Canadian Shows I Like

My screenwriter friend in the comments of that last post responded:


"Well, I'll disagree with you a little bit here.

INTELLIGENCE, though it was sadly cancelled due to low ratings, was an absolutely stellar show, way better than most US shows. Unfortunately it never locked into a large-enough audience.

DURHAM COUNTRY, which also won a bunch of awards, was also really quite good. Last year I think SLINGS & ARROWS won and it was also an excellent show.

The problem is INTELLIGENCE scored the CBC around 250,000 viewers a week, while THE BORDER gets them 750,000 and CTV's FLASHPOINT, which is explicitly a US-style show that actually plays on CBS in the US, gets over 1,000,000 viewers.

My point is, the networks could certainly be more audacious in their programming, but when audiences don't watch the actually good shows, it doesn't help. Networks are businesses and 1,000,000 viewers for a middle of the road show trumps 250,000 for a groundbreaking one.

Don't get me wrong, there are lots of totally crap shows on Canadian TV. Lots and lots. But there's good stuff too. It's just that nobody watches the good stuff."



And I am with him about all this, except that there is not any promotion for the good shows and/or they are not on accessible networks. I mean, why aren't CTV and Global buying and PROMOTING some of the exciting stuff from Movie Network? And it's not enough for them to just put it on in a crappy time-slot and see if people get around to watching it.
And as for the CBC, if no one's watching that channel it's hard for them to advertise their shows. And when they debut a tonne of new shows and promote the crap out of them and then they all turn out to be quite bad, I have problems trusting CBC's judgement.

I am being unfair when I say there's no good Canadian television, because there is. But I haven't seen very much GREAT Canadian Television. Television that I can't wait to see the next episode of...

Canadian Shows I Like:
This Hour Has 22 Minutes
Rick Mercer Report
Corner Gas (specifically season 1)
Regenesis (I used to watch it when it was on Global at least, it was my first introduction to Ellen Page, who I thought was pretty brilliant in it)
Slings and Arrows (I've only seen 2 episodes of this but they were good)
Durham County (I've only seen one episode of this [man, I should baby-sit again] and it was pretty great I auditioned for it way back in the day and the script was really great and refreshing, actually).

At the ACTRA conference a few weeks ago I went to a workshop that involved the creator/producer/actors from a number of different shows including Da Kink in My Hair, Billable Hours, Rent-A-Goalie, and Flashpoint. They were talking about getting their shows made and also crossing over from acting to producing and writing.
It was a neat session and I liked hearing from all the speakers, especially because it was sort of inspiring, not like that other ACTRA workshop I went to where they basically said "everything is impossible", and "if you have nothing under your belt you will never get anything made" "if you are not a Somebody you can never star in your own show" etc etc etc.
And I like Flashpoint. And I liked hearing from the creators because they spoke to the fact that it really is a very "American" show. They pointed out that the show really is Canadian, especially in the way that it focuses on the characters and their interactions and on the actual emotions of the story.
And that's always been my beef with American crime/cop shows, not enough about the police/investigators/lawyers. I want to know more about those main characters. I don't really care about the violence or the mystery, I'm way more into emotions.
Because I'm a pansy like that.

I am maybe somewhat hopeful out our industry. I am. And it's still pretty new, we're still able to make up rules and I think that kind of anything is possible.
(poor grammar but that's what I sort of mean. ha.)

I don't know how we go about changing the attitude of Canadians about Canadian television without constantly producing top quality shows, but I don't know how to keep the top quality shows on the air without changing the attitude of Canadians about Canadian television.