From Matthew Braga of BuzzFeed:
Link: How “ReBoot†predicted the future but got left behind
The future arrived in 1994 as a Saturday-morning cartoon. It crackled with the excitement of the early internet age: of modems and Windows and CPUs, the animated equivalent of dialing into AOL or Prodigy for the first time. It was the first computer-generated television show ever made — a show about computers, made with computers — and unlike anything else on air. Continue reading.Â
Mike McPhaden is a TV writer based in Toronto best known for writing half-hour comedy for adults and kids alike.
Originally from Winnipeg, he got his start doing sketch and improv with the troupe Higher Than the Ground before heading off to train as an actor at York University.  After finding success as a playwright, he graduated from the CFC’s Prime Time TV Program and went on to write for YTV’s How to Be Indie, helmed by Vera Santamaria, John May and Suzanne Bolch. Other shows soon followed: Men With Brooms, Connor Undercover, Seed, Spun Out, Insecurity, Degrassi, as well as animated fare such as Rusty Rivets and Inspector Gadget.
Most recently he adapted two Gordon Korman novels into TV movies for YTV, This Can’t Be Happening at MacDonald Hall (co-written with Adam Barken) and The Wizzle War.
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Jonny Gray has established himself as a bona fide star for YTV. He leapt onto the network as co-lead on Max & Shred and most recently became Bruno in the Bruno & Boots franchise. Now he’s utilizing his real-life horse-riding skills as Josh Luders in the channel’s newest series, Ride.
But Ride, debuting its first episode of 20 half-hours this Monday on YTV, isn’t all about Gray. Instead, he’s part of an ensemble in the equine-themed family drama about Katherine “Kit” Bridges (Kendra Timmins, Wingin’ It), a young lady who swaps Canada for England when her father, Rudy (Mike Shara), accepts a gig as an equestrian supervisor at Covington Academy, an elite riding school. The Canada-England co-production, between Breakthrough Entertainment and Buccaneer Media in the UK, was created by writers Jill Girling (Life with Derek) and Lori Mather-Welch (Queer As Folk) and has a direct lineage to series like Heartland and Anne of Green Gables.
Like Heartland, there are horses and a lot of time is spent on them. It’s a horse riding boarding school after all, so that makes sense, and the beautiful beasts are certainly celebrated. Director Stefan Scaini, a stalwart of Canadian TV from Heartland and Odd Squad to Avonlea and Wind at My Back, spends several moments capturing their movement in Monday’s debut.
But Ride feels more to me like an update of Anne of Green Gables. Kit has a flowing, unruly mane of reddish hair, bursts with enthusiasm and energy, and thinks nothing but the best of people. That, of course, causes her to run afoul of uppity rider Elaine (Alana Boden) and school marm Lady Covington (Sara Botsford). Kit does make a friend rather quickly: a wild and unpredictable horse named TK everyone is afraid of.
There’s a lot to like in Ride. Aside from strong writing—in the first 60 seconds of the debut we know why Kit and Rudy are in England, how they feel about it and their reservations—and the performances (Timmins, in particular, is fantastic), there’s the setting: rolling green English countryside, gnarled tree branches and moss-covered castles.
Check Ride out and let me know what you think.
Ride airs Monday to Thursday at 7 p.m. ET/PT on YTV.
Cast image courtesy of Corus.
Eric Leclerc had me totally befuddled. He performed two magic tricks less than two feet away from where I was sitting, and I still have no clue how he pulled them off. (You can check out the video below.) I was still talking about his performance days after he’d done them, and you’ll feel that way after tuning into YTV’s new hidden camera show.
Debuting Monday on the network, Tricked stars Leclerc—a two-time Canadian Magic Championship winner—as he messes with the minds of everyday Canadians going about their business in and around Vancouver. Monday’s bow tracks the energetic Leclerc while he approaches folks in Granville Public Market. There, he pulls off several food-related head-scratchers, correctly producing favourite snacks, fruits and a wedding ring from the most unlikely of places and using a cell phone to make juice. I don’t want to give away the tricks themselves, but Leclerc’s targets were as amazed and confused as I was. How does he pull off intricate magic that involves, well, possibly reading one’s mind?
“We spent five months in Vancouver filming, and performed 300 tricks,” Leclerc says during a press day in Toronto. “It was the first time in my career where I was doing magic that I wasn’t choosing to be put out there.” Adapted from a series in the UK, Force Four Entertainment auditioned hundreds of magicians before picking the Ottawa-based Leclerc. He and a team of magicians came up with all-original tricks, created and worked with him to perfect them before unleashing the brain-twisters on the public in 20 episodes. Having your angles covered is an important feature of magic, and Leclerc reveals well-placed production assistants and TV camera coordination blocked off key sight lines to keep the magic intact.
And yet, with all of that said, I still don’t know how Leclerc pulled off the trick he performed with a woman’s wedding ring at the end of Episode 1.
“When you experience magic in front of you, you know it’s not a trick,” Leclerc says. “Her reaction was real and that’s what this show is all about. It’s about their reaction when they trust a total stranger who says, ‘Lend me your wedding ring and let’s try something cool.'”
Tricked airs Monday to Thursday at 7:30 p.m. ET/PT on YTV.
Images courtesy of Corus.
From a media release:
YTV gets ready for more pranks from the infamous troublemakers at Macdonald Hall Boys’ School with the start of production on two new original television movies –  Bruno & Boots: This Can’t Be Happening At Macdonald Hall and Bruno & Boots: The Wizzle War. Based on the much-loved Macdonald Hall series by best-selling young adult author Gordon Korman, the movies are produced by Aircraft Pictures and filmed in Hamilton, Ontario. Reprising their starring roles from Bruno & Boots: Go Jump in the Pool are Jonny Gray (Max & Shred, Ride) and Callan Potter (The Other Kingdom), Peter Keleghan (18 To Life, Murdoch Mysteries) and Caroline Rhea (Sabrina The Teenage Witch, Phineas and Ferb).
In This Can’t be Happing at Macdonald Hall, Headmaster Sturgeon has had enough. In an attempt to put an end to Bruno and Boots’ high jinks, he declares that they are to be separated; no shared classes and, most certainly, no shared dorm room. This punishment is worse than anything the boys could have imagined. However, if Bruno and Boots can alienate every boy in Dormitory 3, Sturgeon will be forced to re-unite them. The plot almost succeeds, but one misstep forces the girls from the Scrimmage Academy for Education and Awakening to move into Macdonald Hall, leaving Bruno and Boots back where they started.
In The Wizzle War, the Boards of Directors launch an experimental educational program, introducing authoritarian Assistant Headmaster Mr. Wizzle to the boys of Macdonald Hall and the miserable Assistant Headmistress Ms. Peabody to whip the girls of the Scrimmage Academy into shape. With new dress codes, psychological testing, and early-morning wake-up calls with track laps as punishment, the boys and girls decide Wizzle and Peabody have to go. But how? As they pull out all the stops, they ultimately turn to the theory that “love conquers all†to oust the pair once and for all.
Returning cast also includes Hannah Vandenbygaart (Make it Pop), Kiana Madeira (Really Me, My Babysitter’s a Vampire), Joshua Kilimnik (Backstage, Odd Squad), Drew Haytaoglu (Anne of Green Gables), Isiah Lea (The Stanley Dynamic), Jayne Eastwood (Little Mosque On The Prairie) and Scott Thompson (Kids In The Hall). Joining the cast for the first time in Bruno & Boots: The Wizzle War are Kathleen Phillips (Mr. D, Sunnyside) as Ms. Peabody and Matt Baram (Make It Pop, Seed) as Mr. Wizzle.
As part of Corus Entertainment’s commitment to creating premium kids content, Bruno & Boots: This Can’t Be Happening At Macdonald Hall and Bruno & Boots: The Wizzle War join more than 350 hours of new and returning original programming airing across Corus’ suite of leading Kids networks in 2017. The movies are also produced with the financial participation of the Canada Media Fund and Shaw Rocket Fund.
Bruno & Boots: This Can’t Be Happening At Macdonald Hall and Bruno & Boots: The Wizzle War are produced by Anthony Leo and Andrew Rosen of Aircraft Pictures (Raising Expectations, Todd and the Book of Pure Evil) and directed by Vivieno Caldinelli (Bruno & Boots: Go Jump In The Pool, This Hour has 22 Minutes). The screenplay forThis Can’t Be Happening At Macdonald Hall was written by Adam Barken and Mike McPhaden and the screenplay for The Wizzle War was written by Mike McPhaden.
