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TV,eh? What's up in Canadian television
Murdoch Mysteries

Link: Lives lived: Jordan Christianson, 35

From Simon McNabb for The Globe and Mail:

Link: Lives lived: Jordan Christianson, 35
Jordan found a way to bring this comic perspective to the murder investigations at a police Station House circa 1900. Murdoch Mysteries‘s Detective William Murdoch is a forensic innovator, a master of deduction, an intellectual genius. He has invented the X-ray, the metal detector, the fax machine. Jordan had him invent bicycle gears, the jolly jumper, the tea bag. Fans of the show delighted in these more personal moments, but no one found more joy in them than Jordan himself. Continue reading.

 

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Featured, Saving Hope

Saving Hope co-executive producer previews the series finale

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When you have a chance to talk to one of Saving Hope‘s writer-co-executive producers, you take it. I ran into Patrick Tarr earlier this week in North Bay, Ont., where he is doing pre-production work as the showrunner on Season 3 of Cardinal. Tarr, who has written for Showcase’s King and CBC’s Cracked and the Murdoch Mysteries web series The Curse of the Lost Pharaohs, penned several instalments of Saving Hope, including last week’s “First and Last.”

Now, with the finale “Hope Never Dies” just two days away, we asked Tarr to tease his thoughts on Charlie and Alex’s final storyline.

“I don’t think that there is another ending that is true to what the show is about,” Tarr says. “I asked Adam [Pettle, Saving Hope‘s showrunner], when we were breaking the final episode and we had the idea we did: ‘What is Saving Hope about?’ This is what we’ve been doing for five seasons.”

Tarr acknowledges that, after a handful of seasons, fans are definitely going to have strong feelings if anything untoward were to happen to any of the key characters they’ve fallen in love with. To have something other than a happy ending for Charlie, Alex, Zack, Shahir, Dawn, Dana or Jackson would be incredibly upsetting. That said, Saving Hope is about life, death and everything in between. And, as the writers have proven over the show’s run, no one is safe from injury.

Tarr joined Saving Hope in Season 3 and has been involved in the last 54 episodes and exits with fond memories.

“I’ve been lucky to come on board a successful show that works really well and has great characters and directors,” he says. And now it’s coming to an end this week.

Saving Hope‘s series finale airs Thursday at 9 p.m. ET/PT on CTV.

Images courtesy of Bell Media.

 

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Amazing Race Canada, Featured

Amazing Race Canada hangs ten—and delivers a Fast Forward—in Bangkok

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It’s been a little hard for me to connect with the teams during this season of The Amazing Race Canada. I’m not sure what it is. No one is particularly annoying or deserves my scorn. Everyone seems to get along not only within their own duos but with each other too. Perhaps that’s it; I’m used to villains and heroes distinguishing themselves by now and it hasn’t happened. These folks are just so nice.

And while I haven’t been outright cheering for a pair yet, I was sad to see Zed and Shabbir eliminated. The father-son duo have a great story—Shabbir battled cancer and won, and Zed looks like José Bautista—and they’ve been strong performers so far both physically and in the mental game. Unfortunately, they stumbled in Bangkok, Thailand.

Sam and Paul, who began the Leg in first place, made a costly blunder at the top of the hour, dropping their instructions and train tickets to Shanghai in the street as they walked away. Incredibly, no one had sauntered along and picked them up and the boys reclaimed the ducats when they retraced their steps. And credit to the pair for keeping cool heads and looking for the tickets rather than wasting time blaming each other. They did, however, lose their clue instructions. But even then, Adam and Andrea gave them help without a blink of the eye. Yes, they want help in return, but this being a competition, I’m still surprised everyone is willing to help.

A quick stop at a Montreal-themed restaurant in Shanghai for some Sinorama product placement and teams were on a plane to Bangkok and a cat café in search of their next clue. It also introduced the first Fast Forward of the season, a special challenge that would score the first team to complete it a straight shot to the Pit Stop. The catch is always that you could waste time going there when another team had already completed the task, and many teams choose to skip it altogether. Ivana and Korey and Adam and Andrea both picked the Hoop Takraw. (The others all elected to stick with the Route Info and took a river cruise to their next clue.) I’m not sure how long it took them—and it appeared to be a total fluke—but Adam’s kick landed the ball in that small net, vaulting them to a temple Pit Stop in top spot and a return trip to Bangkok. Ivana and Korey were forced to return to the Route Info.

An intricate, word-free puppet show was the test for everyone but Adam and Andrea, a mixture of body movement, puppet coordination and silence that all members struggled with. Shabbir kept talking, resulting in failure. Sam and Paul and community theatre actors Bert and Karen nailed the performance on their first try and zipped off to the Detour: Bling It involved decorating a tuk tuk in a specific way while Shred It tested the ability to surf and snag flags for a clue. After eight tries, Zed and Shabbir re-read the clue and realized they were supposed to be silent during the puppet show. By the time they did, they were in last place.

After a few practice tries surfing, Sam and Paul nabbed a flag each and quickly departed for the Pit Stop. Andrea and Ebonie completed the surfing next, followed by Kenneth and Ryan. Clearly, the surfing was the easiest of the two Detours, but how could you know until you were there? Still, Shabbir had troubles surfing and after a particularly bad fall, they decided to switch challenges. That put them far behind everyone else and the only thing that could save them from being sent home was if this Leg was a non-elimination. It wasn’t.

Here’s how the teams placed at the end of this Leg:

  1. Adam and Andrea (won trip to Bangkok)
  2. Andrea and Ebonie
  3. Sam and Paul
  4. Kenneth and Ryan
  5. Karen and Bert
  6. Korey and Ivana
  7. Zed and Shabbir (eliminated)

The Amazing Race Canada airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on CTV.

Images courtesy of Bell Media.

 

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Industry News

CBC News announces new team to host The National

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From a media release:

CBC News today announced new hosting details for flagship news program The National. Starting this fall, the new National will be hosted by a team of four award-winning journalists on a nightly basis: senior correspondent Adrienne Arsenault, based in Toronto; political reporter and host Rosemary Barton, based in Ottawa; CBC Vancouver host Andrew Chang, based in Vancouver; and veteran host and reporter Ian Hanomansing; who will be based in Toronto. Offering Canadians a new kind of evening news, the four working journalists will host as an integrated team and also report their own stories to offer more in-depth original journalism and live coverage from more locations across Canada. The new National will launch Monday, November 6 at 9 p.m. ET on CBC NEWS NETWORK and 10 p.m. (10:30 NT) in all time zones on CBC.

Hosted by the collaborative team based in Vancouver, Ottawa and Toronto, the new National will offer a unique proposition for audiences live across all six time zones, with the ability to update throughout the evening until 2 a.m. ET and originate from anywhere in the country depending on the news of the day. The new format will be an inter-platform offering, spanning robust digital content for multiple platforms throughout the day culminating in the evening program.

Born and raised in Toronto, Emmy Award-winning journalist Adrienne Arsenault is a senior correspondent who is deployed to the biggest breaking news stories and investigative stories in Canada and around the world. Over the years and across the continents, Arsenault’s assignments have included disasters, conflicts, politics, sports and human dramas. She has covered the Olympics in Sydney, Salt Lake, Beijing, Sochi, and Rio as well as the World Cup in South Africa, and was awarded a 2015 International Emmy for her work covering the Ebola crisis. Her investigative work on security has seen her cross Canada and pursue terror stories across the globe including the Paris and Brussels attacks. Arsenault began her career at CBC in 1991 as an editorial assistant for The National. Over the years since, her postings have included Vancouver, Washington, Jerusalem and London.

Born and raised in Winnipeg, award-winning political journalist Rosemary Barton is the host of CBC News Network’s daily political show, Power & Politics. She has interviewed many high-profile politicians including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau; former Prime Minister Stephen Harper; U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry; International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde; and General John Kelly, former Homeland Security Secretary, now Chief of Staff to U.S. President Donald Trump. She also secured an exclusive broadcast interview with Omar Khadr. Barton joined CBC as Quebec’s legislative reporter at the National Assembly in 2004 before joining CBC’s Parliamentary Bureau, covering federal elections as well as a number of federal leadership campaigns. During the 2015 Canadian federal election campaign, Barton guided viewers through 11 weeks of election issues, interviewing all main party leaders through the course of the campaign and broadcasting six days a week. Her incisive and engaging interviewing style was recognized with a Canadian Screen Award for best news host in 2016. Barton started her journalism career in her hometown of Winnipeg as a researcher for CBC’s French news network, RDI. She has a degree in French literature from College Universitaire de Saint-Boniface and a Master’s degree in Journalism from Carleton University.

Born and raised in Ottawa, Andrew Chang is the Canadian Screen Award-winning host of CBC Vancouver News at 6. He joined CBC News Vancouver as host in the summer of 2014, and has also spent time in the host chair for CBC Radio One’s The Current, The National and CBC News Now and was a member of CBC’s Olympic broadcast team in 2014 and 2016. Prior to his move to Vancouver, Chang spent a successful decade with CBC Montreal, most recently as co-host of CBC Montreal’s supper newscast. He covered a number of memorable moments in Montreal’s history such as Montreal’s 2011 federal election night special, which saw the unprecedented rise of the NDP in the province, and the resulting collapse of the Bloc Québécois and the 2012 election-night assassination attempt of Pauline Marois. He worked previously as one of CBC’s chief staff reporters, covering breaking news at both the local and network level: from the Dawson College shootings, to the collapse of the de la Concorde overpass in Laval, to a month-long stint on the Parti Québécois campaign bus during the 2008 provincial election. During this time, Andrew also worked as a video journalist.

Born in Trinidad and raised in Sackville, New Brunswick, veteran host and reporter Ian Hanomansing began his broadcasting career at CKDH Radio in Amherst, Nova Scotia, working at radio stations in Moncton and Halifax before joining CBC in Halifax in 1986. Since then he has had a wide variety of assignments as a reporter, anchor and interviewer. Major stories he’s covered include the Exxon Valdez oil spill and San Francisco earthquake (both in 1989), the Los Angeles riot (1992), Vancouver’s two Stanley Cup riots (1994 and 2011), the Hong Kong handover (1997), the Slave Lake (2011) and Fort McMurray wildfires (2016) and seven Olympic Games, the most recent in Sochi in 2014. The host of CBC News Now weeknights on CBC News Network, Hanomansing has hosted many CBC programs including: Pacific Rim Report (1995-1999), which focused on Canada’s connection to Asia; Times 7 (2005), a joint venture between CBC News and the New York Times; Canada Now (2000-2007), a national supper-hour newscast; Still Talking Hockey (2004), a sports-themed late night program on CBC British Columbia; and Feeling the Heat (2007), a summer series about the environment on CBC Radio One. Hanomansing was awarded the 2016 Canadian Screen Award for Best National News Anchor for CBC News Network with Ian Hanomansing. He holds an honours B.A. in political science and sociology from Mount Allison University in Sackville, and also has a law degree from Dalhousie University in Halifax.

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Orphan Black

Link: Orphan Black: Skyler Wexler on growing up on-set and what’s next

From Hermoine Wilson of The TV Junkies:

Link: Orphan Black: Skyler Wexler on growing up on-set and what’s next
“I’d never really had to act like I was badly hurt before and I had to do a lot of coaching. It was really fun for me because I got to learn so much. And the hospital scenes too are my favourite, like the scene where I was doing the surgery to get Cosima better, to get my bone marrow. That scene was really fun because staying in character was really hard and I learned a lot from that. Also me and Tatiana got a really cool selfie together and made really silly faces, so that was really fun.” Continue reading.

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