Tag Archives: Featured

Featured, Mr. D

Interview: Naomi Snieckus is doing it on CBC

On the small screen, Naomi Sniekus can currently be seen playing Bobbi Galka, one of the offbeat teachers at Xavier Academy on CBC’s Mr. D.

Bobbi’s secret relationship with vice-principal Robert Cheeley (Jonathan Torrens) just went public in awkward fashion: she ran up and kissed him full on the mouth near the front office. It’s a relationship that has been simmering all season long, but while Robert wanted their sexual dalliances to evolve into relationship mode, she didn’t. And why would she? Bobbi found him gross to look at but incredible in the sack.

Turns out Snieckus is doing double duty for the CBC, starring alongside her husband and comedy partner, Matt Baram, in Doing It! With Brian & Darla, an online comedy series they co-wrote with Gavin Crawford for CBC Punchline that spoofs life hacks. Brian and Darla peer self-consciously into the camera as they offer helpful hints like placing a kiddie pool of warm, soapy water under your dining room table to put dirty dishes in, or creating a tunnel in a weiner to pump in mustard for a cleaner hot dog.

First of all, did you meet Roberto Alomar when he was on the set of Mr. D this season?
Naomi Snieckus: I didn’t. How do I put this? I like baseball and I enjoy live sports but I’m not like, ‘Oh my God! It’s Roberto Alomar!’ I’m no Gerry Dee. He was crying because he was so happy.

I feel like Mr. D is just an opportunity for Gerry to meet his favourite athletes.
NS: I don’t think you’re far off.

Is it tough when all of your are in the staff room filming scenes for staff meetings?
NS: It is hard to keep it together when we’re in those scenes. And it’s hard for the director to handle it but it adds to the energy of the scene, so it’s worthwhile to have those jokes. You want to be ready so that you’re not warming up after they call ‘Action.’ They always give us a little room to play, but the writing is so strong that we don’t need to. It’s all there. You might discover something in the moment and that’s always welcome.

What’s it like filming in Halifax? Everyone is there, so does it feel a little bit like summer camp?
NS: Total summer camp! We’re all so excited to get there and then on the last day we’re like, ‘I’ll write every day…’ If we shot in Toronto we would have busy lives outside of the show. We love it because we’re all in the same hotel, I bring my dog. It’s lovely.

How many sweat suits do you have in wardrobe?
NS: I have two pairs of track pants and I rotate tops. We have three changes in a day and I’m done my change and having bonbons at the craft table before everybody else. It’s great. And the rest of the girls say, ‘Oh, my shoes are hurting,’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, my running shoes are really uncomfortable!’ It’s a joke now that once a season I get to curl my hair and put on a skirt.

Doing_It

Let’s talk about Doing It! With Brian & Darla. How did it come about and how did it get on as part of CBC’s Punchline?
NS: We have this company, The National Theatre of the World, and we’re creating and developing more and more sketch. We started developing these characters and the CBC gave us a call and asked if we had anything we could turn into a web series. We always have 10 things in our pockets that we can pitch or work on. We had this idea and it was originally called How To with Naomi & Matt, but it was us as ourselves rather than characters. We pitched it and then we thought it would be a lot more fun to be characters. We re-vamped the pitch and took it back to them and they still liked it. They gave us a little bit of money and we shot it in three days in our house.

That really is your house.
NS: Every room of our house was used. There were holes in the walls and spaghetti splattered on the walls but every shot looked great.

Matt, can you talk about Punchline? This is yet another outlet for comedy teams like yourselves to get stuff out there that isn’t on YouTube.
Matt Baram: It’s a really great entry-level opportunity for somebody with a great idea that doesn’t cost a lot of money to make. I think CBC is coming around to the concept of getting folks online and then driving them to the TV. Most major networks in Canada are doing this; they can develop new talent. I think we were the first original content on there and I think people are seeing the possibilities. I think they’d love for something on Punchline to translate to something on the network.

If CBC came to you, could you turn Doing It! into a TV series?
MB: We didn’t go into this without the idea of having a half-hour pitch. Brian and Darla would be one aspect of what that show would be.

This sounds like it has the possibility of being something like Smith & Smith.
MB: Yeah, absolutely. I don’t know if we’d have an original duo song at the end of it, but yeah. Brian and Darla would fit perfectly into something like that. I would love to do a variety show in front of a live audience and have that live feel and also the sketches. That would be a dream.

Did you base Brian on anyone?
MB: Naomi and I have an imaginary friend named Brian that we blame all of out life missteps on. If someone didn’t take out the garbage, for instance, Naomi will go, ‘Ugh, Brian!’ There is a lot of weigh on his shoulders. He’s kind of there so that other people can blame him.

It must be pretty fun to skewer these life hack sites.
MB: As you satirize these people you realize there is a lot of self-satirization going on. How much time does it save you to blow the centre out of a hot dog weiner? And most of these things in attempting them was detracting minutes from our day.

I feel like this is a natural for a coffee table book.
MB: That’s a great idea. The books would be, How to Do Lovemaking, How to Do Cooking With Brian & Darla … a bunch of garbage ideas to make your life more complicated.

Mr. D airs Tuesdays at 9:30 p.m. on CBC; Doing It! With Brian & Darla can be found on CBC Punchline.

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Featured, Podcast

TV Eh B Cs podcast 16 – Hart Hanson Rolls the Bones

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HartHansonBorn in the USA and raised in Canada, Hart Hanson abandoned his dreams of being a guitar god, and graduated from University College, University of Toronto, with a degree in English and Political Theory. He decided to kickstart a writing career by riding his bicycle across Canada, documenting his adventures for the Toronto Sunday Sun.

Hanson wrote for a number of Canadian television programs, including The Black Stallion, Neon Rider, Northwood, The Odyssey, Outer Limits, Poltergeist, Road to Avonlea and the series Ready or Not, for which he received his first Gemini (Canadian Emmy) nomination.

Hanson wrote the pilot for Traders, which was picked up by the Global Television Network and ran for five years, winning many Geminis, including “Best Writing” for Hanson.

Hanson and his family moved to Los Angeles, where he worked on the short-lived series Cupid as a Supervising Producer, then as Co-Executive Producer on the even-shorter-lived series Snoops. He moved to Twentieth Century Fox and worked on the series Judging Amy for three seasons, rising to executive producer. He also helped launch the series Joan of Arcadia, and eventually wrote the pilot for what is now a decade-long run of Bones on FOX.

His newest series Backstrom premiered on FOX in January.

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

Want to become a Patron of the Podcast? We’ve got a Patreon page where you can donate a small amount per podcast and get a sneak peek of each release.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Big Brother Canada, Featured

Review: Big Brother Canada returns with twists aplenty

It seems the only things staying the same on Big Brother Canada are the fact houseguests play, Arisa Cox hosts and there is a house for the players to stay in. Save that, everything else is up for grabs.

Full disclosure: I’ve never watched a season of Big Brother Canada, but I can tell from the get-go it will capture my interest. Taking away the houseguests’ food, personal effects and furniture and making them earn it? Genius. Forcing them to pick two players for elimination moments after arriving in the house? Brilliant.

In a case of first impressions meaning everything, no one knowing her name didn’t stop Risha from getting enough votes to put her on the block. Tall, blonde and wearing a cleavage-baring blouse put a target on that chest of hers and she was an easy pick. And since everyone knew Sindy’s name because she stressed she was “Sindy with an ‘S,'” it was equally easy for her to be chosen too. But just because they were on the block didn’t mean they were staying there. The debut Power of Veto competition saw a combined physical and mental test where Sindy used her brains to beat out poker player Brian—who blasted through the physical aspect—to win PoV and save herself from eviction.

Sindy chose Pilar to take her place on the chopping block before host Arisa Cox revealed everyone would be sleeping on the floor. And while Risha stressed she’d have to charm the houseguests into keeping her around (Hint: start with Bobby), she spent precious minutes sitting in the kitchen by herself while everyone else got to know each other. That won’t win you the $100,000.

Not that this week’s votes matter. Canada decides who is going home: go to the Big Brother Canada website to vote.

Notes and quotes

  • Why do the ladies take such high heels with them? Don’t they know there will be stairs in the Big Brother house?
  • He’s pretty annoying so far, but I’m cheering for Graig because we share the same name (though not the same spelling) and he’s labelled himself the Ginger Ninja.
  • The Big Brother set is impressive, but I got a “bike shop” feel rather than “steampunk.”

Big Brother Canada airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET/PT, Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT and Sundays at 7 p.m. ET/PT on Global.

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Featured, Murdoch Mysteries

Interview: George’s rejection on Murdoch Mysteries

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Poor George Crabtree. The guy is simply not lucky when it comes to love. That was driven home during Monday’s latest episode, “Election Day,” when Edna’s presumed-dead husband returned from overseas to crush Crabtree’s plans of marrying Edna and sharing a life with she and Simon.

George’s shattered love life was just one topic of our conversation with Michelle Ricci, who co-wrote “Election Day” with Mary Pedersen.

Damn you for making Crabtree cry!
Michelle Ricci: I know. Wasn’t that sad?

I kind of figured Edna’s husband would actually show up before the end of the season. Was that the intention all along or was there a chance George and Edna were going to make it as a couple?
We left it open. We weren’t quite sure in the early going. It had been eight years since Tamara Hope had been on the show and we wanted to see if she and Jonny still had that chemistry. They did and she did a great job of growing that character eight years on and having a life lived in between. It became a nice counterpoint to his previous relationships with Dr. Grace and his flirtation with Ruby. We felt it would be great to show Crabtree in a more dramatic environment, give him some curveballs and let him run with it. He did a great job. Wait until you see the finale. I was really impressed with how he took the dramatic scenes and made them very powerful.

Last night’s episode featured the return of the man some people love and others hate: Terrence Meyers.
He’s one of those polarizing characters. You either love to hate him or you love him. I always get a kick out of him because Peter Keleghan is so much fun to watch. He can really sell the ham. When you have a part like this, sometimes an actor will oversell it and not quite pull it off. But he’s one of those actors who can really pull it off and you don’t mind when he goes over the top. You relish it. Last year we had a dramatic turn for Meyers because he was implicated in a murder and things got a little tense for him. We really wanted to take it back to basics with the playful, ridiculous Meyers.

A lot of bodies. There’s a whole lot of bodies. Dead bodies. More than any other Murdoch episode ever.

It’s always fun to see Yannick play off of that. Yannick is the straight man on the show and over the last couple of seasons we’ve been trying to loosen him and he’ll sometimes ad lib some jokes. It’s always great when he goes up against Meyers because he can give it back to him. It was just the two of them going head-to-head without Clegg, the U.S. agent.

I spoke to Arwen Humphreys last week and noted the interesting remark Mrs. Brackenreid had to the Suffragette’s being a wasted vote.
A little bit of that scene might have gotten trimmed, but when we read it the first time, Arwen was wondering what Mrs. B was thinking. And then she realized that not only was Mrs. B representing women of the time but was being very true to her character in embodying that old adage that behind every strong man is a strong woman. A woman at the time would not have necessarily gone against the grain and put herself at risk the way that Ogden and Grace have. None of that would have occurred to her and by that same token she didn’t care about having to vote because her vote happened through Brackenreid. She’s telling him what to do. She’s telling him how to vote and he’s agreeing with her because that’s the way their marriage works and a successful marriage of the time works.

Will the Suffragette Movement angle continue next season?
We have some things happening next season that will change it up a bit.

Agnes Macphail was interesting to see added to the story. The first woman elected to the Canadian House of Commons.
We like to do that all the time and see where our Canadian celebrities are sitting in history. In this case it was with Women’s Suffrage and there were a ton of women we could have referenced but it’s just impossible to fit them in. We still haven’t been able to fit in Emily Stowe and have been trying forever. Mary Pedersen, who co-wrote the episode with me, suggested introducing Agnes as young girl. Technically, she wasn’t living in Toronto at the time but we had her visiting her grandfather who was going to vote that day. It was just a nice little nod to what these early Suffragette’s did to pave the way for the women who were actually able to make those gains later.

What can you tell me about next week’s season finale? What can fans expect?
A lot of bodies. There’s a whole lot of bodies. Dead bodies. More than any other Murdoch episode ever.

Is it a cliffhanger?
There is a cliffhanger, yes.

The season finale of Murdoch Mysteries airs next Monday at 8 p.m. on CBC.

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19-2, Featured

Review: 19-2 closes out Season 2

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“Where do you want to go?”

“Just drive.”

And with that Nick Barron and Ben Chartier drove off  in the season finale of 19-2. We’re still waiting to hear whether of not there will be a third season. If this is it for the series, it’s been one hell of a ride.

19-2 has the ability to make my stomach feel fluttery and throw-uppy at least once a week, but in the case of “Bridges,” it happened several times as stories surrounding Houle, Gendron and J.M. came to a close.

Houle takes the only way out
Bruce Smith and the rest of the writing team certainly could have dragged Sgt. Houle’s on-the-run storyline into Season 3 or beyond, but chose instead to wrap things up on Monday. Good move. I hate it when scenarios are left hanging and unresolved. We all knew that Houle wasn’t going to allow himself to be taken into custody alive—cops and pedophiles aren’t treated well in prison—but I pictured him going down in a hail of bullets. But 19-2 has never been about gunfights (other than the paintball competition earlier this season) so I wasn’t surprised when Nick left just one bullet in Houle’s gun and tossed the weapon back to him. You want out, Nick asked. Do it yourself. Houle did, down by the water, looking off at the lake before pulling the trigger.

Gendron loses it
Like Conrad Pla as Houle, Bruce Ramsay’s scenes as Commander Gendron have been few and far between. But like Pla, when he was given something to do he was masterful with it. The knowledge that he was handing his daughter over to Houle, a man he trusted, to be molested was too much for Gendron to bear. Pair that with J.M. being arrested for assaulting Justine and Gendron snapped on Nick and suspended him for beating the crap out of J.M. But as Isabelle warned, Gendron has got to keep it together and steady this listing ship.

J.M. goes back to old habits
I really hoped J.M. has stopped beating Justine. That storyline was never addressed in Season 2, and J.M. had warned Vince against getting involved with women on the job. It looked like he’d turned a corner and was going to be OK, perhaps even a mentor of sorts. But, of course, that was wishful thinking. With Audrey’s union meeting visit as the fuse, J.M. assaulted Justine again. She pressed charges and Nick doled out the frontier justice J.M. deserved, and asked for.

There are still many questions remaining to be answered. Will Tyler get caught handing over clean pee? Will Bear continue to be Sergeant? Will Gendron quit, allowing Isabelle to ascend to his office? Is Audrey ever going to be a cop again? Where the heck is Kaz?

Hopefully that will all be sorted out in Season 3, if one is greenlit. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. How about you?

Notes and quotes

  • Nick and Ben meeting outside the station and then walking in together? A show of partnership and solidarity.
  • Seeing Houle as one of the day’s “Beautiful Faces” was just awful.
  • “The one guy you think has got his shit together.” J.M. pretty much summed it up.

What was your favourite moment, scene or character from Season 2? Comment below of via @tv_eh.

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