Tag Archives: Featured

Continuum, Featured

Interview: Continuum’s Roger Cross is enjoying his career ride

There’s something you should know about Roger Cross. The man exudes positive energy and loves to laugh. Far from his Continuum character of Travis, the Vancouver-raised actor is a staple of Canadian programming. If you film a TV show in this country, odds are Cross will be in it.

With Continuum‘s penultimate episode, “The Desperate Hours,” set to roll this Friday, we grabbed five minutes with Cross to talk Liber8, auditioning and filming in his favourite city.

Can you talk about the tentative relationship between Liber8 and Kiera this season? It’s foreign to die-hard fans.
Roger Cross: What I love about it is that it shows growth. I grew up very religious, Christian. That’s my belief system and my doctrine, but later on you discover there’s a lot of beauty in the Muslim religion and in Buddhism. If you expand you mind and your views … you know. With Kiera, she came in with this one mind that we’re so bad, but in the end we’re trying to help people. It’s a great growth for her and for us as well. Travis has a very militant way of doing things and he learns that maybe that’s not always the best way. It’s a coming together and learning from each other.

What are you taking from the set?
I’m going to take some gear. Or maybe a piece of a time ball. Where’s the prop department? I need to cozy up to them. [Laughs.]

The CBC did a piece on the burgeoning TV and film industry in Vancouver. What’s it like for a guy like you to be working here so much?
People think they know about it, but they really don’t know about it. I think the segment said there are 42 projects filming in Vancouver. That’s a busy city and I think that’s why Hollywood is upset too. There are a lot of major productions here.

You’ve made your career out here. Every show filming in Vancouver seems to feature you in some way.
They keep me busy. It’s a great thing.

Do you have a favourite Canadian city for filming?
They’re all so different. I do have a special place for Vancouver because where else do you get this view? You have the water, the lush greenery, the mountains, the fresh air … it’s a special place. It’s home for me. I moved here when I was 11. Yes, I live in L.A. and I love it there too, but as you know, you don’t get the lush green in L.A. Toronto has its own energy and its own way of doing things. I’ve been there for the last two years filming The Strain and now Dark Matter, and I’ve gotten to know Toronto a lot better.

How do you get gigs for The Strain and Dark Matter? Are you auditioning, or are folks writing parts with you in mind?
It happens both ways. There are times when I get a call where someone is thinking of me for a part, but yes, I still do audition by going in and earning my pay. Guillermo del Toro isn’t handing anything to anyone on The Strain. I did the auction for that and got it, which was great. For Dark Matter, I was in the Dominican Republic and recorded the audition tape down there and sent it back and got the role.

How great is technology? You’re on vacation and can film an audition on your laptop and send it off.
[Laughs.] It really is. You just use your iPhone to record it, upload it and boom!

Continuum airs Fridays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Showcase.

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Featured, Reality, Lifestyle & Documentary

Crash Gallery kicks off CBC’s evocative, inventive arts brand

One of the most interesting segments of CBC’s spring upfront announcement was the network’s return to spotlighting the arts. What began earlier this month with televised HD performances of The Stratford Festival’s King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra and King John continues in October with the high-intensity Crash Gallery, evocative Exhibitionists and, in November, the inventive Interrupt This Program.

The trio of televised entries—along with online series in The Collective, Canada in the Frame and The Re-Education of Eddy Rogo—represent a re-focussing on something the CBC was known for years ago, but had dropped from schedules because of eroding ratings. Viewers’ tastes were changing, and a one-shot aimed at a ballet dancer on-stage just wasn’t cutting it. Those cyclical tastes have evolved yet again, and CBC is jumping in with both feet.

“As niche broadcasting has grown and as more arts online have exploded, it’s a natural place for us to come back,” says Grazyna Krupa, executive in charge of programming, Arts, CBC Television. “It makes complete sense for us to say, ‘Let’s figure out what works on television and expand what we do online as well. Let’s experiment a little bit and explore how audiences celebrate art in a new way.'”

That all begins Friday with Crash Gallery, a unique twist on the competition reality series. Shot in Vancouver and hosted Sean O’Neill, the Art Gallery of Ontario’s associate director of adult programming and partnerships, Crash Gallery pits three homegrown artists from diverse backgrounds in 30-minute head-to-head competitions. Their task? Create fresh art based on a theme in front of a live audience who vote their favourite work onto the next round. Friday’s debut pits puppeteer Jeny, illustrator (and past Top Chef Canada finalist) Pierre and painter Leilani, who—in the first round—are tasked with creating the theme of love onto a large canvas using paint-filled toy water pistols. After one artist is eliminated, the final two battle for supremacy by crafting a sculpture constructed of glow sticks.

“Crash Gallery felt fresh and new, and it’s immersive,” Krupa says. “We found we enjoyed being drawn into it like our children with Art Attack. The Crash Gallery artists get this immediate good vibe from the crowd. It’s more like an experience than a reality show. You’re not going to walk away from this psychologically damaged.”

Exhibitionists

Exhibitionists—hosted by artist, educator, actor and playwright Amanda Parris—consists of segments that currently exist on CBC.ca and introduces viewers to emerging and established Canadian artists from across the country and what they’re up to. Grupa says anything is game, from GIFs to Stephen Dunn, whose Closet Monster won Best Canadian Feature Film at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

World art is brought to Canada via Interrupt This Program, which Krupa describes as having an Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown feel in telling the stories of street, spoken word, writers and performance art in such cities as Beirut, Athens, Port-au-Prince and Kiev.

Krupa isn’t peering at this plan through rose-coloured glasses, acknowledging that—like anything else on television—ratings will be the final word on this programming stream. The Canadian arts community is excited for the opportunity to be showcased by the public broadcaster, especially less-celebrated works by costume designers, architects and set designers beyond the traditional art categories.

“I want viewers to feel odd, amazed, proud and engaged,” Krupa says. “I want them to get something out if each program, whether it’s knowledge of art or a sense of adventure, and a celebration. These are, for the most part, joyous programs that lift your spirit and that’s what the arts do.”

Crash Gallery airs Fridays at 8:30 p.m., Exhibitionists airs Sundays at 4:30 p.m., and Interrupt This Program airs Fridays at 8:30 p.m. (beginning Nov. 6) on CBC.

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Amazing Race Canada, Featured, Podcast

TV Eh B Cs podcast – The Many Realities of Mike Bickerton

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Amazing

Over the past decade Mike Bickerton has been part of an Amazing Race to bring reality television to Canada. He had directed and produced a staggering list of the country’s most notable reality series including:

Game of Homes, Child Star, The Real Housewives of Vancouver, The Bachelor Canada, Village on a Diet, So You Think You Can Dance Canada, MasterChef Canada, Canada Sings, Battle of the Blades, Canada’s Next Top Model, and Canadian Idol.

He’s currently the senior producer of CTV’s rating’s bonanza Amazing Race Canada which just got picked up for 2016. We talk everything you wanted to know about Canadian reality series but were afraid to ask… lest you get voted out of the country.

Listen or download below, or subscribe via iTunes or any other podcast catcher with the TV, eh? podcast feed.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Children's Programming

Hi Opie! takes Toronto by storm

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It’s one thing to be told Opie is a smash with kids, but it’s entirely another to see it up close and personal.

That was the case Sunday at Toronto’s Word on the Street Festival celebrating literacy and the printed word. TVOKids’ superstar Opie was on hand alongside Gisele to encourage imagination through storytelling—Opie starred in his own bedtime story as Opie-naut, where he encountered aliens called Purple Lurples—and the kids in attendance ate it up. While some preschool aged kids bopped, bounced and bellowed, others stood in rapt attention as Opie, sporting a helmet constructed of aluminum pie plates, told of his otherworldly adventures.

Those adventures extend to Season 2 of Hi Opie! Currently airing on TVO, City Saskatchewan and The Knowledge Network (see airtimes below), Hi Opie! continues to educate and entertain as he helps children transition from home to school. A creation of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, the orange-skinned kindergartner is voiced and operated by Jordan Lockhart. It’s quite a kick to hear Opie’s voice come out of the mouth of the lanky, sunglass-wearing Lockhart; he says it took time for him to figure out how Opie would sound and act.

“There was a lot of sweat, blood and tears put into finding the voice and the character,” Lockhart admits. “I think we started shooting [Season 1] before we really landed on what it is now. I’m really happy with the way the character has developed over these last two years and I’m excited to see where he goes from here.” Lockhart landed the plum gig after meeting with legendary puppeteer Rob Mills at an event. Mills told Lockhart to introduce himself to longtime Henson show producer Lawrence Mirkin; the two connected and struck up a relationship. A year later, Mirkin contacted Lockhart to send in an audition tape, followed by reading a script and then a callback for his latest production: Hi Opie!

Lockhart is constantly amazed not only by the quality of scripts he encounters on the set—the series expands to multiple classrooms this year—but by the child actors he interacts with on-set. Unlike most actors, he’s quite happy crouched down and out of a camera’s line of site and takes pride in an odd circumstance unique to puppeteers.

“It’s incredible to see these little people but into the illusion and it’s enormously gratifying to me,” Lockhart explains. “They are completely unaware of my presence and are locked into Opie. You have to really be present and listen to these people, and what you end up seeing is a complete abandonment of reality.”

Hi Opie! airs weekdays at 6:15 a.m. ET, 10:30 a.m. ET and 1:50 p.m. ET on TVO, weekdays at 9 a.m. CST and 11 a.m. CST on City Saskatchewan and weekdays at 11:50 a.m. PT on The Knowledge Network.

 

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Featured, Sunnyside

Smart and silly Sunnyside returns to City

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Sunnyside is back, and Sundays on City will never be the same. Sandwiched between American fare Bob’s Burgers and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, the ribald sketch comedy series co-created by Gary Pearson and Dan Redican returns for smart and silly second half of Season 1.

Back for more hijinks are established characters like the trio of Meth Denise, Meth Kimmie and Meth Georgette, Shaytan the demonic barista, Molly the virgin and put-upon husband Graham alongside new creations like the Punching Priest (Rob Norman, who drills those who use the Lord’s name in vain and their cell phones in church with a boxing glove) and Dixon (played by Pat Thornton), who is tasked with buying tampons for his wife. It’s a job given many men, but there’s a twist to it in that strange place called Sunnyside: a war has broken out on the streets and Dixon dodges bullets on his way to the store.

Sunnyside_cast

“There is a war going on and nobody knows why,” Kathleen Phillips says with a laugh. The writer, actor and comedian who portrays memorable ladies like Denise, Molly and Carla, explains the bigger picture storylines for the remaining seven episodes include a volcano eruption, the Second Coming of Christ and the Rapture. Originally ordered for six episodes, Rogers greenlit an additional seven instalments, meaning Phillips, Thornton, Norman, Redican, Pearson and fellow cast Alice Moran, Kevin Vidal and Patrice Goodman headed back to Winnipeg. As Phillips explains, that meant returning to a familiar setting with established characters they could complement with new ones and plunge everyone into more outlandish scenarios.

“There’s never really a time when we say, ‘That’s too crazy,'” Phillips interjects. “If anything, we say, ‘That’s not big or weird enough.'” And while the cast may suss out who the characters are in the writers’ room, Phillips divulges the series’ hair, makeup and wardrobe team play an integral part in helping shape Sunnyside’s citizens.

“It informs everything,” she says. “Sometimes you see the script and you don’t know who the character is because you haven’t had time to sit down and figure out the nuances until you have the costume and the wig on and you’re walking to set. And then you have it.” Aside from Sunnyside, Phillips can be seen reprising her role of librarian Miss Terdie in Season 5 of Mr. D when it returns to CBC in January, and most Thursdays at Comedy Bar where she appears in the Laugh Sabbath comedy collective. Also on tap? She’s working on Filth City, a feature film from LaRue Entertainment headed to Super Channel in 2016, filming her own short film and appearances slated for the Guelph Comedy Festival on Oct. 3 and the Cream of Comedy’s 20th Anniversary show on Oct. 22.

Sunnyside airs Sundays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on City.

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