Tag Archives: CBC

Baroness von Sketch Show, Featured

CBC’s Baroness von Sketch Show is back for even better Season 2

In what’s quickly become a wonderful summer tradition, CBC marks the end of June with the returns of Still Standing and Baroness von Sketch Show. Look for my interview with Still Standing host Jonny Harris elsewhere on the site; this column is all about the funny ladies of Baroness von Sketch Show.

Returning Tuesday at 9 p.m. on CBC, the first season was a riotous romp through the minds of Carolyn Taylor, Aurora Browne, Jennifer Whalen and Meredith MacNeil and the crazy, kooky and creative characters and situations they came up with. The group won a well-deserved Canadian Screen Award earlier this year for Best Writing for a Variety or Sketch Comedy Series and they’ve returned to form in this sophomore season. (Check out my feature story on the ladies in Canadian Screenwriter Magazine.)

The troupe’s Mad Max-inspired bit has been posted on social media over the past few weeks and is the first sketch following Tuesday’s opening credits for the episode entitled “It Satisfies on a Very Basic Level.” Filmed on the shores of Lake Ontario, it’s a well-written, supremely acted segment showing a quartet of strong women in a post-apocalyptic world where all men have been killed so ladies may rule. At least, that’s what we’re led to believe, though the truth comes out. MacNeil, as in Season 1, grabs laughs not just with her delivery and facial expressions but her entire body. A sky-high orange mohawk and fur cape complete her ludicrous look.

Browne nabs a serious laugh in the next skit regarding showing ID when shopping for a certain item, a brief history lesson on menstruation is given next, followed by an uncomfortable situation that arises when someone forgets not to ask about one woman’s ex.

Unlike Saturday Night Live, where sketches often go on way too long on expired laughs, Baroness Von Sketch Show is tight, quick and to the point. The Season 2 writing room contained—in addition to Taylor, MacNeil, Whalen and Browne— award-winning author and poet Zoe Whittall (The Best Kind of People), author Monica Heisey (I Can’t Believe It’s Not Better: A Woman’s Guide to Coping with Life), Jennifer Goodhue (This Hour Has 22 Minutes), standups Mae Martin, Elvira Kurt and Dawn Whitwell, Ann Pornel and Alex Tindal (The Sketchersons), playwright Donna-Michelle St. Bernard, Ify Chiwetelu, artist and writer Mariko Tamaki, Evany Rosen and Nelu Handa. The result? A summer of continuous laughs.

Baroness von Sketch Show airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on CBC.

Images courtesy of CBC.

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Featured, Still Standing

CBC’s Still Standing kicks off Season 3 in Fort McMurray

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It isn’t within Still Standing‘s guidelines to visit a place like Fort McMurray. After all, one of the stand-up/documentary hybrid’s keystones is to visit small communities across the country and Fort McMurray’s population is over 61,000. But the other rule is to focus on an area hit by hard times, and you don’t get much harder hit than the Alberta town which saw much of its area consumed by wildfires.

Returning with two back-to-back episodes on Tuesday at 8 p.m. on CBC, Harris and his crew stop in Fort McMurray during the first half-hour before jetting to Bell Island, Nfld, for the second instalment.

“We thought the story [in Fort McMurray] was so compelling and important that, with the one-year anniversary of the evacuation coming up [for filming], it was a story we could tell,” Harris told us during CBC’s upfront media day. Harris, his writers and producers spent several days in the area, interacting with folks and preparing original standup material to be performed for the community. Rewatching video of the events of May 3, 2016, brings the seriousness of the situation to light. It’s not, you’d think, something folks would want to laugh about. But they do, whether it’s at Harris’ suggestion some folks’ sins brought hell upon them or his own admission he’d freak out during an emergency.

But the episode is as much about joking about the situation as it is about the little triumphs and “disasterhood.” People offered up food, clothing, water and rooms to those affected by the conflagration. And, over a year later, the community is rebuilding, burgeoning and offering surprises.

“I was amazed by how multicultural it is there,” he Harris says. “I’ve met people from every corner of the globe in Fort McMurray and it doesn’t have that rough and tumble, work camp sort of feel. It’s got great restaurants and a healthier art scene than you might expect.”

The mark of a community getting back on its feet.

Still Standing airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on CBC.

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Baroness von Sketch Show

Link: Canada’s female-led ‘Baroness von Sketch Show’ primed for U.S. debut

From Lauren La Rose of The Canadian Press:

Link: Canada’s female-led ‘Baroness von Sketch Show’ primed for U.S. debut
It’s shaping up to be a royal summer for Canada’s “Baroness von Sketch Show” as the female-led foursome is set to bring its irreverent comedy to audiences on both sides of the border.

Cast members Aurora Browne, Meredith MacNeill, Carolyn Taylor and Jennifer Whalen are all back on board for the show’s second season, which returns Tuesday on CBC-TV. The series will also make its U.S. debut on IFC in August.

But even with the potential of much wider viewership, there will be little change to the homegrown sketch show’s signature style. Continue reading. 

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Featured, Reality, Lifestyle & Documentary

Jonathan Torrens delivers the funny and heartfelt in CBC’s Your Special Canada

Jonathan Torrens wears his patriotism on his sleeve. Want proof? In addition to co-hosting a podcast with former Our Lady Peace drummer Jeremy Taggart called Canadianity (a book is on the way this fall), he’s hosting a Canada Day special where he does maple syrup shots and jumps into a massive butter tart.

Your Special Canada starring Jonathan Torrens—debuting Sunday at 9 p.m. on CBC and repeating July 1 at 7 p.m. —is an entertaining and ingenious hour featuring Torrens playing himself and memorable characters like Slappy the Trivia Beaver and cross-dresser Sindy Crosby. A combination of online bits he’d already done for the network’s comedy portal were strung together with original content filmed in Torrens’ birthplace, Charlottetown. The celebration begins with a Sir John A. MacDonald re-enactor sniffing that everything has been done with regard to Canada Day television specials; Torrens aims to prove him wrong.

“The first is with The Taters of Conspuderation, a diorama with potatoes dressed as the Fathers of Confederation,” he says on the line from his home in Nova Scotia. “The second is ‘Jonath-Anne of Green Gables,’ a one-man show in which I play both roles, and my big finale is jumping into a big butter tart.” It took a few days for producer and star Torrens—along with writer-producer-director Richard Mortimer, producer Lynn Harvey and writers Paul Pogue and Steve Dylan—to suss out the content surrounding the existing skits; the result is a variety show with a Canadian angle.

Torrens gets gooey to celebrate Canada Day

There are plenty of outlandish moments in Your Special Canada—Torrens dons a beaver suit and slaps folks in the face with a whipped-cream-laden beavertail when they get trivia questions wrong, and has Zamboni drivers compete in an obstacle course—but there are goosebump-inducing ones too. Case in point: Torrens delivers a heartfelt take on Alanis Morrisette’s “Thank You” to this country and flies to Canadian Forces Station Alert in Nunavut to deliver maple syrup, Canadian flag toques and good feelings to soldiers stationed there.

“My challenge in Alert was to keep it together and not cry on camera,” the Mr. D co-star admits. “First of all, the sacrifices that they make for our country are enormous. Secondly, the universal feeling of the folks is that it’s an honour to be posted there and they’re happy to be there.”

“It just makes you realize that making funny faces on the TV … there is no merit in that compared to what these people are doing.”

Your Special Canada starring Jonathan Torrens airs Sunday at 9 p.m. on CBC. It repeats on Saturday, July 1, at 7 p.m. on CBC.

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Industry News

What’s more Canadian than Air Farce, eh? Celebrated comedy troupe fetes Canada’s 150th, July 1 on CBC

From a media release:

Making Canadians laugh for over four decades, AIR FARCE pulls out all the stops for the country’s 150th birthday, capturing the patriotic spirit of the sesquicentennial celebrations in 60 funny, fast-paced minutes. For its first-ever summer special, and for the first time in AIR FARCE history, the whole country will come together to watch at the exact same time — no delays and no time shifting. AIR FARCE CANADA 150 premieres Saturday, July 1, 2017, at 8:00 PM ET/5:00 PM PT on CBC with an encore broadcast on Monday, July 3 at 8:00 PM (8:30 PM NT).

AIR FARCE CANADA 150 embraces what it means to be Canadian, satirizing Canada’s past, present and future. Flashing back through history, the special focuses on the people and events that shaped our nation, including the Vikings landing in Newfoundland, the first hockey game, cottage life with Justin and Sophie Trudeau, and pop culture parodies like Canada: The Musical and an all-new take on the classic NFB animation Log Driver’s Waltz.

AIR FARCE CANADA 150 stars founding troupe members Don Ferguson and Luba Goy, and veterans Jessica Holmes (The Holmes Show, The Itch), Craig Lauzon (Fool Canada, The Ron James Show), Darryl Hinds (My Babysitter’s a Vampire, Little Mosque on the Prairie), and Emma Hunter (The Beaverton, Mr. D). Joining the troupe for the first time are Chris Wilson (from Vancouver’s award-winning sketch duo Peter n’ Chris, The Beaverton, What Would Sal Do, Meet the Family) and Toronto television and stage actress Isabel Kanaan (Haunted or Hoax). The special is directed by Rob Lindsay and Wayne Moss.

Special guest stars scheduled to appear include Chris Hadfield, the first Canadian astronaut to walk in space, Lorne Cardinal (Corner Gas, Into the Forest, Insomnia), Kaniehtiio Horn (What Would Sal Do, Letterkenny, Hemlock Grove), Hélène Joy (Murdoch Mysteries, Heartland, Durham County), Eric Peterson (Corner Gas, This is Wonderland, Street Legal) and Ed Robertson (Barenaked Ladies).

A fan favourite, AIR FARCE is one of Canada’s longest-running television comedies and highest-rated entertainment specials. A total audience of over 2.1 million Canadians watched AIR FARCE NEW YEAR’S EVE last year on CBC. (Source: Numeris TV Meter, Dec. 30, 2016 – Jan. 1, 2017 and Jan. 3, 2017, CBC Total, A2+, Total Canada, AMA, generated by InfoSys+TV).

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