From Sabrina Furminger of Westender:
Continuum’s last hurrah
“We had a big plan that we knew we could do seven seasons in terms of story points, but at the end of the day, those plans are kind of like a road trip,†says Barry during a set visit in mid-May.
“So we were always prepared to do the short trip or the long trip, depending on what opportunities we were given. Regardless of how many seasons we got, the ending was always going to be the same.†Continue reading.
From a media release:
Slice™ dives into the dating game with the new Canadian series First Dates, premiering Tuesday, September 1 at 10pm ET/PT on Slice. Filmed on location in Vancouver, the endearing series captures all of the awesome and the awkward moments of first encounters as a restaurant filled with single people are paired up for real first dates. With the cameras catching everything from the heartache to the heartwarming, First Dates airs back-to-back new episodes Tuesdays at 10 pm and 10:30 pm ET/PT on Slice.Â
First Dates brings viewers a compelling look at the attractions, the heartaches, the connections, and the stakes of a first date. Each episode showcases a restaurant of singles who have been paired up for a real first date with someone they’ve never met. The restaurant is fitted with more than 30 fixed-rig cameras capturing every moment, including awkward small talk, flirtatious glances, outrageous faux pas, and subtle, or sometimes forced, smiles. Each episode features three of the hand-matched couples as the cameras record their dates. At the end of the night, each single is interviewed solo, dishing on the best and worst moments of their date. The couples are then reunited side by side to reveal whether there will be a second date…or not.
For some daters there is an instant, and very apparent, attraction, but for others it’s clear that there will not be a happy ending. First Dates gives viewers a fly-on-the-wall look at the hope, charm, awkwardness, heartfelt humour and potential spark of a first date with smiles, tears and everything in between. Honest and observational at its core, each First Dates date is real-life playing out in front of the cameras.
Slice.ca boasts exclusive First Dates extras including a series of “Top 10 Dos and Don’ts for a First Date†and videos of beloved TV celebrities answering burning questions about love and dating. These fun First Datesvideos are available at slice.ca/first-dates/video.
Based on the hit format from Warner Bros. International Television Production, First Dates is a co-production between Force Four Entertainment and Remedy Canada Productions, in association with Shaw Media and Slice.
From a media release:
CBC’s summer hit about small towns with a lot of heart, STILL STANDING, has been renewed for a second season, which will be broadcast in 2016. The unique series follows comedian Jonny Harris (Murdoch Mysteries) as he travels across the country to small towns on the ropes who are managing to keep laughing in the face of adversity. During his week-long stint, he immerses himself in the local culture and mines enough material to put on an original stand-up comedy routine for the residents.Visiting towns from coast to coast, Jonny uses his time to learn what makes each place special doing everything from being challenged to eat a 20 Ib. bag of apples in Berwick, NS, mounting a 10,000 Ib. Harley Davidson in Lytton, BC, befriending a yodelling cowboy in Manitou, MB and being a guest in an eight person town (six person in the winter) in Rowley, AB.
Production company Frantic Films is looking for suggestions of small towns to visit for Season Two. They are hoping to hear from small towns that boast a strong sense of community and a narrative of adapting in the face of adversity, after economic and industrial changes in their region. Interested viewers can nominate their town online at cbc.ca/stillstanding. This season, the series visited Bamfield, BC, Coleman, AB, Souris, PEI, Willow Bunch, SK, Berwick, NS, Oil Springs, ON, Lytton, BC, Manitou, MB, Wawa, ON, Teeswater, ON, Rowley, AB, Buxton, ON and Fogo Island, N.L.
Join Greg and Diane every Monday as we debate what’s on our minds. This week, what do you think of Shomi?
He Said:
Now that Shaw/Rogers has made Shomi (I refuse to spell it with the small “s” as the two cable companies hope people do) available to all Canadians with Internet access, we thought it would be a good time to revisit the streaming site and all that it offers. As a Rogers subscriber—and the cable bills to prove it—I’ve had Shomi’s beta for months.
Have I used it? Not really. I’ve checked out back episodes of The Twilight Zone and A Young Doctor’s Notebook and Other Stories but that’s it. I blame that on the fact I’ve had Netflix for a couple of years and it comes immediately to mind over Shomi. It’s just not top of mind, so I can’t honestly pass judgment on the service yet. I can tell you that people in my sphere of influence still talk about Netflix with no mention of this Rogers/Shaw partnership but maybe that will change as time goes on.
What I can say is that I’m happy Shomi (and, eventually, Bell Media’s CraveTV) is available to Canadians with the Internet. Just having another option is a step forward into the 21st century.
Likewise, along noteworthy American and international programs like Sons of Anarchy, Transparent, The Last Man on Earth, The Office, Mr. Robot, Peaky Blinders and Empire is a whack of Canadian content spanning CBC, Rogers and Shaw’s libraries. Sitcoms include Seed, Package Deal, Mr. D, and 22 Minutes while more serious fare like Cracked, Between, Lost Girl, Vikings, Haven, Remedy, Rookie Blue, Continuum, Murdoch Mysteries, Republic of Doyle, Heartland, Being Erica and Emily of New Moon butt up against Dragons’ Den. That’s a wide range of homegrown content available and a nice snapshot of the (mostly) quality stuff on the air in this country.
Licensing issues continue hamper the most recent seasons of these series being offered, but you can still get a nice head start on those first few seasons before chasing them down on conventional cable (or via illegal means). I’d love to see the rights to older Canadian series like King of Kensington, DaVinci’s Inquest, Traders, Bizarre, Ready or Not and North of 60Â approved so they can be offered on Shomi too.
She Said:
I’m a newly minted Shaw internet customer after a recent move, not because I was eager to go with a company that included Shomi but because Shaw cable internet had worked better for me in the past than my recent Telus ADSL. But a nice bonus is a month’s free trial of the new-ish streaming service. And then they opened it up to all Canadians days later so it’s not really a bonus anymore, but whatever.
CraveTV offered media a trial back at launch, and I checked it out then, but until the service is available to all I can’t recommend it or not. I will say I’m looking forward to their January (supposedly) public launch, and curious what their price point will be — it’s hard to imagine they’ll stick with $4/month when it’s a standalone service, yet they will be the last entrants in the current Netflix/Shomi/Crave battle of the streaming services.
Back to Shomi … I may have gotten more use out of it in a couple of weeks than Greg has so far, because I’m test driving it to see if I want to pony up the $8.99/month it would add to my internet bill — increasing that now-$30 bill by … um, carry the 1 … a large percentage. Would I stick with both Shomi and Netflix? No. They both fill the same niche in my media-watching life, catching up on series I hadn’t seen in first run and watching back catalogue comfort films. I don’t need to see any specific show or movie on either service — I’ll pick the one that has the most I want to watch and the best user experience.
The first thing I noticed about Shomi is that I had seen a lot of the offerings already … on Netflix. There is some crossover, particularly with the CBC shows and some older movies. Shomi has some current-ish American shows I can’t watch anywhere else, though not the kind of international fare Netflix offers.
The second thing I noticed is that Shomi doesn’t work well without a set top box. I got frequent errors trying to use Chromecast until I figured out the trick of starting the video on my phone or laptop first and then casting. It makes for a clunky viewing experience. I also found the user interface somewhat non-intuitive — for some shows it was much easier to figure out how to play the trailer than the first episode, yet I always want to dive straight into watching.
Another odd thing is that the menu will say there are two seasons of, say, Transparent or Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce, but when you click on the series it turns out “Season 0” is extras such as trailers and interviews. Yeah, that’s not a season. There is no such thing as a season zero. It feels like their engineers didn’t have the technical skills to master how to include those without having the app call it a season.
And what are we, cavemen? The app doesn’t do autoplay of the next episode, so unlike Netflix we can’t accidentally binge watch until we’re catatonic and get the “are you still watching?” message of shame. With Shomi we actually have to make a conscious choice to watch the next episode and let our better judgement interfere with our couch potato tendencies.
As is often the case when we talk about CanCon, I think Greg is the glass half full person and I’m the glass half empty, cracked, and I cut my lip person. I was surprised at the small number of Canadian series. CBC seems to lend out non-exclusive streaming rights to whoever wants them, so I can watch many of those shows on Netflix or on CBC’s own website or app. Given Shomi is a Shaw/Rogers partnership, I would have expected to see more Shaw/Rogers shows.
Going forward I expect we will. Networks in Canada don’t own the shows, the production companies do. And streaming rights would have to be negotiated separately if they weren’t originally part of the licensing deal, which they wouldn’t have been for older shows. But Shomi’s offerings highlight just how few original series Rogers and Shaw currently have.
So the crucial verdict: will I pay for Shomi? I can see myself periodically adding it for a month at a time and then cancelling once I’ve binged the shows I want to watch, just for the shows unavailable (legally) elsewhere.  I’ve already binged Catastrophe and checked out Transparent and Girlfriends’ Guide. I’d already watched Fresh of the Boat and sampled some of the other exclusives, and I intend to check out Mr. Robot, but so far I wouldn’t give up Netflix’s superior user experience and their originals and exclusives for what Shomi has to show me so far.
From The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon:
Tatiana Maslany discovered the downside to wearing glitter in a twerk scene the hard way while filming Orphan Black.
