I’ve been waiting for years to have Still Standing film in a small town close to me. And then, when it finally did, I missed the whole thing.
I’ll blame COVID-19 for that, as Season 7 of Jonny Harris’ cross country standup series had to adjust to changing audience numbers and community health recommendations on the fly. Returning on Wednesday at 8 p.m. on CBC, Harris and his crew drop in on Hope, B.C., where they divulge the history and people of that small Canadian community.
And, like hundreds of other television productions, the pandemic delayed everything and put the heart of the show—Harris’ live performances in front of the communities he was in—in jeopardy.
“At first, we were just grounded,” Harris says. “And then we were going to do shows, but the capacity was going to be greatly reduced, like 30 people in the audience. I was devastated. I thought, ‘It won’t feel like the show.’ And then, I turned on the TV, and there was Jimmy Fallon telling jokes, basically, in front of The Tonight Show crew. And I realized everyone had to eat some crow during the pandemic.”
Despite crowd restrictions and wildly fluctuating social distancing rules from province to province, Still Standing still looks great. Thanks to creative camera angles and editing, you really can’t tell how many people are in each audience. Those outside, community shots and interviews are still intact, weaving personal and business stories around small communities struggling to make ends meet.
As for the episode filmed in my area, the Wakefield, QC, instalment (just a 10-minute drive from my home) airs on January 19 and finds Harris traipsing around a community embracing its railway past to drive tourism to the area.
“It’s such a gorgeous area, and close enough to Gatineau and Ottawa that it’s accessible but far enough away that’s it’s never going to be a suburb.”
Still Standing airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on CBC and CBC Gem.
To say Season 1 of Transplant was a success would be an understatement. Critics and viewers lauded the CTV medical drama with high ratings and Canadian Screen Award nominations and wins. The love extended to the U.S., where Transplant aired on NBC and around the world in the UK, Spain, Australia and the Netherlands.
Now Transplant is back and, judging by the season premiere—kicking off Monday at 10 p.m. ET/PT on CTV—that success will grow even more.
We spoke to Joseph Kay, Transplant‘s creator—showrunner, executive producer and writer—about what’s next for Bash (Hamza Haq), Jed (John Hannah), Mags (Laurence Leboeuf), June (Ayisha Issa), Theo (Jim Watson) and recurring characters Dr. Mark Novak (Gord Rand) and Rania (Nora Guerch).
What was it like to see the love that the show was getting as the first season rolled out across North America? Joseph Kay: I was and am really, really proud that people responded to the work. Really thrilled by that. There’s a team of people who work unbelievably hard to make the show on every level, and we care a lot about what we do and put all of ourselves into it. You work hard and sometimes audiences respond and sometimes they don’t, but you work hard either way. So to see people like it, to see audiences respond to it is just very humbling and exciting and thrilling. I always did feel that there was something at the core of the show that would connect with audiences. It tells someone’s individual experience that people are interested in, but it also has some resonance and accessible themes.
We always did our best to deliver them in a warm, engaging, fast-paced, page-turney sort of way. We are excited for people to see the work we’ve been doing the last year as well.
I immediately fell in love with the characters and cared about what happened to them. And that continues in Season 2 with the first episode, “Guardrail.” What is it that makes a show succeed in this connection with an audience like Transplant does? JK: I wish I could articulate the answer to that well. I totally hear where you’re coming from, and as an avid viewer of things, sometimes you just connect and sometimes you don’t. I think on the level of Transplant, I’d say two things. One, I would first say that, man, we do have such a great ensemble, starting with Hamza, to Laurence, John, Jim, and then even expanding from there, our actors are very, very good. And I think that they deal with the emotion in a really real accessible, funny way. They’re just warm people that you want to spend time with and they convey that. So I think that’s a very huge part of it.
And in terms of the storytelling, one thing I’m proud of about the show is that we’re telling a very specific story for Bash that I think audiences are interested in, but I feel like we’re also trying to tell this kind of thematic story for everyone. Our stories are always about moving forward or starting over or reconciling old versions of ourselves with new versions of ourselves. We locate a theme and variations on the theme that allow audiences to connect with the show. And that that’s why audiences are interested in following those characters on their journeys. And finally, Transplant is a medical procedural, yes, but it’s very much about the main characters. Some of these shows have a balance that skews towards the guest stars, the patients, whereas our show is really, really firmly grounded in the doctors and the main characters. So we try really hard to get you engaged on that level as well.
Was there anything that you changed between seasons? Anything you felt needed tweaking? JK: We did some tweaking. From a narrative perspective, we feel like we’re going through stages of Bash’s journey, so we’re digging into a different side of it now. He’s kind of grasping onto job security and we get to open up deeper and wider emotional stories to tell, and that changes things, I’d say, just in terms of how we address the storytelling overall. From my perspective as a writer and producer and of all people who make the show, the directors, the editors, the people on set, we’ve gotten better at all sides of it, so it allows us some more freedom.
When we last left the group, Jed had collapsed from a stroke. Did you always know that would be the Season 1 cliffhanger? JK: In the first season I actually had intended to kill John’s character in the finale. I had always been really fascinated by the death of the mentor part of a hero’s journey. And that’s what we started off kind of thinking that Bash would’ve saved him in the pilot and there’d be lingering effects from what had happened that just kind of come out of nowhere and kill him and then Bash would’ve had to move forward without him. By around Episode 4 of production in Season 1 we realized, ‘We can’t do that.’ He’s too good. He makes everything around him better, as an actor, as a human being, as a person to collaborate with. He’s just a wonderful presence and performer.
In Monday’s episode, we are introduced to Dr. Mark Novak, who shakes up the department. I love Gord Rand and was thrilled to see him play this character. JK: I like to think of [Mark] as a little bit puckish, because he’s an agent of chaos and that’s a really fun thing to write, too, and Gord really delivered.
A question about your writer’s room. Adam Barken, Stephanie Morgenstern, Mark Ellis, Rachel Langer, Julie Puckrin … what a who’s who of a writer’s room. What was it like working with these folks in the writer’s room for Season 2? JK: We’ve been blessed on that level across the board. Everybody was really excited to come onto the show when the writing started for Season 2. And yeah, you absolutely nailed it, it’s kind of an all-star list of writers that you just rattled off. They’re all incredible. One thing that I think is great with Transplant is because there’s freedom in the narrative when it comes to the kinds of stories we tell it encourages great writers like that to come with stories they are really passionate about, they would love to tell that maybe it would be harder to tell in other kinds of places. And I always am like, ‘Yeah, let’s find a way to tell that story.’ I feel like it excites the writers, so we have this season all throughout, all of those people brought selflessly pieces of themselves to share and pour into the show. And I’m really proud of the results that are great. We’re lucky to have them.
“Guardrail” really kicks off Season 2 with incredible visuals. JK: I want to shout out to Stefan Pleszczynski, our lead director and one of the EPs this year who is a huge part of just maintaining the aesthetic consistency of the show. Beyond Stef, the whole production team is really committed to that. Our director of photography, Pierre Gill, is an unbelievably talented guy, and we sort of across the board take that really, really seriously. Directors who come to the show all want to knock it out of the park on a visual level. There’s a way that the show’s written that encourages long takes or exciting movement, and the directors all really like to play and make the production value really sing.
What types of stories are on the way in Season 2? There are stories coming up where we deal with different issues, medical issues, cultural issues. And in all of those cases, we just take the research and authenticity and truthfulness component extremely hard, because I think that something that’s inherent to the tone of the show across the board is it tries to be grounded. It tries to be human. It tries to be emotionally honest. So we always like to do that work and we challenge ourselves to do that work and be challenged all the way from idea to beyond editing, and editing is still doing that work.
You ended the first season with a cliffhanger. Is that the same with Season 2? Have you set that bar? Is there a cliffhanger at the end? JK: There is a cliffhanger at the end of Season 2. There are multiple cliffhangers.
Like other fans, I was gutted when Kim’s Convenience came to an end. I missed the laughs, the family dynamic, and the diversity I was seeing on my television screen. Thankfully, that hole has been filled by Andrew Phung—Kim’s Convenience‘s Kimchee—in Run the Burbs.
Co-created by Phung and his best bud and collaborator, filmmaker Scott Townend, Run the Burbs—debuting Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. on CBC—follows the Phams, a young Vietnamese-South Asian-Canadian family living on a cul-de-sac in the suburbs.
“Relatable” was the first word that came to mind as I watched the debut episode of Run the Burbs. In those opening moments, I witnessed something I’ve done myself: trying to deliver a trunkful of groceries from the car into my house in one trip. To see the Phams—father Andrew (Phung), mother Camille (Rakhee Morzaria), daughter Khia (Zoriah Wong) and son Leo (Roman Pesino)—draped like pack mules struggling in the heat, made me laugh out loud at them, and myself.
“For this family, in particular, they make these mundane moments big,” Townend says. “And there are the families around them as well. People are going to say, ‘I have a neighbour like that.’ I’ve got neighbours like this, Andrew’s got neighbours like that. It was important to find the comedy in those everyday moments.”
In the works since the summer of 2019, Phung says Run the Burbs came organically and easily, thanks in large part to their longtime friendship and the way they constantly supported each other. By December of that year, Phung was confident what they had created would end up on a network.
“We had something here that was so fun and full of life and energetic,” Phung says. “What’s wild to me is that, through the process, a lot of it has remained the same.”
At the centre of Run the Burbs is Andrew Pham, a whirling dervish of a man who is full of positivity, good-natured humour and truly believes in the good in everyone. Even when there are down moments, like in Episode 1, when a planned block party seems to be going off the rails, it doesn’t last long. And with high-powered and diverse comedic talent in Phung’s co-stars and supporting roles played by Aurora Browne, Ali Hassan, Julie Nolke, Jonathan Langdon, Chris Locke, Samantha Wan, Simone Miller and the late Candy Palmater, the laughs are loud and last long.
“We are incredibly fortunate to have the cast that we do,” Townend says. “It is a powerhouse of comedy and every episode, every actor brought something new to the part. They took what was on the page, directors included, elevated it and made it better.”
Run the Burbs airs Wednesdays at 8:30 p.m. on CBC and CBC Gem.
CBC was delivered a one-two punch to its primetime comedy lineup when Schitt’s Creek and Kim’s Convenience both ended. Thankfully, the huge holes left by those two wonderful series are being filled by equally special projects this winter, Son of a Critch and Run the Burbs.
Debuting Tuesday at 8:30 p.m. on CBC and CBC Gem, Son of a Critch—co-created by Mark Critch and Tim McAuliffe—brings Critch’s childhood to life in a hilarious and truly relatable way. Based on the award-winning, best-selling memoir by Critch, the comedy tracks 11-year-old Mark (played by Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) as he heads off to a new school in 1980s St. John’s, Newfoundland.
As a child of the 80s, I was immediately drawn in and related to Young Mark and what he was going through. What kid hasn’t felt out of place in his own skin, and tried mightily to fit in? Throw in a rocking soundtrack of 80s tunes complemented by music from Keith Power and Alan Doyle, a cast that includes Critch as his own father, Mike, Claire Rankin as his mother, Mary, Malcolm McDowell as his grandfather, Pop, and Colton Gobbo as his brother, Mike Jr., and Son of a Critch is instantly enjoyable.
“It was very strange,” Critch says of being on the set of the television show for the first time. His family home, torn down in the 1990s, was recreated from his sketches and memories. And parts of his wardrobe, as Mike Sr., were his father’s.
“I remember looking down at one point and seeing my grandmother’s wicker chair in my peripheral vision, the radio that I listened to every day during the winter to see if it was going to be a snow day and wearing my Dad’s jacket and thinking, ‘I’m inside a memory.’ And then looking over and seeing Malcolm McDowell and saying to myself, ‘You sick fool, you should be talking to a therapist about this!'”
McDowell is just the tip of the iceberg in a stunning cast assembled for Son of a Critch. It all starts with Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, who puts everyone else on his back to carry the series as Young Mark. The British actor, who most recently appeared in The Haunting of Bly Manor, pulls in viewers with his large, soulful eyes and sensitive performance.
“I’ve never seen anybody better than Benjamin,” Critch says. “I’ve never had that Hollywood experience, where he was doing his audition and I said, ‘Stop, we need to get that guy. Here are my keys and my house, just get that guy!'”
Son of a Critch airs Tuesdays at 8:30 p.m. on CBC and CBC Gem.
