bears, keys, hats, glasses and wallets). Doing so helps him get their attention or gets them to follow him somewhere where attention is needed. Usually by the end of the episode, the villain doesn’t look quite as bad as he did at the start and The Littlest Hobo wanders off supposedly to help other people in need.

The possibilities for the show seemed endless. The Littlest Hobo had no real reoccurring characters except the dog. He could be plopped into any random situation, encounter some sort of trouble or dispute (marred with some terrible acting of course) and by the end of the episode in most cases, he’d head off somewhere else.

Looking at the show now, one could wonder if this show was ever taken seriously. Compared with the high-octane dramas on TV it feels tame, remarkably cheesy and simply unbelievable. You really had to suspend your sense of reality and maintain a childlike sense of wonder to believe a mere German Shepherd could follow a complex situation, read and warn others of impending doom or trouble. This is all made even worse by some dreadful acting and some low production value.

Despite all that The Littlest Hobo still has a place in many Canadians hearts and some might find it surprising that this simple show about a dog is now as synonymous with Canada as maple syrup and hockey. Even more surprising is that The Littlest Hobo isn’t even a Canadian creation. The show was a remake of an American series based on an American film which were also both titled The Littlest Hobo. So with all that, is that enough of a reason to warrant regular showings on network television in 2012? That’s debatable.

Today, seeing animals on TV week after week isn’t such a rare phenomenon as it may have been when The Littlest Hobo originally aired. These days animals are taking centre stage with channels like Animal Planet, National Geographic and Nat Geo Wild. Network television is also taking part with the likes of the delightful Chestnut the horse on CBS’ 2 Broke Girls and gear up for a host of animals this fall on NBC’s Animal Practice.

This summer also brought a lot of man’s best friend with Dogs in the City on CBS which plays out like a bizzaro world Littlest Hobo. Instead of an ownerless dog helping random people through difficult situations in a half-hour drama, Dogs in the City brings us a dog guru (Justin Silver) who helps dogs that are in crisis (anxiety with certain people or eating through walls) in a modern day hour-long reality show format. The guru supposedly abandons the dog and their owner when his work is done not unlike the end of The Littlest Hobo. As The Littlest Hobo falls in the shadows of the more popular Lassie, the recent series Dogs in the City could be argued to fall in the wildly successful Dog Whisperer on National Geographic and Nat Geo Wild which has been on the air for years.

Catch The Littlest Hobo weekdays on most CTV Two stations and weekends on most CTV stations. (Check your local listings for the exact airtimes in your area.)

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Featured

TV, eh? Rewind: Check It Out!

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By Dexter Brown

We’ve set our time machine back to 1985 and switch on CTV, Howard Bannister and the gang is on. This week on Rewind, we check out Check It Out!

Watching supermarket sitcom Check It Out! (CTV 1985-1988) in 2012 is a wild mind trip to television’s past. The show is complete with the typical 80s sitcom antics right down to the decade’s signature massive hairdos. Unabashedly retro, Check It Out!  appears to be completely oblivious to the fact that it was setting itself up to look very dated very quickly.

At first glance, Check It Out!  may simply seem to be a vehicle for Get Smart’s Don Adams. This time instead of playing a spy, Adams takes the role of the store manager of a large supermarket chain. In a typical episode of Check It Out! you’ll get to see Adams’ character Howard Bannister interact with various fellow dim-witted  employees and some difficult patrons. Despite its ho-hum premise and the predictable writing (compared to today’s television), it lasted a solid three seasons on CTV and even made it onto the USA network and syndication in the States.

Personally, I found it a bit jarring seeing Adams staring in a little Canadian show like Check It Out! but it was the 80s; Bea Arthur, then star of the popular series The Golden Girls was even doing commercials for Shoppers Drug Mart back then. To have American stars show up so prominently in the Canadian homegrown scripted TV business seems to be a less common phenomenon now. It’s rare to see a big-name American celebrity staring or guest starring on Canadian TV. Exceptions to the rule include Felicity and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers’ Amy Jo Johnson who now stars in CTV’s Flashpoint and Ed Asner of Mary Tyler Moore and Lou Grant fame who made a few guest appearances on Michael: Tuesdays and Thursdays.

The series shares some similarities to TBS’ 10 Items or Less which was canceled way back in 2009. 10 Items felt much like a remake of Check It Out! done in a similar style to NBC’s The Office and also added the improvisational style of Curb Your Enthusiasm. It too lasted three seasons on American cable. Neither 10 Items nor Check It Out! seemed to click with their audiences. My theory is that supermarkets aren’t the most exciting eventful places in the world and they often don’t produce the most exciting characters. But then again, CTV’s Corner Gas was set virtually in the middle of nowhere with some average middle-of-the-road characters and it turned out to be one of Canadian television’s greatest hits.

If you’d like to catch up with Check It Out! you’ll find it over on Comedy Gold.

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Dramas and Comedies, Featured

TV, eh? Rewind: SCTV

By Dexter Brown

What look back at Canadian TV would be complete without SCTV? So grab your Shower In A Briefcase and fling your TV out the window, we’re taking a trip to Melonville.

SCTV (Global 1976-1979, CBC 1980-1983, Superchannel 1983-1984) played out like a warped funhouse mirror to the television landscape of its day. Satirizing everything from Hollywood blockbusters, campy B-movies, network news, overly dramatic soap operas, idiotic children’s programming, bland talk shows to commercials and network bumpers, SCTV is probably one of the most versatile TV shows to hit the airwaves. Each episode consisted of sketches intended to mimic programming from a typical broadcast day from a low-budget station in a town called Melonville.

Characters from the show have turned into Canadian icons; Bob and Doug McKenzie are perhaps the most popular, spawning a movie and an animated sitcom long after SCTV bit the dust. Guy Caballero, the president of SCTV, local celebrity Johnny La Rue, and news anchor Floyd Robertson (yes, named after CBC/CTV news anchor Lloyd Robertson) all could be characterized as jerks with short fuses. These characters are in addition to a wide array of impersonations, including Bob Hope, Tammy Faye Bakker and Divine.

With a host of characters striking a chord with the public, it would only be logical to think that SCTV would’ve launched its stars into the mainstream, and it did. Many of the stars went on to bigger and better things on television and the big screen. John Candy appeared in Home Alone, Cool Runnings and JFK. Eugene Levy has appeared in the American Pie film series as well as A Mighty Wind and more recently Goon. And Martin Short went on to become a cast member on Saturday Night Live (as did fellow cast members Tony Rosato and Robin Duke), starred in Primetime Glick and was a judge on Canada’s Got Talent.

Memorable episodes of SCTV include The Battle of the Networks Stars parody “The Battle of the PBS Stars,” where Julia Child and Mr. Rogers, for example, competed in athletic events. Another episode consisted of a spoof simulcast of the CBC due to a writer’s strike at SCTV. Also memorable was the show’s Towering Inferno parody, “Top of the Reactor,” where the SCTV studios were moved into the world’s tallest and thinnest building and a nuclear reactor was placed on top.

With its brilliant satire of late ’70s and early ’80s TV, you can’t help but imagine what SCTV would be like in today’s world of 500+ channels, the majority owned by three or four large corporations. The essence of SCTV did carry over to the YTV series That’s So Weird. Both SCTV and That’s So Weird consist of a series of sketches meant to be taken as television shows or commercials airing on a fictional low budget television network. Sadly however, That’s So Weird’s writing feels lazy compared to SCTV, the actors don’t seem nearly as versatile, and overall it feels less inspired. Still, those are points that could be made when comparing many of the shows today to ones from yesteryear and you have to take into consideration That’s So Weird is a kids’ series airing on basic cable in Canada.

CBC’s long-running series This Hour Has 22 Minutes also shares a bit in common with SCTV. Although 22 Minutes is largely a satirical news show (SCTV did have fake news sketches but they were not as prominent as the news bits of 22 Minutes), it did have television and ad parody sketches that are very SCTV-esque. CTV’s Canada AM was regularly satirized as “Canada in the Morning” and Nancy Grace as “Panic Room with Betty Hope” for example. The television show and ad parody sketches are brief and typically appear as bumpers to commercial breaks leaving their presence limited.

Perhaps there won’t ever be a show quite like SCTV again. Catch reruns on The Comedy Network and Comedy Gold.

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Featured

TV, eh? Rewind: Twitch City

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By Dexter Brown

For our first look back at TV, it only makes sense to look at a TV show about TV. So grab a box of Frooty O’s, turn off Rex Reilly and snuggle up with your favourite cat as we present Twitch City in the first of our Rewind series.

Twitch City (CBC 1998-2000) may have been off the air for just about 12 years now, but already it feels like a relic of television’s past. While the satirical sitcom’s sharp writing, quick wit and laugh track-free scenes are commonplace for most modern-day network sitcoms, Twitch City does feel ancient in some regards. The show’s numerous references to some long-forgotten television shows, along with the old-school graphics for the opening title sequence, do more than enough to prevent Twitch City from holding as much of a timeless quality as much of the other memorable shows from the same era.

Twitch City nearly instantly comes across to viewers as the anti-Friends, anti-Seinfeld and anti-Caroline in the City, a play off of the single young friends in the city type sitcoms that were popular throughout the 90s. Gone are the bright apartments in a sprawling metropolis and the carefree 20- or 30-somethings. They are replaced by a grungy, dark dwelling somewhere in Toronto and a television-obsessed slacker.

Choosing to make television a centrepiece of the show, it only seems fitting that it is portrayed as an insipid wasteland. Surprisingly, some real-life television personalities make cameos in the show. They seem to unwittingly allow Twitch City to poke fun at them as vapid and vacant, like noise lost among itself.

One of the more memorable episode of Twitch City, the particularly surreal “The Planet of the Cats” — a spoof of Planet of the Apes — consisted of making light of the sci-fi genre, choosing to satirize the over-the-top acting and dialog and the tense drama by merely replacing the invading life forms with cats.

Strangely enough some of the scenes in “The Planet of the Cats” are eerily reminiscent of ABC’s remake of NBC’s 80s sci-fi show V. So strange in fact, it almost felt as if Twitch City got ahold of the scripts of ABC’s V some ten years before it aired, replaced the alien overlords with cats and filmed it in a townhouse in downtown Toronto.

The show, and particularly “The Planet of the Cats,” could be argued to share the humour of the recently canceled surreal sketch show Picnicface from The Comedy Network. Both built their foundation on low-budget absurdist humour but being developed several years later, Picnicface was willing to take absurdist humour to a whole other level.

With only a dozen or so episodes aired, you can’t help but wonder if Twitch City was on the wrong network at the wrong time as the show’s dark, surreal and absurdist humour seems to fit much of what aired on The Comedy Network in the past decade. Perhaps it may have lived a longer life there in the 2000s, as opposed to sharing time on the same schedule with shows such as The Fifth Estate and The Nature of Things.

Today, the CBC has decided to move away from more niche programs such as Twitch City despite a recent shot at a cable-like program, Michael: Tuesdays and Thursdays. While that show was critically acclaimed, it suffered greatly in the ratings. More mainstream shows such as Mr. D proved popular with the public and the network has since come off of one of its highest rated seasons ever.

Want to relive Twitch City or try it out for the first time yourself? Check out Twitch City episode “The Planet of the Cats” on YouTube right now.

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Dramas and Comedies, Featured, Flashpoint, Industry News, Saving Hope

Industry Update – Bell Media/CTV 2012 Upfronts

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This is the first year I attend CTV/Bell Media’s upfronts. Press conferences are held at Bell Media Queen Street. The upfront presentation is held at The Sony Centre for the Performing Arts, for the second straight year.

The fall 2012 slate for both CTV and CTV Two is about what one expects from the channel. Aside from Flashpoint, American shows are the order of the day. CTV Two airs Saturday reruns – it doesn’t use the term “encore presentations,” which is to its credit. CTV Two’s Saturday schedule features The Listener, The LA Complex, Saving Hope, and The Borgias. Midseason introduces a show called Motive (working title), a crime procedural.

Catherine MacLeod is the Vice-President, Specialty Channels at Bell Media. The most interesting thing she says to me is that The LA Complex will undergo a “retool” for its second season, possibly including a castmember shuffle. MacLeod is aware of the show’s poor performance, yet reasons that its poor showing on The CW is the result of everything doing poorly on The CW, and young people not watching as much television. MacLeod notes The LA Complex‘s positive critical reception.

As for Todd and the Book of Pure Evil and Picnicface‘s cancellations, MacLeod gives me a flat “they just weren’t performing.” The Borealis pilot is completed, but not yet scheduled. Four of the shows on The Comedy Network’s 2011-12 development slate – Hotz D.V.M., Spun Out, The Tim Steeves Project and Satisfaction – are still in development. No new channels, or rebrands of existing channels, are on the horizon for Bell Media.

The six press conferences take three hours total. For the most part, they’re breezy – light on detail, aside from the Flashpoint conference. Of note, Flashpoint will have a two-hour finale. CTV has no reason to screw with Flashpoint – it’s the rare case of a Canadian show ending on its own terms. At seventy-five episodes, it will live on in reruns for years to come.

The afternoon presentation formally announces Astral’s introduction into the Bell Media family, barring “little things” like CRTC regulations. That’s actually how Bell Media President Kevin Crull sells a $3.38 billion acquisition to advertisers.

The upfront presentation is strangely formatted. Stars enter, stand for five seconds, and leave. CTV Programming & Sports President Phil King says he won’t run down the schedule, then does so later in the presentation. I don’t understand why he teases the advertisers, and other attendees, like that.

Odd things in the base schedules stand out for me, like SportsCentre airing on CTV three times a week, on weekend afternoons. CTV allows Juicebox a two-hour, early-Saturday-morning block, while CTV Two gives Juicebox two hours of time early on Sundays. TSN’s documentary series, Engraved on a Nation: Stories of the Grey Cup, the CFL and Canada, follows CTV’s 4:00 PM ET Sunday edition of SportsCentre.

For the 2012-13 season, CTV still gives The Littlest Hobo ninety minutes of weekend, early-morning time. I’m surprised that dog isn’t the mascot for CTV’s 2012 London Olympics coverage.

Overall, I’m disappointed by Bell Media’s upfront. Upfronts should be a time to introduce new acquisitions and launches, but Bell Media is more interested this year in which companies it buys, instead of which shows it develops. Maybe the not-yet-completed Astral deal prevents Bell Media from showing its full hand, as Bell Media assumes Astral’s development properties. I don’t know. TSN’s Engraved on a Nation remains the most ambitious thing announced for Bell Media’s 2012-13 production slate, and that was revealed earlier in May.

This year’s upfronts have been, as a whole, underwhelming. Maybe a whole whack of shows will be ordered by the end of 2012. In a year where the Canadian television world threatens contraction, I doubt it.

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