Tag Archives: Bell Media

Captivating Canadian original series reign supreme on Discovery this fall including debut of The Mightiest

From a media release:

This fall, Discovery delivers series with astounding stories of human strength, savvy, and adventurous spirit including the debut of the all-new Discovery Original THE MIGHTIEST. Premiering Wednesday, Nov. 23 at 8 p.m. ET, the six-episode, one-hour docu-series follows veteran adventure hosts Aliya Jasmine and Teddy Wilson as they take to the field to witness the mightiest of machines take on new missions. From re-engineered Chinook helitankers fighting wildfires 24/7 in Southern California, to a train that helps sustain life and connect communities, the series reveals the innovation and science that enable these machines to conquer nearly impossible challenges. Shot across Canada, Europe, and the U.S. in 2022, THE MIGHTIEST is produced in partnership with Bell Media Studios and Exploration Productions.

Leading up to the launch of THE MIGHTIEST is the highly anticipated Season 2 premiere of Discovery Original docu-series MUD MOUNTAIN HAULERS, Monday, Oct. 31 at 10 p.m. ET. Then, Season 2 of extreme adventure series LAST OF THE GIANTS kicks off on Thursday, Nov. 24 at 9 p.m. ET, and the two-part special event AFTER THE STORM, which features stories of last year’s widespread flooding in the Pacific Northwest, premieres on Thursday, Dec. 15 at 10 p.m. ET. Meanwhile, new episodes of beloved Discovery Original series HIGHWAY THRU HELL air Mondays at 9 p.m. ET throughout the year.

Discovery Canadian Original Series Premieres:

MUD MOUNTAIN HAULERS – Season 2

Mondays at 10 p.m. ET, beginning Oct. 31

In the new season of MUD MOUNTAIN HAULERS, brothers Craig and Brent Lebeau, third-generation loggers hoping for a successful logging season, and brothers Shane and Chad Glover, second-generation loggers based in the Kootenay region of B.C., along with their father Gary Glover, battle treacherous terrain, unpredictable weather, and complex machinery to get their logs to the mill.

In the season premiere “Let’s Get This Party Started,” Craig LeBeau and his crew set up camp in a remote part of the Shuswap Highlands, on the steepest, baddest block any of them has ever seen: Gollen. Things start out well, until bad weather and a stuck truck derail the entire operation. Meanwhile, Brent’s clearing a snowmobile trail for a local ski resort but, with so many jobs on the go, a mechanical oversight and impending snowfall may cost him the entire job.

MUD MOUNTAIN HAULERS is produced by Great Pacific Media.

THE MIGHTIESTSeries Premiere

Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET, beginning Nov. 23

THE MIGHTIEST takes to the field to witness mega machines take on all-new mighty missions, giving viewers an all-access pass to every aspect of the vessel and the people around it as it embarks on a new and dangerous journey.

In the series premiere “Launch Day,” host Teddy Wilson is aboard the U.S. Navy’s newest and largest aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford to document final training and tensions rising as the crew prepares for its long awaited first mission. The episode also looks at the massive Airbus A-380’s first landing into a major North American hub, the re-launch of a flying telescope after being grounded for months, and final touches on a cruise ship three times bigger than the Titanic.

LAST OF THE GIANTS – Season 2

Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET, beginning Nov. 24

After their action-packed adventures in North America and the Amazon, Cyril and the team are back with more high-adrenaline missions in Argentina, Nicaragua and the Marquesas Islands in the South Pacific.

In Argentina, searching for swamp-dwelling, deadly stingray, Cyril and the team venture into dangerous, uncharted rivers. Trekking through Nicaragua, the team skillfully evade deadly predators as they seek out the prehistoric giant Tarpon and the Goliath Grouper. Finally, journeying to the most remote islands in the South Pacific, Cyril leads a scuba dive through swarms of sharks and moray eels to find a giant trevally, an ocean predator capable of explosive attacks and even snatching birds from the sky.

LAST OF THE GIANTS is produced by Untamed Productions.

AFTER THE STORMTwo-Part Special Event

Thursday, Dec. 15 and 22 at 10 p.m. ET

In November 2021 an unprecedented storm slams into the Pacific Northwest, pummeling the region with a month’s worth of rain in just 48 hours. As rivers break their banks and landslides erupt from the coastal mountains,15,000 people flee their homes via crumbling highways and collapsing bridges. Many of those homes – and the land they sit on – are soon swept away.

AFTER THE STORM follows the events firsthand with the people who fought through this historic flood – from the first signs of trouble brewing over the ocean through the days of impact, with experts explaining the forces behind the disaster. In the aftermath engineers and towns race to rebuild vital infrastructure and roads connecting the coast to the rest of the country. Even when the trucks and trains are rolling again, the ongoing question is about the future: how to build back better in the face of more unpredictable weather – and more unforgiving storms to come.

Part 1 – “A River In The Sky” – Thursday, Dec. 15 at 10 p.m. ET

When the storm of the century hits the west coast, smashing rainfall records, no one is fully prepared. As the storm takes hold, landslides batter highways, trapping hundreds of drivers. Chelsey Hughes is heading home from a weekend getaway when a wall of debris slams into her car, throwing her into a river of mud and into a fight for survival. In the nearby Sumas region, community heroes like Gary Baars jump into action when rising water overwhelms the system of dikes and pumps that protects their land. Local farmers mount daring rescues of stranded workers and drowning livestock. As defenses collapse, one group of locals works through the night to save the pump station – their community’s last safeguard. In the storm’s aftermath workers race to rebuild dikes and reconnect important roads. Beyond the rush to fix what’s broken, experts explore new ways to manage life in vulnerable flood plains and adapt to the intensifying forces of nature.

Part 2 – “Hell or High Water” – Thursday, Dec. 22 at 10 p.m. ET

On the heels of the summer heat dome, which sparked catastrophic wildfires across southern B.C., November’s atmospheric river brings record-breaking rainfall. In the province’s desert-like interior, firefighter Dylan Bullock is still recovering from severe burns that he suffered in the wildfires. When parched mountains can’t absorb the rainfall, it pours into the rivers and into the city of Merritt. As floodwater submerges the nearby wastewater treatment plant, 7000 residents must evacuate – just as collapsing highways and bridges cut off escape routes. In small, isolated communities the raging Nicola River devours land and houses, stranding locals and triggering dramatic rescues. In the weeks that follow the storm, crews work tirelessly to fix the water plant and improvise repairs to let traffic and supplies start flowing, and engineers analyze what other countries are doing to mitigate flood damage and build more resilient infrastructure.

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Preview: Paul Rabliauskas shines in CTV Comedy Channel’s raucous Acting Good

In 2016, Letterkenny made a huge splash when it debuted on the then-Crave TV. Jared Keeso told the expletive-filled story of a small town full of odd folks getting up to all kinds of shenanigans. Letterkenny is still going strong 10 seasons of six episodes later.

I expect the same for Acting Good.

Kicking off on Monday at 10:30 p.m. ET/PT on CTV Comedy Channel, Acting Good, co-created and starring Anishinaabe standup comedian Paul Rabliauskas, is a raucous showcase for his comedic talents.

Loosely based on his life at Poplar River First Nation in Manitoba and the family and friends that inhabited that community, Rabliauskas plays Paul, a man who moves back to his eccentric family in the fly-in community of Grouse Lake First Nation after life in Winnipeg goes awry. Tail between his legs, Paul is at the mocking mercy of sister Jo (Roseanne Supernault), cousin Dean (Gabriel Daniels), mother Agnes (Tina Keeper, who is also a producer) and ex-girlfriend Rose (Cheyenna Sapp).

The debut instalment—directed by award-winning actor, director and choreographer Michael Greyeyes—pokes fun at land acknowledgments, bullying, “Indian time” and a breakdown of a certain mouth sound that had me giggling.

Sharply written by Rabliauskas and co-showrunners Amber-Sekowan Daniels, Eric Toth and Pat Thornton, Acting Good has a lot of heart wrapped up in its first 22 minutes and is well worth tuning in to.

Acting Good airs Mondays at 10:30 p.m. ET/PT on CTV Comedy Channel.

Image courtesy of Bell Media.

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Children Ruin Everything’s Aaron Abrams: “Their love is very present and they love their kids”

Life with young children can be chaotic. There are school lunches to make, school to get to, after-school clubs to attend, play dates to coordinate, teeth to be brushed and bedtime stories to be read. It can be exhausting, frustrating, and maybe a little infuriating at times, but it’s ultimately rewarding.

That’s the main theme of Children Ruin Everything.

Now in its second season on CTV, the Monday night comedy stars Meaghan Rath and Aaron Abrams as Astrid and James, who are juggling work, going back to work, in-laws and friends when you have kids in your life. In the second season, siblings Felix (Logan Nicholson) and Viv (Mikayla SwamiNathan) are joined by an infant brother, meaning they’re now sharing a room. That, of course, results in conversations about sharing and privacy.

“This season, we really get into more chaos, obviously, because there is another baby,” Abrams says. Because of COVID-19, the first season of Children Ruin Everything was rushed and stressful. The sophomore go-round was much more relaxing, allowing for what he calls a “blooper energy,” between him and co-star Rath. That is evident on-screen too; there is an ease in their performances that is natural and easy to like and their physical comedy is unmatched.

The aforementioned privacy angle is addressed in Monday’s new episode, “Privacy,” where Astrid and her sister, Dawn (Nazneen Contractor), are convinced their mother, Nisha (Veena Sood), is keeping something from them. Meanwhile, a request to launch a new product at work leads James to agree to meet with Ennis’ (Ennis Esmer) sketchy cousin to consider his new gummy product, and soon they’re roping in more of James’ family to help with the pitch. Kim Coates drops by for the instalment, adding to an impressive list of guest stars that have included Anna Hopkins, MasterChef Canada winner Mary Berg and Aaron Ashmore.

There are many, many family sitcoms battling for primetime eyeballs, but nothing, Abrams says, like Children Ruin Everything.

“The show is about parenting, and the parents are emotionally intelligent communicative people,” he says. “To me, that was not only a new way of doing things—where they weren’t at odds and the dude isn’t some big palooka trying to watch the game and she’s a shrew—this is a couple who is a team. Their love is very present and they love their kids. And that, to me, made it funnier.

“They are smart people who are constantly being turned into idiots.”

Children Ruin Everything airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on CTV.

Image courtesy of Bell Media.

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Preview: CTV’s Transplant kicks off Season 3 in shocking style

When we last left Bash, his career and those around him were at a crossroads. He was offered a job in the new trauma OR, but his mentor, Jed, left the hospital. Mags, meanwhile, aimed to change her residency, June was about to get a new roommate in the almost stepsister she didn’t know she had and Theo’s life was on the line following a helicopter crash.

So, yeah, there is a lot to address when the award-winning Transplant returns this Friday on CTV. Here’s what the network released as the official synopsis for “Fracture,” written by creator Joseph Kay and directed by Stefan Pleszczynski.

Bash’s decisions lead to conflict with the new Chief of Emergency Medicine, Dr. Neeta Devi (Rekha Sharma). Mags (Laurence Leboeuf) struggles to save a patient who thinks the system gave up on her. June (Ayisha Issa) has trouble with her new roommate – who happens to be her almost-step-sister – and gets a work proposal from Novak (Gord Rand). Theo (Jim Watson) has trouble adapting.

And here are some non-spoilery tidbits I picked up while watching a preview:

Bash and Amira become Canadian citizens
A month after the events of the Season 2 finale, we meet up with Bash and Amira, who are nervously waiting in a government office to begin the citizenship process (no word on how long they’d been waiting for an appointment), when a woman has difficulty breathing and Bash leaps to action. As an aside, I’m very impressed with Sirena Gulamgaus’ acting chops. She wasn’t a newbie actress when she started on Transplant, but her growth as a performer has evolved over the past two seasons.

We’re introduced to Dr. Neeta Devi
Played by Rekha Sharma—who has been so great in Yellowjackets—Chief of Emergency Medicine Dr. Devi dramatically enters York Memorial on the heels of a shocking chain reaction accident.

Theo fights to survive
Spoiler alert! Jim survived the helicopter crash. But now the real test begins; can he make his way to safety in Ontario’s unforgiving North? And if he does, how will what happened affect him?

A memorable guest gig
Veteran actor Joe Cobden (This Life, Bellevue) turns in one heck of a performance as a man who confounds Bash with his post-op demeanour. First responder series like Transplant rely on killer casting to supply episodes with engaging characters dipping in and out of York Memorial and Cobden nails his gig.

Are Mags and Bash … a thing?
There are lots of longing looks between the two during the first half of Friday’s return, but nothing to suggest anything intimate might have occurred in the last month.

Transplant airs Fridays at 9 p.m. Eastern on CTV.

Images courtesy of Bell Media.

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Cynthia Loyst celebrates 10 seasons on The Social

The first season of The Social is memorable to Cynthia Loyst for a couple of reasons. Back when it launched in September 2013, Loyst was, as she describes, “a sleep-deprived new mom pumping my breasts backstage between rehearsals.” And, secondly, there was a chemistry between the hosts at that time—Melissa Grelo, Lainey Lui, Loyst and Traci Melchor—she noticed right away.

With Season 10 of The Social returning this week at 1 p.m. ET on CTV Grelo, Lui and Jess Allen, Loyst looks back on the past nine seasons.

Congratulations on your upcoming 10th season of The Social.
Cynthia Loyst: I cannot believe it’s the 10th season of The Social. I was literally pregnant when we were doing auditions for this show. And then when we launched the show, I was a sleep-deprived new mom who was pumping my breasts backstage in between rehearsals and things. So we’ve come a long way. I have this boy who’s going into Grade 4.

Back when you were doing the auditions and you were pregnant, what were your thoughts at the time? Were you thinking, ‘What were they thinking when they asked me to do this? Or what was I thinking when I agreed to do this?’
CL: Well, it’s interesting because there were rumours of a show being developed that was kind of going to be a Canadian version of The View for a long time prior to this. Even when I was doing the audition, I was like, ‘Well, is this thing even going to happen?’ But then it seemed like it was becoming more of a reality. And I thought, ‘Well, there’s no way they’re going to hire me,’ because the timeline was such that I would’ve been just after giving birth. So I thought, ‘I’m probably out of the running,’ But then I got the call and was told that I was going to be part of the cast. I was shocked. I went through a variety of emotions. I was shocked. I was elated. And then I was terrified.

And was there chemistry between the hosting panel back then? Was it immediate?
CL: There were a bunch of different people who auditioned. The producers threw us in different combinations and configurations and the very, very first test group was the original four of us who were actually hired. There was really good chemistry, but I didn’t think much of it at the time. But looking back, it was clear that there was a kind of electricity with that first initial four. And clearly, other people felt it too, because my understanding is they went through a bunch of different combinations and then they showed them to test audiences to see what people really were resonating towards. And so I think part of that was what was immediately picked up on.

You can’t fake chemistry on television.
CL: We didn’t know each other all that well, but there was a mutual respect right away. And even though we didn’t come from necessarily different political backgrounds, a la The View, we were definitely very different women. We’re not the type of women who would necessarily be thrown together and have come together naturally. For whatever reason though, I think there was just a combination of stage of life, experience level, and I think passion for hot topics and a willingness to speak out that brought out some kind of interesting magic and alchemy.

What were your expectations during that first season?
CL: I think my expectations were just to stay treading water. I couldn’t really think beyond the end of the day. Because I was sleep-deprived and because I was this new mom, everything felt very new and I don’t remember thinking that it would last past the season, but I don’t remember thinking it wouldn’t last past the season. I was just kind of like, ‘Let’s keep this thing as long as we can.’

Can you walk me through the process of how the content of an episode of The Social is decided?
CL: Every evening or afternoon, we get a lineup of pitches. Our producers and us have contributed anything that comes across our feed that we feel passionate about or excited about. And somebody assembles that into a short list. Sometimes it’s as many as 40 pitches and they have links attached to them. We go through them, we pick our topic, like six or seven, and we send that in. Then the producers meet early in the morning before we are part of that and hammer out what they think will be our hot topic topics from segments one, two, and now three. And then we meet all together in person and we kind of hash it out around the table. During the pandemic, it was all on a Zoom call or on a phone call.

Sometimes we’re able to immediately go, ‘OK, yeah. That lineup is amazing. Let’s run with it.’ And other times it’s quite a struggle. It might be that we feel it’s too much of a personal ask to go down a certain road. Or it might be that there’s a topic in the news that we feel like we don’t have enough information about. We don’t feel comfortable, let’s shelve that for tomorrow. Those are the types of discussions that we have at any given point in time.

Segments four and five now are lifestyle segments, so those are planned way in advance. It might be an author, a celebrity, a chef, or a fashion person. The show was conceived as feeling like you’re either going through a magazine or surrounded by a really interesting dinner party. It feels like that’s sort of spirit and energy of the show.

What is it that you particularly look for when all these pitches are brought to you or all these segment ideas? What gets you excited?
CL: My background is in sexual health and I’m a sex educator and that’s what I did first. I was producing for documentary series about sexuality. Relationships and love are big to me and I’m a parent, so I feel like whenever there’s something that kind of comes up in the parenting realm, often ignites something in me and I think a lot of our viewers. But then sometimes there’s unexpected stuff that comes up in the news, where you’re just like, ‘Even if I don’t immediately have an opinion or thought about it, I know it’s an important thing to delve into.’ And so then it becomes this sort of puzzle of doing research quickly to come up with something that’s articulate and thoughtful without just being like news. Because we aren’t the news.

We come after the news. But we aren’t news and that’s not what we’re supposed to be. We’re trying to add to an insight or a personal take or something that maybe people wouldn’t have thought of related to maybe a news topic. So it’s always different things that ignite. And sometimes I’ll read something and think, ‘Oh, I’m not that interested.’ But then in the meeting, someone will say something and they’ll spur on some kind of inspiration towards it.

Is there a standout moment for you or two over the last nine seasons?
CL: We obviously had a really hard time, like everyone else did, during the pandemic. It was hard doing a TV show where you’re used to communicating in real-time and having an audience and a connection. So that was a real challenge, but I think something beautiful came out of it. After the murder of George Floyd, the conversation immediately became, rightly so, about Black lives. And we had Tyrone Edwards from eTalk on the show and it was a moment that went viral.

He was so emotional and spoke from the heart and it was just an unforgettable moment and a really important one, I think, for viewers most of all to see that. I think it helps change a conversation and illuminate things that maybe hadn’t been seen on daytime TV before.

Anything else?
CL: I have this gigantic crush on Jason Momoa from Game of Thrones and Aquaman. He came on the show, and one of the producers, unbeknownst to me, had assembled a little montage of me talking about Jason Momoa. She played it for him on the show, much to my mortification, but he was a great sport about it. I wanted to climb out of my own skin and maybe hide behind the couch.

The Social airs weekdays at 1 p.m. ET on CTV.

Images courtesy of Bell Media.

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