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CBC Announces Winter 2021 Premiere Dates

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From a media release:

CBC today announced broadcast and streaming premiere dates for its winter 2021 slate of original programming, including over 20 new and returning Canadian series reflecting a diverse range of storytelling and perspectives. The new winter primetime schedule launches Monday, January 4 on CBC TV and the free CBC Gem streaming service.

MONDAYS:
Mystery Mondays return on January 4 with new seasons of hit detective series MURDOCH MYSTERIES (Season 14) and FRANKIE DRAKE MYSTERIES (Season 4).

New weeknight primetime program CANADA TONIGHT WITH GINELLA MASSA launches Monday, January 11 at 8 p.m. on CBC News Network.

TUESDAYS:
CBC’s Tuesday night comedy lineup continues on January 5 with new episodes of THIS HOUR HAS 22 MINUTES and BARONESS VON SKETCH SHOW The Final Season: Bonus Episodes, featuring never-before-aired sketches, followed by irreverent new series HUMOUR RESOURCES, starring Jon Dore and featuring comedians including Sarah Silverman, Aisha Brown, Tom Green, Scott Thompson and Ronny Chieng.

KIM’S CONVENIENCE returns with Season 5 beginning January 19.

New seasons of WORKIN’ MOMS (Season 5) and TALLBOYZ (Season 2) debut on February 16.

WEDNESDAYS:
British drama QUIZ, based on the true story of a former British army major who was caught cheating on the game show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and starring Matthew Macfadyen (Succession), premieres January 13.

Season 3 of procedural crime drama CORONER starring Serinda Swan, followed by new buddy-cop drama series PRETTY HARD CASES (formerly Lady Dicks), starring Meredith MacNeill (Baroness von Sketch Show) and Adrienne C. Moore (Orange Is The New Black), premiere February 3.

THURSDAYS:
documentary Channel originals Fear of Dancing, Clydesdale: Saving the Greatest Horse and The Oslo Diaries premiere on CBC TV, January 7 through 21.

Beginning January 28, legal drama BURDEN OF TRUTH starring Kristin Kreuk returns with Season 4, and THE FIFTH ESTATE continues on a new night.

FRIDAYS:
MARKETPLACE continues on January 8, featuring an ongoing series, “Face Racism,” hosted by Asha Tomlinson, which follows people in search of justice in their communities, the marketplace and the workplace, often bringing them face-to-face with company executives and government officials.

The landmark 60th season of THE NATURE OF THINGS returns on January 8 with an ambitious archeological dig that peels away myths surrounding the last queen of Egypt in SEARCHING FOR CLEOPATRA, and the following week, a special five-part series, WILD CANADIAN WEATHER, showcasing a cinematic journey through Canada’s most extreme and spectacular weather.

New docuseries ANYONE’S GAME (formerly Orangeville Prep), offering an inside look at the competitive, high-pressure world of basketball’s most successful preparatory program at The Athlete Institute in Orangeville, Ontario, launches on January 15, with all episodes available that day to stream on CBC Gem.

New family-friendly series ARCTIC VETS, offering an up-close look at the wildlife that inhabits Canada’s north and the veterinarians at the Assiniboine Park Conservancy who work tirelessly to keep them safe, premieres February 26.

SUNDAYS:
Audience favourite HEARTLAND returns with a new season on January 10, followed by a four-week special event featuring back-to-back episodes of BBC’s acclaimed LES MISÉRABLES dramatic miniseries, starring Dominic West, David Oyelowo, Lily Collins and Olivia Colman.

Starting on Valentine’s Day, February 14, Season 4 of THE GREAT CANADIAN BAKING SHOW welcomes a new batch of amateur bakers and two new hosts, Second City alumni Alan Shane Lewis and Ann Pornel, followed by the exclusive Canadian premiere of BELGRAVIA, highlighted in Vanity Fair’s Five New Juicy Costume Dramas to Add Glamour to Your Quarantine, centering on secrets and scandals amongst the upper echelon of London society in the 19th century.

CBC KIDS:
CBC Kids’ refreshed weekday lineup begins Monday, January 4 with new seasons of PJ MASKS, KIRI AND LOU, and TRUE AND THE RAINBOW KINGDOM. New CBC Kids and Radio-Canada original preschool animated series DINO RANCH, produced in partnership with Disney, premieres on Saturday, January 16, featuring the adventures of the Cassidy family as they tackle life in a fantastical, “pre-westoric” setting where dinosaurs still roam. CBC Kids original tween sci-fi drama ENDLINGS, produced in partnership with Hulu, returns for a second season, launching on CBC Gem Friday, January 15, with episodes released weekly.

SUNDAYS

7 PM – HEARTLAND Season 14 (10×60) premieres January 10

8 PM – LES MISÉRABLES (8×60) the BBC miniseries premieres January 10 with back-to-back episodes

8 PM – THE GREAT CANADIAN BAKING SHOW Season 4 (8×60) premieres February 14

9 PM – BELGRAVIA (6×60) Julian Fellowes’ historical drama premieres February 14

10 PM – THE NATIONAL CBC News’ flagship program continues Sunday to Friday each week

MONDAYS

7 PM – CORONATION STREET continues weekdays at 7 p.m., Fridays at 7:30 p.m.

7:30 PM – FAMILY FEUD CANADA Season 2 (104×30) continues Mondays to Thursdays

8 PM – MURDOCH MYSTERIES Season 14 (11×60) begins January 4

9 PM – FRANKIE DRAKE MYSTERIES Season 4 (10×60) begins January 4

TUESDAYS

7 PM – CORONATION STREET continues weekdays at 7 p.m., Fridays at 7:30 p.m.

7:30 PM – FAMILY FEUD CANADA Season 2 (104×30) continues Mondays to Thursdays

8 PM – KIM’S CONVENIENCE Season 5 (13×30) premieres January 19

8:30 PM – THIS HOUR HAS 22 MINUTES Season 28 (19×30) continues January 5

9 PM – BARONESS VON SKETCH SHOW (5×30) The Final Season: Bonus Episodes featuring never-before-aired sketches premiere January 5

9 PM – WORKIN’ MOMS Season 5 (10×30) premieres February 16

9:30 PM – HUMOUR RESOURCES (6×30) a new irreverent comedy premieres January 5

9:30 PM – TALLBOYZ Season 2 (8×30) premieres February 16

WEDNESDAYS

7 PM – CORONATION STREET continues weekdays at 7 p.m., Fridays at 7:30 p.m.

7:30 PM – FAMILY FEUD CANADA Season 2 (104×30) Mondays to Thursdays

8 PM – CORONER Season 3 (10×60) premieres February 3

9 PM – QUIZ (3×60) the British drama starring Matthew Macfadyen (Succession) premieres January 13

9 PM – PRETTY HARD CASES (formerly Lady Dicks, 10×60) a new female-driven buddy-cop series premieres February 3

THURSDAYS

7 PM – CORONATION STREET continues weekdays at 7 p.m., Fridays at 7:30 p.m.

7:30 PM – FAMILY FEUD CANADA Season 2 (104×30) Mondays to Thursdays

8 PM – documentary Channel originals Fear of Dancing, Clydesdale: Saving the Greatest Horse and The Oslo Diaries premiere January 7 through 21

8 PM – BURDEN OF TRUTH Season 4 (8×60) premieres on January 28

9 PM – THE FIFTH ESTATE Season 46 (7×60) continues January 28 on a new night

FRIDAYS

7 PM – CORONATION STREET continues weekdays at 7 p.m., Fridays at 7:30 p.m.

7:30 PM – CORONATION STREET continues weekdays at 7 p.m., Fridays at 7:30 p.m.

8 PM – MARKETPLACE Season 48 (22×30) continues January 8

8:30 PM – ANYONE’S GAME (formerly Orangeville Prep, 6×30) a new factual series about basketball’s most successful preparatory program premieres January 15

8:30 PM – ARCTIC VETS (10×30) a new factual series featuring the wildlife of Canada’s north premieres February 26

9 PM – THE NATURE OF THINGS Season 60 (13×60) continues with an ambitious archeological dig in SEARCHING FOR CLEOPATRA on January 8

SATURDAYS

Afternoon – ROAD TO THE OLYMPIC GAMES Season 6 continues

6:30 PM – HOCKEY NIGHT IN CANADA begins January 16

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Because News, Featured

Radio One’s Because News brings laughs to primetime TV

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When it came to creating Because News, Gavin Crawford looked across the pond.

“When we were first figuring out what will it be and what will we do, I was like, ‘Let’s steal the British ideas,’ because those are the shows I like,” Crawford recalls. Created by Crawford, Elizabeth Bowie and David Carroll, the long-running Radio One program recently made the jump to a new platform.

Airing Sundays at 7 p.m. on  CBC (and Saturdays at 11 a.m. on Radio One), Because News features host Crawford and a rotating panel of comedians, sketch performers and funny people who make games out of the week’s news.

Last week’s radio and TV episode welcomed Andrew Phung (Kim’s Convenience), Jennifer Whalen (Baroness Von Sketch Show) and comedian Martha Chaves, and poked fun at Halloween amid the pandemic, COVID-19 itself and the U.S. election. Best known for his work on The Hour Has 22 Minutes and  The Gavin Crawford Show on The Comedy Network, we spoke to the Second City alum and Gemini Award-winner about adding TV cameras to Because News, how the show is written and tight-turnaround times.

Did you always hope Because News would become a television show?
Gavin Crawford: When we first started doing the show, I always thought there was a possibility if it worked out it could translate, just simply because there are so many British ones that fulfill those same things. When we were first figuring out what will it be, what will we do, I was like, ‘Let’s steal the British ideas,’ because those are the shows I enjoy watching. And so we always tried to model it that way, that it would be modular. Then, I guess, partly because it’s me and I like to do voices and characters, we would end up making things like fake movie trailers. But I guess I always had in the back of my mind, if CBC ever wants to do cross-platform stuff, it’s something they could actually manage to do.

Was it you and Elizabeth Bowie who developed the show together?
GC: Yeah. Basically, Liz and David Carroll came to me and said, ‘We’ve got a green light to make a pilot of a news quiz, and we think you’d be a good host for that. Is that something you’d want to do?’ Once we had established, ‘OK, it’s going to be me,’ we tried to figure out what we wanted to do. In my experience of watching those shows, I wanted it to be about the comradery of the panellists.  wanted us to be able to tease each other. I don’t want the answers to be necessarily that hard or important. I don’t want to try and solve a refugee crisis. We want to take the ball of news that everyone has and have fun with it where we can and make fun of the people in power. But, in a weird way, they are less game shows than they are talk shows.

I always tell the panellists, ‘You don’t have to get the right answer. You can say wet socks and a cat, for all I care. Let’s be able to take the time to riff with each other and take up ideas and improvise, the way that a lot of the people on the show are improvisers and comedians.’ So that’s what we like to do and to try and make sure that there’s enough space for that.

How difficult was it to take this show that’s made for the radio and translate it to TV? 
GC: There are definitely difficulties that you don’t have on radio. But it wasn’t too hard, because we made a conscious decision not to reinvent the wheel. I like the show the way it is, and if it was on TV, I still want it to be that. The hardest thing was how do we get people in a studio together, with the pandemic, knowing that we have to space everybody eight feet apart?

There are little technical things like how do you just keep a comradery going when you know they’re going to cut to a wide shot, and it’s going to look very wide. Those are things that you have to think of. And then there are weird technical things. If you show a graphic or TV, everything has to be triply sourced and thrust through legal. The hardest thing is clearing everything from the team of lawyers, and being like, ‘We need this clip of Trump saying this funny thing.’ Whereas on the radio, that’s a five-minute job. And on TV it’s a day and a half.

I listened to the most recent episode on the radio and noted there were a few segments there that weren’t on the TV episode.
GC: The radio is always five minutes longer, so just from a time standpoint, there’s always going to be an extra round or something on the radio that doesn’t make it to the TV. I don’t actually mind, because it gives you a reason to see things on different platforms, as opposed to a show that would be the same from one to the other, and you just pick and choose where you listen to it.

You record and film the show on Thursday, and then you’re turning this around to be ready for television broadcast on a Sunday. 
GC: It’s a very quick turnaround. That’s why those British panel shows look like that because they’re very quick. You don’t get a lot of time to edit it and things like that. There’s a number of things that I’d love to be able to do that we just can’t do time-wise. So, we try to filter in what we can do. But it’s tricky because sometimes the news doesn’t even set itself until Wednesday night. And you’re pulling graphics on a Tuesday afternoon. And of course, everybody wants the most heads up they can get on everything.

You’re having to keep on top of things happening in Canada and around the world for the show. Do you ever just feel overwhelmed?
GC: Oh yeah. I call it Bad Mood Tuesday, where after a weekend of combing through what’s going on to see what we’ll have the next week, I’m always in a bad mood on Tuesday. Then we try and lift ourselves out of it. ‘OK, what will put us in a good mood?’ And then we get to joke around about things, and the other writers come in, and then we’re like, great. I feel that’s maybe how the audience also feels. Our job is to be like, ‘OK, well, here’s your good news,’ Sunday night or Saturday morning when all these things you’ve been hearing about all week. Here’s the way you can hear about them that maybe doesn’t make you want to hide in the woods.

Because News airs Saturdays at 11 a.m. on Radio One and Sundays at 7 p.m. on CBC and CBC Gem.

Images courtesy of CBC.Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail

Kim's Convenience

Thunderbird Entertainment announces start of production on Season 5 of CBC original comedy Kim’s Convenience

From a media release:

Thunderbird Entertainment Group Inc. (TSXV: TBRD) (OTC: THBRF) (“Thunderbird” or the “Company”) is thrilled to announce that production of the next season of its hit CBC original comedy series Kim’s Convenience begins today in Toronto. One of Canada’s most-watched homegrown comedies, the fifth season is set  to premiere on CBC TV and CBC Gem  in Winter 2021. As previously announced, CBC has also renewed the series for a sixth season.

In season five, the Kim family faces one of its toughest challenges yet, as they navigate a difficult medical diagnosis for Umma (Jean Yoon). With Appa (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) stepping up as the primary caregiver, and a recently graduated Janet (Andrea Bang) moving back in, boundaries are inevitably crossed. Meanwhile, Jung’s (Simu Liu) brief trip to business school tests his relationship with Shannon (Nicole Power) as Kimchee (Andrew Phung) reconnects with his family, and his high school crush.

Earlier this year, Kim’s Convenience was recognized by TV Guide as one of the best “feel good” streaming series available. It was also recently dubbed as a perfect quarantine distraction by Oprah magazine. Additional accolades include numerous Canadian Screen Awards, Leo Awards, ACTRA Awards and a Canadian Comedy Award. The series has also received nominations for awards from the Writers Guild of Canada, and the Directors Guild of Canada. In addition, the series has received international acclaim, winning a 2019 award for “Most Popular Foreign Drama” at the 2019 Seoul International Drama Awards in South Korea.

In addition to airing in Canada on CBC and CBC Gem, the series also streams on Netflix and is watched on cable and VOD platforms around the world, including in Japan and Korea.

A CBC original series, Kim’s Convenience is based on the award-winning play by Ins Choi, who also adapted it for television. The series is produced by Ivan Fecan and co-created by Ins Choi and Kevin White on behalf of Thunderbird Entertainment in association with the Soulpepper Theatre Company. Executive Producers are Ivan Fecan, Alexandra Raffé, Ins Choi and Kevin White, and Sandra Cunningham is Supervising Producer.Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail

Awards, Featured, Industry News

Cardinal, Kim’s Convenience and Schitt’s Creek win during Night 3 of the 2020 Canadian Screen Awards Virtual Presentations

Cardinal, Kim’s Convenience, Schitt’s Creek and Baroness Von Sketch Show were among those who captured trophies during Night 2 of 2020 Canadian Screen Awards Virtual Presentations.

The Canadian Screen Awards, originally scheduled to air in March, moved online and was streamed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Wednesday’s online ceremony celebrated Crafts in Scripted Programs, narrated by Evany Rosen and Kayla Lorette, and Scripted Programs and Performance, presented by Eric McCormack.

Here are the winners in Wednesday’s key categories:

Best Writing, Web Program or Series
Wendy Litner, How to Buy a Baby

Best Writing, TV Movie
Christina Welsh, Believe Me: The Abduction of Lisa McVey

Best Writing, Variety or Sketch Comedy
Baroness Von Sketch Show

Best Writing, Comedy
Jared Keeso and Jacob Tierney, Letterkenny

Best Writing, Drama Series
Patrick Tarr, Noelle Carbone and Aaron Bala, Cardinal

Best Guest Performance, Drama Series
Dalmar Abuzeid, Anne with an E

Best Guest Performance, Comedy
Amanda Brugel, Kim’s Convenience

Best Supporting Actress, Drama
Kristen Thomson, Cardinal

Best Supporting Actor, Drama
Thom Allison, Killjoys

Best Supporting Actress, Comedy
Emily Hampshire, Schitt’s Creek

Best Supporting Actor, Comedy
Andrew Phung, Kim’s Convenience

Best Supporting Performance, Web Program or Series
Emma Hunter, How to Buy a Baby

Best Lead Performance, Web Program or Series
Emily Hampshire, Save Me

Best Web Program or Series, Fiction
Save Me

Best Lead Performance, TV Movie
Kate Drummond, Nowhere to Be Found

Best Lead Actress, Drama Series
Karine Vanasse, Cardinal

Best Lead Actor, Drama Series
Billy Campbell, Cardinal

Best Lead Actress, Comedy
Catherine O’Hara, Schitt’s Creek

Best Lead Actor, Comedy
Eugene Levy, Schitt’s Creek

Golden Screen Award for TV Drama or Comedy
Murdoch Mysteries and Private Eyes

Best Sketch Comedy Show & Ensemble Performance
Baroness Von Sketch Show

Best TV Movie
Believe Me: The Abduction of Lisa McVey

Best Comedy Series
Schitt’s Creek

Best Drama Series
Cardinal

For the complete list of winners, visit the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television website.

Virtual Presentation Schedule:

Thursday, May 28, 2020

7 PM ET: Canadian Screen Awards for Cinematic Arts (Narrator: Théodore Pellerin)

Watch the Virtual Presentations on  Academy.ca, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail

Obituary

Link: David Hayman dies: Music supervisor for film, TV and ads, VP Guild of Music Supervisors Of Canada Was 42

From Bruce Haring of Deadline:

Link: David Hayman dies: Music supervisor for film, TV and ads, VP Guild of Music Supervisors Of Canada Was 42

David Hayman, a Canadian music supervisor with extensive film and television credits, has died at age 42. His death was confirmed by his company, but no cause was immediately available. Continue reading.Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail