Chopped Canada, Food Network Canada – Season 2 premiere
Chopped Canada’s sophomore season features a hearty new batch of Canadian competitors who have to turn baskets of mystery ingredients into gourmet dishes. Each episode begins with four ambitious chefs and course-by-course, one competitor is chopped from the competition until only one remains and walks away with $10,000 and the title of Chopped Canada champion.
From James Bawden:
I wasn’t even sure I wanted to watch the previews of Schitt’s Creek which CBC sent my way. I mean the title is terribly off putting but eventually curiosity got the better of this TV critic and I watched three episodes one after the other, barely pausing for a cup of tea.
And you know what?
At times this sitcom starring Eugene and Dan Levy and Catherine O’Hara is funny and crazy as hell. Continue reading.
To begin I must put this review into context. I have not read The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill. This will be my review untainted by previous knowledge of the story. That said…
This is the first of six episodes, featured on CBC in Canada and later this year on BET in the US, directed by Clement Virgo, and produced by Conquering Lion Pictures and Out Of Africa Entertainment. In it we will learn the story of Aminata Diallo and her life as both a slave and a loyalist to Britain during the Revolutionary War.
We open in 1807 in the House of Parliament in England. Aminata Diallo (Aunjanue Ellis) is waiting to testify on behalf of the Abolitionists petitioning the Court to end slavery. Her testimony is our story; Aminata is our Djeli (storyteller).
The elder Aminata transports us back to the time of Aminata’s youth (Shailyn Pierre-Dixon) in the village of Bayo and we learn she is raised as a Muslim by newly reverted parents. Her mother is a renowned baby catcher who travels freely from village to village and Aminata learns the same skills at her mother’s knee. Her father is the only member of her village who owns a Qur’an. As her story unfolds, we are told that the Man Stealers are targeting the local villages and so as a precaution Aminata’s father accompanies his wife and daughter to a birthing in one of the nearby villages. Coincidentally, it is on this very journey that the young family is ambushed on their way. Aminata is captured and shackled, her parents are left to die in the jungle, and Aminata’s village is set to fire.
The remainder of this episode deals with the treacheries Aminata was subjected to during her journey across land and water, from her village of Bayo (present day Segou, Mali, Africa) to Port Charles Town NC. Coffled to her fellow captives, she makes the long journey across the arid African landscape to where the river meets the sky (Atlantic Ocean) and the awaiting slaver. Along her journey, Aminata is befriended by one of her captors Chekura Tiano (Siya Xaba), who as it happens is also a captive. He had been sold to the leader by his uncle following the deaths of his own parents. Chekura shares his food and water, and unshackles Aminata for her journey – finding favour with her captors I think will be a theme throughout the story as we see this happen in a couple of instances throughout this episode.
The captives reach the shore and are imprisoned at the major slave trading operation located on Bance Island, branded, and then herded onto the slaver. The lead Man Stealer, no longer in need of Chekura sends him to the ship to be traded. Once on the filthy ship Aminata once again finds favour (and value), this time with “Medicine Man†Tom (Nick Boraine). Tom learns that Aminata is not only fluent in many of the tribal languages but she is a capable midwife. An agreement is struck; Aminata assists the Medicine Man, he will in turn help her.
Aminata’s strength of character is evident during this voyage. She avoids Tom’s advances and refuses his attempts to rename her “Maryâ€. With her position as The Medicine Man’s Assistant, and her assumed innocence of youth, Aminata is granted freedom from her chains and is allowed to move about the ship unencumbered. This freedom leads us to the climax of this installment. Aminata is able to secretly gather weapons and supplies them to her fellow captives. The slaves then orchestrate an ambush using the women in their midst to distract the sailors. Aminata takes refuge behind the ship’s wheel with Chekura providing extra protection from the bloody fight. Ultimately though, their meagre weapons prove fruitless to the well-armed crew. However, Tom the Medicine Man dies in the fight and a woman (Fanta, played by Nondumiso Tembe) who also hails from Aminata’s village is executed for her role in murdering him.
At long last the journey ends and we arrive at Port Charles Town, North Carolina in 1761. It is here that Aminata is sold to Robertson Appleby (Greg Bryk) for five pounds sterling and taken to his plantation. The episode closes with young Aminata falling into a deep sleep in the first comfortable bed she has seen in months and we are instantly transported years ahead with the young adult Aminata (Tenika Davis) being roused from her sleep to go “catch a babyâ€.
So far I have only a couple minor complaints. I am a stickler for small details and I find that even though they may seem minor, I find them highly unnerving. Early on we see Aminata with her father as she practises her writing. I have to wonder, why is it that a man who knows how to read Arabic is teaching his daughter to write Arabic words in the Latin alphabet? Further, the scene in which Aminata is praying is a very poor representation for Islamic prayers (no female would have situated herself for prayers with her back to a man, at the very least even in the situation as a captive she would have likely positioned herself closer to the vegetation to preserve some sense of modesty).
All in all though, this was a great opening episode and I cannot wait to see what unfolds next. Let me know what you think or perhaps what you are most looking forward to in the next episode in the comments below.
From a media release:
Force Four Entertainment and Remedy Canada Productions, in association with Shaw Media, are proud to announce the start of production on First Dates Canada, a new Canadian documentary series scheduled to air on Slice in 2015. Based on the hit format from Warner Bros. International Television Production, First Dates Canada brings viewers a compulsively watchable look at the attractions, the heartaches, the connections, and the perils of a first date.
Filmed on location in Vancouver, each episode of First Dates Canada documents a restaurant of single men and women who have been paired up for a first date with someone they’ve never met. The restaurant is fitted with more than 40 hidden cameras capturing every moment of the ensuing, and sometimes cringe-worthy, conversational foreplay. Honest and observational at its core, First Dates Canada is a real-life romantic comedy where the players direct themselves.
Online applications for First Dates Canada can be filled out by visiting www.Slice.ca/First-Dates-Canada. Applicants must be 19 years of age or older, available for filming in the Vancouver area, and must provide a headshot of themselves. The casting site also allows people to nominate friends or family for the show through the same online application process.
Originally produced in the U.K. by Twenty Twenty for Channel 4, First Dates has become an international hit, with local versions produced in a number of other territories including Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands. First Dates Canada is a co-production between Force Four Entertainment and Remedy Canada Productions, in association with Shaw Media and Slice.
From a media release:
HISTORY is taking viewers inside a covert operation in the new, fact-based drama series, Gangland Undercover, which chronicles infiltrator Charles Falco’s (Canadian Damon Runyan) mission inside one of America’s most notoriously violent outlaw motorcycle gangs. Giving a rare look inside this historically infamous organized crime gang through the eyes of an undercover investigator, the six-episode series premieres on HISTORY Monday March 2nd at 10pm ET/PT and is based on Falco’s 2013 memoir, “Vagos, Mongols, and Outlaws: My Infiltration of America’s Deadliest Biker Gangs.â€
Joining Damon Runyan in the cast are fellow Canadians Paulino Nunes (The Firm, Haven), James Cade (Copper, Rookie Blue), Don Francks (La Femme Nikita, Hemlock Grove), Melanie Scrofano (Warehouse 13, Edwin Boyd), Ari Cohen (Small Town Murder Songs, Maps to the Stars), Stephen McIntyre (Less Than Kind, Haven), Ian Matthews (Lost Girl, A History of Violence) and Patricia McKenzie (Cosmopolis, Mirador).
The series follows Falco’s three-year mission living a double-life as an ATF informant planted inside one of the most historically dangerous motorcycle gangs, the California-based Vagos – a criminal group involved in drug trafficking, arms smuggling, money laundering and murder. Falco initially took on the assignment out of self-preservation, to avoid 20 years in prison on drug charges, but his outlook soon shifted, becoming a quest to achieve justice. Operation 22 Green, as it was known, ended in March 2006 with the arrests of 25 gang members.
Drawing on the wealth of material from Falco’s book, along with broader documented historical research of inter-gang rivalries, the series captures the reality of outlaw biker counter-culture: a world in which freedom is equated with the right to carry guns and trade drugs with impunity, a world in which respect can be earned through fear.
Gangland Undercover is produced by Cineflix Productions in association with Shaw Media and Stephen Kemp. Noel Baker (Hard Core Logo) is the lead writer. Neil Rawles (Manson, 9/11 State of Emergency), Carl Hindmarch (The Somme, Holby City) and Stephen Kemp (Dangerous Persuasions, Locked Up Abroad) are the directors. Charles Tremayne and Kim Bondi are amongst Cineflix’s Executive Producers. A+E Networks will distribute Gangland Undercover outside of North America under the A+E Studios International banner.
