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Because I love television. How about you?

Month: May 2020

Watchable the week of May 31, 2020

May 31, 2020 /

SHOW OF THE WEEK: Quiz (May 31, 10 p.m., AMC)

Matthew Macfadyen as Charles Ingram and Sian Clifford as Diana Ingram in “Quiz.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Matt Frost/AMC/ITV

I’m a sucker for anything with Matthew Macfadyen in it (see “Ripper Street,” “Howards End,” “Succession” and lots more). Here he plays English army major Charles Ingram, who’s accused along with his wife and another man of cheating on the TV game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”

Macfadyen is joined by other notable U.K. actors, including Sian Clifford (“Fleabag”) as wife Diana, Michael Sheen (“Masters of Sex”) as “Millionaire” host Chris Tarrant , Helen McCrory (“Peaky Blinders”) as the Ingrams’ lawyer, Elliot Levey (“Silent Witness”) as “Millionaire” creator David Briggs and Mark Bonnar (“Line of Duty”) as producer Paul Smith.

The case, in both real life and on the series, turned on the idea that Diana Ingram and another aspiring contestant who was in the studio audience, Tecwen Whittock (Michael Jibson), used coughing to point Charles toward the correct answers as he played his way to the $1 million-pound prize.

The three-part series is both an absorbing courtroom drama and a pop-culture primer. It takes us through the creation of “Millionaire” for the ITV network in 1998 and how a subsection of the British population became obsessed with the show.

If you don’t know the outcome of the actual case I won’t spoil it for you, but you will likely find yourself conflicted about the couple’s innocence or guilt.

Parasite (June 2, 7:30 p.m., Crave)

Choi Woo-shik, Song Kang-ho, Jang Hye-jin and Park So-dam in “Parasite”
PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of TIFF

This South Korean movie by celebrated director Bong Joon Ho became the first foreign-language film to win the Best Picture Oscar earlier this year. But I’m recommending it for another reason, because it’s entertaining from start to finish with plot twists I can almost guarantee you won’t see coming.

I won’t give anything away beyond saying it’s about a family of impoverished grifters in Seoul who ingratiate themselves with a rich family. Trust me when I say you will find yourself rooting for the swindlers.

This airing is part of the “Stay at Home Cinema” program from the Toronto International Film Festival and Crave. Before the movie, you can go to tiff.net at 7 p.m. for a livestreamed chat between TIFF artistic director Cameron Bailey; Sharon Choi, an aspiring director who was Bong’s interpreter during his four trips to the Oscars stage in February, and Tom Quinn, co-founder of the film’s North American distributor, NEON.

And if you’re willing to check out some homegrown award winners, “Antigone,” which just won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Film, is airing June 5 at 7 p.m. on Crave as part of “Quebec Cinema Month.” I confess I haven’t seen this one, but the Toronto Star’s former movie critic Peter Howell highly recommends it.

One more movie option: Hollywood Suite is showing award-winning films all summer in a program it calls “The Best of the Best.” It kicks off June 1 to 7 with Oscar Best Picture winners, including “Patton,” “Moonlight,” “Kramer vs. Kramer,” “All About Eve,” “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” “The Hurt Locker” and “Out of Africa.”

Trackers (June 5, 11:30 p.m., HBO)

PHOTO CREDIT: Cinemax/YouTube

I suspect the pandemic-mandated halt in TV production is going to mean even more international programs on North American networks and streamers as supplies of domestic shows dry up. If they’re of the calibre of this South African-made drama, that’s fine with me.

“Trackers” is based on a 2011 novel by South African author Deon Meyer and was adapted for TV by Meyer, Brit Robert Thorogood (“Death in Paradise”) and a team of South African writers.

There are many strands to this thriller, including terrorism, diamond smuggling, black market animal importation, Cape Town gangsters, and investigations by the CIA and the South African intelligence service. The plot lines unspool and intertwine skilfully and suspensefully, without anyone hammering you over the head with exposition. And the series is populated with interesting characters of varied ethnicities (dialogue is subtitled in both Afrikaans and English) and locations in and around Cape Town that are unfamiliar to North American eyes.

Shoot to Marry (June 6, 9 p.m., Super Channel Fuse)

Filmmaker Steve Markle and hat maker Heidi Lee in Markle’s documentary “Shoot to Marry.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Shoot to Marry

This documentary is the closing night movie of the Canadian Film Festival and won an Audience Award at the Slamdance Film Festival in January. Toronto director Steve Markle (“Camp Hollywood”) set out to heal his broken heart, after his girlfriend of four and a half years rejected his proposal, by filming interesting women – and potentially finding a new love among his subjects. No spoilers here, but Markle did indeed meet some interesting women, among them delightfully quirky hat maker Heidi Lee (above), a sex club owner, a professional cuddler, a heart transplant recipient, a fire spinner, a butcher, a wrestler, a lumberjack, a dominatrix, a tattoo artist and more. The doc is by turns funny, cringe-worthy, heartwarming and illuminating.

Odds and Ends

Jodie Comer as Villanelle and Sandra Oh as Eve Polastri in “Killing Eve.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Laura Radford/BBCAmerica/Sid Gentle

I have really enjoyed this season of “Killing Eve” and, in particular, the work of Jodie Comer as assassin Villanelle. Season 3 concludes May 31 at 10 p.m. on CTV Drama Channel. Two other series are also wrapping their seasons on the main CTV channel on May 31: “I Do, Redo” at 7 p.m. and “Mary’s Kitchen Crush” at 7:30 p.m.

A number of series are beginning their seasons this week, including “Fuller House: The Farewell Season” June 2 on Netflix; Season 4 of “13 Reasons Why” and Season 5 of “Queer Eye,” both June 5 on Netflix; and Season 5 of “RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Stars” on Crave June 5 at 9:30 p.m.

Finally, Canadians are getting in on the celebrity commencement ceremony trend with “We Celebrate: Class of 2020” (June 6 at 8 p.m. on CTV and everywhere CTV content can be found). Among those shouting out all the students who won’t be getting real-life graduations due to COVID-19 are talk-show host Lilly Singh; a whack of musicians including Alessia Cara, Shawn Mendes, Selena Gomez, Joe Jonas, Arkells, Meghan Trainor and more; athletes like Penny Oleksiak and P.K. Subban; actors like Jacob Tremblay and Natalie Portman; even Muppets Miss Piggy and Gonzo.

Transplant’s Laurence Leboeuf loves smart, ‘spazzy’ Dr. Mags

May 26, 2020 /
Laurence Leboeuf as Dr. Magalie “Mags” Leblanc in “Transplant,”
which concludes its first season on May 27. PHOTO CREDIT: Bell Media

When the doctors and nurses of the fictional York Memorial Hospital are gathered around an emergency patient, calling out instructions and reaching for life-saving equipment, to actor Laurence Leboeuf it’s a bit like a ballet.

She plays Dr. Magalie “Mags” Leblanc in CTV’s “Transplant,” which ends its first season Wednesday, May 27 at 9 p.m. And she uses the word “ballet” a couple of times during our interview to describe the process of making the show’s medical scenes look and feel believable.

“Transplant” is about Dr. Bashir Hamed (played by Hamza Haq), a Syrian refugee who becomes a resident in the ER of a big Toronto hospital after saving the life of his future boss, Dr. Bishop (Scottish actor John Hannah), in an accident. Mags is one of his fellow ER residents.

As with all medical TV shows, Haq, Leboeuf and their cast mates have to convincingly fake a variety of medical procedures. For the really big traumas, the cast would spend hours rehearsing at weekend “boot camps,” Leboeuf said.

“At the beginning of rehearsal, sometimes I would start and after five minutes I was like, ‘This is never gonna happen. There’s too much to do,'” Leboeuf said over the phone from her hometown of Montreal, where “Transplant” shoots. “Then the puzzle comes together and, at the end, it’s super rewarding when the ballet happens and you’re like ‘Wow, that’s cool, we did that.'”

Not only did the actors have to learn medical jargon (with the help of consultants Dr. Zachary Levine and nurse “Magic Mike” Richardson), they had to learn to use it convincingly, to time it to their movements as they manipulated fake medical equipment and to, well, you know, act while spouting words like “pericardial effusion” and “sternotomy.”

Add the fact that English is not Leboeuf’s first language and it’s that much more of a challenge.

“I wanted Mags to speak really, really fast: to not think, like she knows everything; she’s read all the books, there’s no delay in her mind,” Leboeuf said. “So sometimes, with English being my second language, it was harder for me to put it into my mouth.”

Mags has been one of the most challenging and rewarding roles that Leboeuf has played. It’s the first time in a more than two-decade career that the 34-year-old has been a lead in a TV series.

She has played a doctor before, in the Quebec series “Trauma,” although that character was an “extremely troubled” surgeon “who was seeing her dead father and stuff like that.” Leboeuf has switched back and forth between French and English TV and movies, including “Being Erica,” “Durham County,” the English remake of “19-2” and the limited series “The Disappearance.”

Mags has been special, though. “I love playing Mags,” said Leboeuf. “I love her quickness and her spazziness and her awkwardness and her brain. When I first read the script I was just like, ‘Yeah, I love this character already.’ I could actually be playing her for a while if we get the chance. She is that interesting.”

And just for the record, the workaholic Mags is “just so the opposite of who I am,” Leboeuf said. “I enjoy doing nothing; I love having  a social life outside of my job, although I love what I do.”

As I write this, Bell Media has not yet said if “Transplant” is getting a second season. I would, however, be astonished if it didn’t given that the show has been a ratings hit here at home – drawing more than 1.7 million viewers in early May, according to the most recent Numeris ratings available – and has been picked up by NBC to air in the U.S.

Leboeuf says that last bit of news is “so rewarding.”

“When you’ve worked hard on a show, and we’ve all believed in it and we’ve all loved it and we’ve  all thought we were doing a great show, so just to have that validation not only within Canada but now kind of internationally that’s just really, really rewarding.”

Leboeuf has given some thought to why medical dramas are such an enduring part of our TV landscape.

“Medical shows are like an endless well of amazing stories to tell,” she said. “Always there’s sorrow and rejoicing and courage and life-saving and sacrifices. We see the family struggles, we see the doctor struggles, we see the human part of it.”

And with plot lines that touch on everything from anti-vaxxers to mental illness to racism to drunk driving to gender dysphoria, Leboeuf sees “an endless well of amazing stories, human stories” to draw on.

Assuming “Transplant” does get the go-ahead for more episodes, Leboeuf is itching to get back to work with the cast mates who’ve become “an instant family,” once it’s considered safe for TV production to resume during this COVID-19 pandemic.

In the meantime we’ve got Wednesday’s season finale to look forward to.

“It’s a great cliffhanger, something big’s happening. It’s a great episode,” she said.

Watchable the week of May 24, 2020

May 24, 2020 /

SHOW OF THE WEEK: Normal People (May 27, CBC Gem)

Daisy Edgar-Jones as Marianne and Paul Mescal as Connell in “Normal People.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Hulu via CBC Gem

There’s something to be said for a literary adaptation that makes you eager to watch the next episode even when you’ve already read the book and have a general idea where the plot is going. That’s how I feel about the TV version of Sally Rooney’s bestselling novel of the same name.

Part of that could be down to the fact that Rooney co-wrote the series alongside Alice Birch, a story editor on “Succession,” but the lion’s share of the praise goes to young leads Daisy Edgar-Jones (“War of the Worlds”) and Paul Mescal. 

The book and show follow prickly rich girl Marianne and popular working class bloke Connell as they become secret lovers in high school in Sligo, Ireland, and then weave in and out of each other’s lives at college in Dublin and beyond.

Edgar-Jones and Mescal bring Marianne and Connell to gloriously complicated life, making the bond between them palpable and believable.

This is one of a number of interesting shows coming out of Ireland lately, including “Dublin Murders” (Sarah Greene and Leah McNamara from that series play small but significant roles in “Normal People”) and “Dead Still,” which I wrote about here last week. (To see my Toronto Star story on that show, go to thestar.com and search for Dead Still.)

Space Force (May 29, Netflix)

Steve Carell as General Mark Naird in “Space Force.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Aaron Epstein/Netflix

If you go into this comedy expecting a military version of bumbling boss Michael Scott from “The Office” you’ll be disappointed. Steve Carell, who created “Space Force” with “Office” co-creator Greg Daniels, plays Mark Naird relatively straight. He’s a highly decorated four-star general who’s rigidly devoted to duty, as well as his wife and daughter, but saddled with the daunting mission of putting “boots on the moon by 2024” – a directive delivered by the unnamed U.S. president via Twitter. The comedy is informed by real-life situations – a military space branch created by a president who delivers policy on the fly, a U.S. rivalry with China, a cosy relationship with Russia – that veer off into ludicrousness, such as the method, which I won’t spoil here, by which Naird and his team try to save a satellite that the Chinese have sabotaged. I only had time to screen two episodes and the characters didn’t quite gel for me, including John Malkovich as science adviser Dr. Mallory, Ben Schwartz (“Parks and Recreation”) as social media adviser Tony Scarapiducci, Alex Sparrow (“UnREAL”) as Russian liaison Bobby Telatovich and an underused Lisa Kudrow (“Friends”) as Naird’s wife Maggie. 

Raising the Dead: Re-examining Night of the Living Dead
(May 29, 9 p.m., Hollywood Suite)

Hollywood Suite pays tribute to the movie “Night of the Living Dead” and
to late director George A. Romero. PHOTO CREDIT: Hollywood Suite

If you’re a fan of horror movies and, in particular, the work of zombie godfather George A. Romero, you might enjoy this look back at his seminal 1968 movie “Night of the Living Dead.” In this Hollywood Suite original documentary, film aficionados reflect on how the movie about a zombie invasion revolutionized the genre and established a “zombie bible” for film and TV projects to come. Plus people who worked on the film, including producer and sound engineer Gary Streiner and Kyra Schon, who played child zombie Karen Cooper, reflect on the man himself. The doc will be followed by screenings of “Night of the Living Dead” and Romero’s 1978 followup “Dawn of the Dead.”

Rescuing Rex (May 30, 9 p.m., TVO)

Toronto resident Harrison and his dog Nigel, who was rescued in Texas and brought to Toronto by Redemption Paws. PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of TVO

I’d keep tissues nearby while you watch this documentary, which will alternately break and gladden your heart. It follows two rescue operations, Toronto’s Redemption Paws and Taiwan’s Mary’s Doggies, both of which do the difficult, heart-wrenching work of getting unwanted dogs off the streets or out of overcrowded shelters and into the arms of new owners in Toronto . Yes, the dogs in the doc by Leora Eisen will melt your heart (Nigel, above, was a particular favourite of mine), but the film doesn’t soft-pedal the human cruelty that lands these animals on the streets or in shelters, often after being abused, or the fact that not every rescue has a happy ending. It also airs on TVO June 2 and June 4 at 9 p.m., and can be streamed any time at tvo.org.

Odds and ends

I really wish I had been able to preview “The Walrus and the Whistleblower,” a new doc about Phil Demers, a former animal trainer who was sued for $1.5 million after speaking out about what he saw at the Marineland animal park in Niagara Falls. Alas, I never got a screener, but I’m sure it’s worth watching nonetheless. It airs May 28 at 8 p.m. on CBC and CBC Gem as part of “Hot Docs at Home,” as well as on documentary Channel at 9 p.m.

CTV’s “Transplant,” which has become a hit here in Canada and will soon be seen in the U.S. on NBC, ends its first season May 27 at 9 p.m. I interviewed Laurence Leboeuf, who plays the driven Dr. Mags Leblanc, and will post that interview here later this week.

Also this week, two talent competitions begin new seasons on May 26: it’s No. 15 for “America’s Got Talent” (Citytv at 8 p.m.) and No. 4 for “World of Dance” (CTV at 10 p.m.). And if you like watching ridiculously fit people doing ridiculously hard things, Season 2 of “The Titan Games” begins on May 25 (Global at 8 p.m.).

Watchable the week of May 17, 2020

May 17, 2020 /

Here’s what caught my eye over the past week of screening.

Dead Still (May 18, Acorn TV)

Michael Smiley as post-mortem photographer Brock Blennerhasset in “Dead Still,” a co-production of Ireland’s Deadpan Pictures and Canada’s Shaftesbury for Acorn TV. PHOTO CREDIT: Acorn TV

This is my favourite new show of the week. It starts with the premise of a post-mortem photographer, i.e. a photographer who takes portraits of families with their dead loved ones – catnip for anyone with a taste for the macabre. But that’s just one element of this six-episode series that’s also a murder mystery, a period drama, a family drama, a black comedy and a glimpse of how people lived in 1880s Dublin, both the upper and lower classes.

The characters spring to life from the very first episode, particularly the central trio: photographer Brock Blennerhasset, played by Michael Smiley (“Luther”), who seems to prefer the dead to the living; his aspiring actress niece Nancy (Eileen O’Higgins of “Brooklyn” and “Mary Queen of Scots”), who’s naive and worldly at the same time; and his assistant Connal (Kerr Logan of “Alias Grace” and “Game of Thrones”), a gravedigger with the soul of an artist.

The secondary characters are just as well drawn. They include Aidan O’Hare (“Dublin Murders”) as the police detective trying to solve the murders with no backing from the higher-ups; Canadian Mark Rendall (“ReGenesis,” “Versailles”) as a sculptor who courts Nancy; and Peter Campion (“Derry Girls,” “Peaky Blinders”) as Nancy’s rake of a brother, Henry.

Besides post-mortem photography, a fascinating Victorian practice, the series touches on the fad for spiritualism and seances, and even Victoria porn. There’s a wonderful episode in which Brock and Connal appear to be haunted by the ghost of a little boy they’ve just photographed. And the Dublin locations are fantastic.

Acorn, which commissioned the series, releases two episodes May 18, with more to follow weekly. It also airs Fridays at 10 p.m. on Citytv.

(If you’d like to read my Toronto Star interview with Mark Rendall, director Craig David Wallace and executive producer Paul Donovan, go to thestar.com and search Dead Still.)

Hightown (May 17, Starz on Crave)

Monica Raymund stars as Jackie Quinones, who’s trying to stay clean and solve a murder at the same time in “Hightown.” PHOTO CREDIT: Starz via Bell Media

This is a meaty post-“Chicago Fire” project for Monica Raymund, who stars as a hard-partying fisheries office in Provincetown, Mass., who finds a young woman’s body on the beach after a bender. After skipping out of rehab, Jackie tries to stay sober while tracking down a fellow drug addict who may be entangled in the crime. That brings her into the orbit of Detective Ray Abruzzo (James Badge Dale, “The Pacific,” “24”), who’s trying to solve the murder, which is linked to the area’s opiod epidemic. At the Television Critics Association press tour in January, Raymund said she was glad to be playing “something completely different” from Gabby Dawson in “Chicago Fire.”  “This role is really about battling my inner demons, trying to find redemption, trying to fill something within me that I can’t fill.”

Homecoming (May 22, Amazon Prime Video)

Stephan James as Walter Cruz in Season 2 of “Homecoming.” PHOTO CREDIT: Amazon Prime Video

I can’t say too much about Season 2 of the series here because there is an embargo on reviews until May 18. Suffice to say the seven episodes I watched kept me entertained. Stephan James is back as veteran Walter Cruz, a former subject of the mysterious Homecoming program. This season, he acts opposite new recruits Janelle Monae and Oscar winner Chris Cooper. And there’s a bigger role this season for Hong Chau (“Watchmen”) as Geist Group employee on the rise Audrey Temple. Check thestar.com this week for my Toronto Star interview with Stephan.

Little Fires Everywhere (May 22, Amazon Prime Video)

Kerry Washington as Mia and Reese Witherspoon as Elena in “Little Fires Everywhere.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Erin Simkin/Hulu

After shepherding “Big Little Lies” to the screen, Reese Witherspoon has brought another bestselling book about complicated women to television, this time Celeste Ng’s “Little Fires Everywhere” with Kerry Washington (“Scandal”) as her co-executive producer and co-star. This is really Washington’s and Witherspoon’s show. They star as mothers Mia and Elena – one a guarded artist with an unconventional approach to parenting, the other a journalist who tries to mould her kids to her idea of perfection – who are pitted against each other. Neither comes across as particularly likeable, but they are interesting to watch. Class differences, racial divisions and white privilege form the context of what is essentially a story about mothers and daughters. Lexi Underwood and Megan Stott stand out as Mia’s daughter Pearl and Elena’s daughter Izzy.

If you missed it …

“The Great” debuted May 16, also on Amazon Prime. It’s history with a wink, loosely based on the story of Catherine the Great, empress of Russia from 1762 until 1796, and her coup against her husband, Emperor Peter III. Elle Fanning makes an engaging Catherine, intelligent, kindhearted and devoted to Enlightenment ideals. Nicholas Hoult plays Peter as a needy and callous man-child, preoccupied with drinking, fighting and screwing the wife of his best friend. Phoebe Fox is fun as Marial, Catherine’s servant, a former aristocrat demoted to serf, and Sacha Dhawan plays Catherine’s co-conspirator Count Orlov.

Odds and ends

A new episode of “Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet” comes to Apple TV Plus on May 22. “The Masked Singer” has a two-part season finale May 19 and 20 at 8 p.m. on CTV. “A League of Their Own” is the latest instalment of “Stay at Home Cinema” from Crave and the Toronto International Film Festival on May 19, with a Q&A with Geena Davis at tiff.net at 7 p.m. and the movie at 7:30 p.m. on Crave.

Watchable the week of May 10, 2020

May 10, 2020 /

Happy Mother’s Day! Here’s what caught my interest this week.

I Know This Much Is True (May 10, HBO, 9 p.m., also Crave)

Mark Ruffalo as twins Thomas and Dominick Birdsey in “I Know This Much Is True.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Atsushi Nishijima/HBO

This show is first a testament to the talent of Mark Ruffalo. He plays twin brothers in this series about the ravages of mental illness and family dysfunction – paranoid schizophrenic Thomas and his fiercely loyal but volatile brother Dominick – and you’d swear they were played by two different people. 

Ruffalo shot Dominick’s scenes first, then spent five weeks gaining 30 pounds and researching mental illness before playing Thomas.

Credit is also due to Philip Ettinger, who plays both twins as young men.

If you’re looking for an easy breezy isolation watch, this six-episode series isn’t that. Based on Wally Lamb’s Oprah-endorsed 1998 novel, it begins with Thomas mutilating himself in a public library in what he sees as a necessary sacrifice to end the Gulf War. Things spiral from there, with Thomas sent to a forensic psychiatric institution and Dominick fighting to get him out while fighting demons of his own, including grief over the loss of his mother, wife and baby daughter, and the fallout of a bad childhood with a violent stepfather.

The series casts light on the relentlessness of mental illness and the human wreckage it leaves in its wake; the multi-generational poison of toxic masculinity but also the power of human connection. 

It is at times harrowing but also deeply absorbing.

This is Ruffalo’s show, but other fine actors play supporting roles, including Melissa Leo as the twins’ mother; Rosie O’Donnell and Archie Panjabi as a sympathetic social worker and psychiatrist, respectively; Kathryn Hahn as Dominick’s ex-wife; and Canadians Bruce Greenwood and Michael Greyeyes as the head of the forensic hospital and its janitor.

A Confession (May 12, BritBox)

Joe Absolom as Christopher Halliwell and Martin Freeman as Steve Fulcher in “A Confession.”
PHOTO CREDIT: ITV/BritBox

A young woman missing for days. A detective racing to try to get her back alive. A suspect who in an apparent burst of remorse leads him to her body, plus that of another woman police didn’t even realize was dead. And then it falls apart for the detective and the mother of one of those girls. Those are the basic outlines of this BritBox original, based on a real 2011 case that cost detective Steve Fulcher his job. Prolific English actor Martin Freeman (“The Office,” “The Hobbit,” “Fargo,” “Sherlock” and too many others to mention) plays Fulcher. He is joined by other top-notch British stars, including Imelda Staunton (“Harry Potter,” “Vera Drake,” “Shakespeare in Love”) and Siobhan Finneran (“Happy Valley,” “The Stranger,” “Downton Abbey”) as the mothers of the two victims. The series makes clear the enormous amount of work that goes into catching a killer, the fact that not all victims of crime are considered equal, and that justice and the law are not necessarily the same thing.

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend (May 12, Netflix)

Kimmy (Ellie Kemper) and Titus (Tituss Burgess) take a road trip as part of “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Netflix

I’m not a Kimmy aficionado, but there are worse time wasters than this special that has Kimmy (Ellie Kemper) about to marry her prince (Daniel Radcliffe) when she stumbles on another plot by the Reverend (Jon Hamm) who imprisoned her and other women in a bunker. Because this is an interactive show, with numerous places where you get to choose the characters’ actions, it can eat up quite a bit of time. Some critics apparently spent hours exploring the different scenarios. I ran through it once, long enough to say that it maintains the charm and gee whiz goofiness of the series. And thanks to creators Tina Fey and Robert Carlock and their writing team there are some zingers in among the “fudging” and “what the h-e-single-c-single-k.” The gang is all back to support Kimmy, including Tituss Burgess, Carol Kane (in a double role) and Jane Krakowski. 

Dr. Miami (May 14, CBC and CBC Gem at 8 p.m.)

Plastic surgeon Dr. Michael Salzhauer, a.k.a. “Dr. Miami,” cuddles some breast implants.
PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of CBC

I should say up front that I’m not a fan of plastic surgery, which is the bread and butter of Dr. Michael Salzhauer, the Dr. Miami of the title. He has parlayed Snapchat videos and livestreams of his breast and butt lifts into pop culture fame, at least among the people who seek self-fulfilment in bigger boobs, flatter tummies or Kardashian-style bubble butts. It’s clear that Salzhauer is as vain and insecure as the people he treats, but he’s also skilled at what he does, and he’s an observant Orthodox Jew whose wife and five children tolerate his social media obsession. As abhorrent as I found parts of this documentary I also found it hard to look away. It’s part of the “Hot Docs at Home” series.

Hotel Paranormal (T+E, May 15, 9 p.m.)

Dan Aykroyd narrates the supernatural series “Hotel Paranormal.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Blue Ant Media

Like his “Ghostbusters” character, Canadian actor Dan Aykroyd is a believer when it comes to things that go bump in the night, which is why he’s narrating this spooky new series for Canada’s Blue Ant Media and Saloon Media. Although it’s a Canadian-made show, the haunted hotels it features are in the U.S. and Europe, at least in the first two episodes. The one I screened featured a poltergeist that escalated into demonic possession in Texas, an evil entity unleashed by teens on a school trip to Rome and a grabby phantom in New England. The subjects of the encounters narrate their tales with assists from re-enactments, alleged “actual” photos and video, and paranormal experts. Whether you believe is up to you, but at the very least it should give you a shiver.

Odds and Ends

“Call Your Mother” (May 10 at 10 p.m. on CTV Comedy Channel) has various comedians paying tribute to their moms, including Louie Anderson, Awkwafina, Jimmy Carr, Judah Friedlander, Jim Gaffigan and more. If you’re in the mood for nostalgia, you might like “The Happy Days of Garry Marshall” on ABC May 12 at 8 p.m. It features stars like Henry Winkler and Julia Roberts recalling the late Marshall’s classic shows and movies, including “Happy Days,” “Laverne and Shirley,” “Mork and Mindy,” “Pretty Woman” and so on. On May 13 at 8 p.m., CBS and Global TV have the 40th season finale of “Survivor: Winners at War”: the reunion and other live elements have, of course, been shot remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Farewell to a great Canadian show

May 8, 2020 /

One of the reasons I like having a blog is because I get to write about TV shows that I really love and one of those shows is CTV’s “Cardinal.”

I was hooked on this detective drama from my first peek at the first episodes in 2017 and my admiration only grew as I got to meet and talk with people involved in the show, including the amazing Billy Campbell and Karine Vanasse, and director Daniel “Podz” Grou. (You can read those stories on the Toronto Star’s website. I’ll post the urls below.)

Yet all good things truly do come to an end. For “Cardinal,” that end is Monday, May 11 at 10 p.m. on CTV. But here’s something that might ease your withdrawal symptoms: CTV’s “eTalk” is airing a special, “eTalk Presents: Cardinal,” this Friday, May 8, at 7 p.m. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m told I make a “cameo” appearance in it, since correspondent Danielle Graham did her interviews with Billy and Karine the same weekend I was on set in North Bay.

That was such a fun weekend. Myself and a handful of other media spent a Friday afternoon in April 2019 watching the shooting in the North Bay office that stood in for Algonquin Bay police headquarters, and grabbed short interviews with Billy and Karine , and producer Julia Sereny whenever we could. They were busy. It was their last day of shooting in North Bay and they were put behind schedule by an unexpected visit by Ontario Premier Doug Ford and his then finance minister, Vic Fedeli.

Here’s my admittedly very non-professional photo of Doug Ford and Vic Fedeli talking to Billy Campbell and Karine Vanasse on the “Cardinal” set on April 5, 2019.

On Saturday we got to do photo shoots with Billy and Karine, and to attend the wrap party on Saturday night. That was my first ever wrap party. Who knows if I’ll ever get invited to another?

Zach Smadu, centre, who plays Detective Kular, with Kristen Thomson, who plays Dyson, and Billy Campbell. You already know who he plays, right? PHOTO CREDIT: Bell Media

Anyway, one thing I regret is that when I wrote my Toronto Star feature about the set visit (url below), I didn’t have room to include my interview with James Downing and Zach Smadu, who play detectives Ian McLeod and Ash Kular, respectively. They’re very witty and charming gentlemen. Here’s a little taste of our chat, which started with me joking to Zach about the fact he started out in musical theatre.

Me: What’s a guy with a musical theatre background doing in a cop show?

Zach: Dancing with glee. I mean, I started in musical theatre. You didn’t know that?

Me: It’s amazing what you can find out on an IMDb page.

James: The punishment you’re gonna take …

Zach: Jimmy brings his guitar to set every day. When we’re not working we’ll sing songs. We actually had a running joke starting in Season 2 that we wanted them to do McKul …

James: They call us McKul.

Zach: That McKul is at a karaoke bar one night and just like, it’s some weird random thing because we do that all the time.

James: The director went, uh, not so much.

Zach: It would have been a very different show … Being in the world of police drama, especially the kind of intensity of this show and bringing life and realness, especially as our leads and Jim and all the co-stars and guest stars do, it’s really still like theatre because it’s a team sport.

James: That was so sincere. He just likes carrying a gun.

Zach: Actually that was the only ask I had this season, because I have yet to pull my gun out … There’s a lot of crime in this town. Can you believe the amount of crime in this little town?

Me: Well , maybe if somebody brings the wrong type of doughnuts.

James: Ooooh.

We chatted a bit more about how James, for instance, got into acting because he had a crush on a girl in the drama society at school; how Zach wanted to be a sprinter when he was growing up; and how much they’ve both enjoyed working on “Cardinal.”

James Downing, left, who plays Detective McLeod, with Billy Campbell in Season 3 of “Cardinal.” PHOTO CREDIT: Bell Media

So here’s to you McKul and the rest of the “Cardinal” crew. Thanks for the memories.

If you want to check out the first interview I did with Billy and Karine: https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/television/2018/01/03/canadian-tv-crime-drama-cardinal-returns-to-its-elements.html

My interview with Podz: https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/television/2019/01/23/director-daniel-grou-found-dream-cast-in-cardinals-billy-campbell-and-karine-vanasse.html

The story I wrote about the final season: https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/television/2020/04/05/billy-campbell-karine-vanasse-and-an-army-of-others-brought-north-bay-and-cardinal-to-the-world-the-final-season-arrives-monday.html

Watchable, the week of May 3, 2020

May 3, 2020 /
From left, Jowee Omicil, Randy Kerber, Lada Obradovic, Damian Nueva Cortes (at rear), Tahar Rahim, Ludovic Louis, Andre Holland and Adil Dehbi in “The Eddy.” PHOTO CREDIT: Lou Faulon/Netflix

The Eddy (Netflix, May 8)

If you love Paris, jazz and the work of Andre Holland (“Moonlight,” “The Knick”) – and I love two out of those three – this could be the show for you.

It’s from British writer Jack Thorne (“His Dark Materials”), and boasts Oscar-winning director Damien Chazelle and songwriter Glen Ballard as executive producers. Chazelle also directed the first two episodes. 

Holland is Elliot, the American owner of a small Paris jazz club (The Eddy of the title), a well known musician who stopped performing after the death of his son. Holland is an actor who can do as much with a look as some do with a page of dialogue, a talent that is well suited to the slower pace of the series and the attention it pays to the internal struggles of its characters.

Handheld camera work, liberal use of closeups and naturalistic dialogue (in several languages, with subtitles) give the series a documentary feel.

The Paris showcased here is not the city of travelogues or movie musicals. It’s gritty, sometimes dangerously so. We see the back alleyways, the banlieues and the nondescript buildings that real people live in, not a flower box or cast iron balcony in sight.

The cast includes American Amandla Stenberg as Elliot’s troubled daughter Julie; French actors (and real-life couple) Tahar Rahim and Leila Bekhti as Elliot’s best friend Farid and his wife Amira; French actor Adil Dehbi as bar employee Sim, who befriends Julie; and Polish actor Joanna Kulig as Elliot’s former lover Maja, the singer in the bar’s house band. 

The music, written by Ballard, threads its way naturally through every episode, performed and recorded live by a band of multicultural actor-musicians. 

It anchors the characters, brings them together when they’re at odds, brings them solace when they’re in pain. And there is a lot of pain here, some of it precipitated by a violent incident in the first episode; some of long standing, such as Elliot’s and Julie’s reckoning with the fallout of their broken family.

If you’re used to whiz-bang plotting and rapid-fire dialogue, “The Eddy” might feel plodding to you, but I found its humanity appealing.

It’s about people striving and failing; about love, family, friendship and their imperfections; about life in general.

The characters stay with you, like snatches of song.

Beginnings and Endings

David Costabile as Mike “Wags” Wagner, Damian Lewis as Bobby “Axe” Axelrod and Maggie Siff as Wendy Rhoades in Season 5 of “Billions.” PHOTO CREDIT: Jeff Neumann/Showtime

Sunday night marks the beginning of Season 5 of “Billions” on Crave (9 p.m.) and the end of Season 3 of “Westworld” on HBO (9 p.m.). I’m behind on both shows so I can’t give you much insight into how either unfolds. I do know that Julianna Margulies (who I’ll always remember as Nurse Hathaway on “ER” although she’s better known now for “The Good Wife”) has joined the cast of “Billions.” It also looks to be a good season for Maggie Siff (“Sons of Anarchy”), another actor who’s very watchable.

Sunday also brings the second half of the fourth season of “Rick and Morty” on Adult Swim (11:30 p.m.), a show that I confess I had never watched until I screened this new episode. It seems clever enough (I got a particular chuckle out of the Bechdel test reference) and I’m sure people who like the series will enjoy it.

Odds and ends

Jerry Seinfeld has a new standup special, “23 Hours to Kill,” coming to Netflix May 5. It was not made available to critics to screen ahead of time, which seems odd to me given what a big name Seinfeld is. I’ve only seen a couple of trailers and neither of them made me laugh, so make of that what you will.

BritBox has “Florence Nightingale” launching on May 6. It’s timely on a couple of levels: this is the bicentennial year of her birth and nurses are very much top of mind during the coronavirus outbreak. Nightingale revolutionized the practice of nursing in Britain and around the world after she became famous for tending to soldiers during the Crimean War of 1853 to 1856. This show is described as a biopic drama, but it felt to me more like an extended “Heritage Minute,” using Nightingale’s own words from her letters and journals to sketch her devotion to her profession and her religion. Nonetheless, Laura Fraser, who I’ve enjoyed in shows like “Breaking Bad,” “Better Call Saul” and “Loch Ness,” makes a compelling Florence and gives you a taste of just how extraordinary this woman was.

If you haven’t seen them yet, I recommend “Never Have I Ever” on Netflix, “Looking for Alaska” on CBC Gem, “Run” on HBO/Crave and Season 6 of “Bosch” on Amazon Prime Video. Also, check out Toronto actor Robbie Amell in “Upload” (Amazon) as a young man who’s uploaded to a virtual afterlife after his sudden (and suspicious) death.

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