From James Bawden:
Link: Having Our Baby: Surrogacy On Trial
Having Our Baby is the challenging new look at surrogacy that premieres on the Documentary Channel Tuesday night at 10. It answers many of the basic questions about this boom and there are facets I’d never even thought about. Continue reading.
From a media release:
So you think you could be a chef? Home Chef to Pro Chef, a brand new original Canadian series on Makeful —a lifestyle brand that celebrates the maker community and the creation of one-of- a-kind, handmade goods—is giving several passionate home cooks a once-in-a-lifetime chance to live up to the challenge. Premiering Monday, March 6 at 8:30 p.m. ET/PT, during a nationwide free preview, the 14-part, half-hour series pairs home cooks with restaurants that serve their favourite cuisines, ranging from Italian to Indian to French-bistro.
After a crash course on managing a professional kitchen from restaurateurs and head chefs, the aspiring amateurs are given a shot at running a full dinner service for real, paying customers, while their mentors watch from a monitor and offer advice remotely via a tablet. At the end of each episode, the rookie chef will be critiqued by the customers, who have been unaware of what has been going on behind the scenes. If the home cook’s dishes get a passing grade, their signature dish will be added to the restaurant’s menu.
Coinciding with the launch of the series, Makeful will also roll out Cook Like a Pro Chef, a series of one-minute digital videos offering valuable cooking tips from the professional chefs themselves. The eight videos each feature a different chef and offer up cooking advice that ranges from a fool-proof method of getting pizzeria-style pizza to marinating Atlantic Cod with maple and spruce leaves. The videos will be available on Makeful’s social media feeds, including Facebook and Twitter as well it’s YouTube channel.
Home Chef to Pro Chef is premiering during Makeful’s free preview event, which gives 10 million subscribers across Canada free access to the brand’s inspiring lineup of shows that bring to life creative ideas focused on food, design and style.
I’ve spent time in Yellowknife. I was lucky enough to visit the city in 2010 during a press junket for Ice Pilots NWT. It was winter, and the city was a ruggedly beautiful place full of welcoming citizens happy to host folks from Ontario.
Yellowknife is the focal point of Thursday’s episode of CBC’s documentary series Firsthand, as “The Missing Tourist,” delves into the story of Japanese tourist Atsumi Yoshikubo, who disappeared in 2014. Award-winning producer, writer and director Geoff Morrison presents the facts surrounding the case, and they become more spooky, odd and downright strange as the hour unfolds.
It all begins very straightforward and factual: Yoshikubo, two days after arriving from Japan, entered a visitors’ centre and asked about aurora borealis tours. It being October, the high season for aurora watching is the winter, tours were closed. She then visited an art gallery and bought coffee mugs. It’s one thing to deliver the facts in a dry, journalistic way; it’s another to see security camera footage of Yoshikubo, decked out in a bright pink coat and white boots in the visitors’ centre and art gallery. It adds a personal connection for the viewer. That makes it all the more stark and heartbreaking when it’s revealed that, five days later, Yoshikubo walked out of town and disappeared.
People saw her on Old Airport Road that final day, walking alone and towards the city dump, but thought nothing of it. After all, the 45-year-old had a camera and was dressed for the weather. Search and rescue took on the case, using a helicopter, while citizens from the city of just over 20,000 chipped in to help.
The fascination with true crime and missing person cases has never waned—there is a proliferation of podcasts on both subjects—and “The Missing Tourist” is an addictive watch. You can’t help but wonder, as TV news presenters, crime reporters and witnesses weigh in, what happened to Yoshikubo. Was she kidnapped? Did she slip and fall somewhere in the woods? Was she killed by a bear?
The documentary doesn’t just cover the case in Yellowknife, but jets to her home—a small prefecture in Southern Japan—to do more investigating and spotlight how big the story became there. Why would a Japanese tourist not only travel on her own to Yellowknife (most do it as part of a travel group) but in the off-season. Was she fleeing someone or something by coming to Canada? Was she looking for a new start?
By the end of the hour, the answers are given. And the journey to get there is dramatic and very well done.
Firsthand airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. on CBC.
Image courtesy of Catherine Lutes.
From a media release:
Discovery today announced production is underway on a second season of its new, smash hit original Canadian series, HEAVY RESCUE: 401. With the Season 1 finale scheduled to premiere tomorrow night (Feb. 28) at 10 p.m. ET on Discovery, the network has confirmed 10 brand new episodes are already in production for broadcast in early 2018.
Debuting last month to a premiere episode audience of more than 760,000 total viewers, HEAVY RESCUE: 401 became the most-watched premiere in the network’s 22-year history. In all, nearly 3.5 million unique viewers – or one in 10 Canadians – tuned in to the first episode. To date, the series has an average audience of 627,000 viewers in its premiere timeslot.
Produced by Thunderbird Entertainment’s factual arm and the creators of Discovery’s HIGHWAY THRU HELL, Great Pacific Media, HEAVY RESCUE: 401 follows multiple major tow operators, rescue, and maintenance crews day and night along North America’s most intense stretch of highway, Highway 401. With the support of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario, York Regional Police, maintenance contractors, and several other organizations, the series features the men and women who keep Ontario’s 400-series highways operating at any cost.
More than 300 people work on the production of HEAVY RESCUE: 401. The series is made possible with the support of the Ontario government’s film tax credit program, and the Canada Media Fund.
HEAVY RESCUE: 401Â is produced by Great Pacific Media (a Thunderbird Company) in association with Discovery. Executive Producer is Mark Miller and Blair Reekie. The series producer is Todd Serotiuk.
From James Bawden:
Link: Cracking Cancer: Must-See TV
The future of Canadian TV is bright –I make this statement after watching the brilliant new homegrown documentary Cracking Cancer which premieres on CBC-TV’s Nature Of Things Thursday night at 8 on CBC TV.
The subject is daunting enough –the advent of POG or Personalized OncoGenomics but this new technique in battling cancer is personalized by the true tales of patients. Continue reading.Â
