SHOW OF THE WEEK: Going Native (May 8, 8:30 p.m., APTN)
Drew Hayden Taylor gets a horse-riding lesson from Jarrod Pretty Young Man in “Going Native.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of APTN
What do you think of when you think of Indigenous culture? Beads and feathers? Powwow dances? Drum circles?
How about zombie movies, gourmet cuisine, cutting edge architecture or an award-winning winery? No? Then let Drew Hayden Taylor enlighten you.
The 58-year-old member of Ontario’s Curve Lake First Nation is no slouch himself when it comes to cultural contributions
Take a peek at his website and check out his list of accomplishments, which includes writing short stories, plays, novels, nonfiction books, TV and film scripts, acting as a writer-in-residence at several universities and as artistic director of Native Earth Performing Arts.
I also think of Taylor as a cultural ambassador via documentaries like “Redskins, Tricksters and Puppy Stew,” “Searching for Winnetou” and “Cottagers & Indians” (based on his play of the same name).
In the 13-episode series “Going Native,” he spreads the word about Indigenous accomplishments and combats damaging colonial stereotypes.
Sure, that can be an uphill battle in a country like Canada, whose citizens consistently undervalue its cultural accomplishments, let alone those of its First Nations, but I urge you to check out “Going Native” nonetheless — not just because you’ll learn some things, but because it’s fun.
Taylor travels throughout North America (this was shot pre-pandemic) and uses humour and enthusiasm to share vignettes about Indigenous visionaries — people like architect Patrick Stewart, filmmaker Jeff Barnaby, video game designer Meagan Byrne and vintner Justin Hall, to name just a handful.
Taylor throws himself into his research, sometimes quite literally as when he attempts to mount a horse bareback at the home of the Pretty Young Man Indian Relay Team or gets chased by “zombie” Xander Jones. I’d put those in the “do not try this at home” category, but I’d happily sample the wine at Nk’Mip Cellars in Osoyoos, B.C., or the bison sausage at Toronto’s NishDish.
Other episodes delve into music, fashion, art, business, spirituality, survivalism, storytelling, sports and astronomy. And the series has already been renewed for a second season.
Sortez-Moi de Moi (May 7, 8 p.m., Crave)
Pascale Bussieres and Vincent Leclerc in “Sortez-Moi de Moi,” a.k.a. “Way Over Me.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Bell Media
This Quebec drama is attention-grabbing right out of the gate in that it’s rooted in the treatment of mental health — and not TV disease-of-the-week mental health but knotty, complex issues that won’t be resolved in an episode or even a season.
It should come as no surprise, either, that the patients aren’t the only ones struggling.
The series begins with a death — I won’t say whose — that has life-changing consequences for some of its characters, particularly crisis team social worker Clara St. Amand (Sophie Lorain), who’s devoted to her work but not to the bureaucracy behind it, and psychiatrist Justine Mathieu (Pascale Bussieres), who seems unsympathetic at first glance.
The other lead character is a charismatic patient with bipolar II disorder, David Ducharme (Vincent Leclerc), a condition that given his line of work (again, no spoilers) could be life-threatening.
Based on the two episodes available for review, the drama does an excellent job of teasing out the connections and complications between its characters, not giving too much away but leaving you wanting to know more.
The show is described as a psychological thriller, but it also plays at times like a medical or crime drama, one grounded in naturalistic performances. It’s based on an idea by actor Lorain and director Alexis Durand-Brault, known in Quebec for the TV series “Au secours de Beatrice” (“Helping Beatrice”), about an emergency room physician with psychological problems.
Also known as “Way Over Me,” “Sortez-Moi” debuts simultaneously in French, on Crave Super Ecran, and on Crave in versions that are dubbed or subtitled in English.
Short Takes
Expert Paul Winicki assesses author Jason Reynolds’ watch collection in “Antiques Roadshow, Celebrity Edition.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Antiques Roadshow for WGBH
Prohibited from taking its show, well, on the road by the pandemic, this venerable series celebrated its 25th season by sending its appraisers to the homes of celebrities to assess their favourite things. The episode I screened featured Olympic figure skater Nancy Kerrigan, author Jason Reynolds, actor S. Epatha Merkerson, pro golfer Dottie Pepper and comedian Jay Leno (who, in an unintended bit of irony given his recent apology for making racist jokes about Asians, casually mentions all the Asian antiques scattered around his Newport, Rhode Island mansion). Most of the items in that first episode didn’t have outsized monetary value — apart from a couple of Kerrigan’s medals, particularly the one she won after that infamous 1994 injury — but that doesn’t dampen the vicarious thrill of peeking into famous people’s abodes.
Jill Halfpenny as Jodie with Cody Molko as Daniel in “The Drowning.” PHOTO CREDIT: Bernard Walsh/Acorn TV
The Drowning (May 6, Acorn TV, Sundance Now)
This drama explores the line between grief and obsession when a woman who lost her four-year-old son in a drowning accident spots a teenager on the street who looks remarkably like her child would at 14. Caution, reason and everything else is thrown to the wind as Jodie (Jill Halfpenny, “EastEnders”) sets out to prove that Daniel (Cody Molko) is actually her son Tom, whose body was never found that day at the beach. Rupert Penry-Jones (“Spooks,” “The Strain”) also stars as Daniel’s father, or abductor in Jodie’s eyes.
Odds and Ends
From left, David Julian Hirsh, Ben Daniels, Josh Duhamel, Leslie Bibb, Mike Wade and Matt Lanter in “Jupiter’s Legacy.” PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Wilkie/Netflix
There are several shows of interest coming to Netflix this week, all of them embargoed for review until later in the week. Most notable is “Jupiter’s Legacy” (May 7), a made-in-Toronto family superhero drama starring Josh Duhamel, Leslie Bibb and Ben Daniels. It’s based on the comic book series by Mark Millar and Frank Quitely. Netflix also has Part 2 of “Selena: The Series” (May 4) about revered Mexican American singer Selena Quintanilla; and the docuseries “The Sons of Sam: A Descent Into Darkness” (May 5), about a journalist who spent decades trying to prove that serial killer David Berkowitz had not acted alone.
From Apple TV Plus comes Season 2 of office comedy “Mythic Quest” (May 7) about a group of video game developers.
SHOW OF THE WEEK: The Handmaid’s Tale (April 28, 9 p.m., CTV Drama Channel/Crave)
Elisabeth Moss as June Osborne in Season 4 of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” PHOTO CREDIT: Hulu/Bell Media
The handmaid is a renegade in Season 4 of this dystopian drama and one who doesn’t always feel on the side of the angels.
Viewers will likely find themselves vacillating between sympathy for and frustration with June Osborne, the handmaid of the title, played with the usual fervour by Elisabeth Moss, who also directed three episodes this season.
If you watched Season 3 — and if you didn’t, consider this your spoiler alert — you’ll recall that June was shot in the season finale, after she and a band of rebel handmaids were able to distract armed guards long enough for a plane carrying 86 children to take off for Toronto, striking a blow against the totalitarian regime of Gilead.
When Season 4 opens, June gets patched up enough for a network of Marthas to get her and the other handmaids out of Boston and to temporary safety at a farm overseen by teenaged wife Esther (Mckenna Grace, “Designated Survivor”), whose much older husband appears to have dementia — which comes in handy when there are a bunch of strange women running around the property.
Esther is a bit of a puzzle at first, fawning over June one moment, angrily bullying Janine (Madeline Brewer) the next for her reluctance to eat the pig that had to be slaughtered to feed all the extra mouths. It becomes clear that Esther is another traumatized victim who has suffered sexual violence sanctioned by the regime.
She gets a chance to take revenge against one of the men who violated her and the scene is emblematic of the ambivalence viewers may feel about this season. On the one hand, we’ve been waiting for the men who’ve enslaved the women of Gilead to get their comeuppance. On the other, June sanctions an act of savagery — which takes place off camera, but still — that seems to put her on an equal footing with the men who have tortured and executed women.
And yet, to deny women like June their revenge, even when the violence makes you squeamish, is to deny them their full humanity, which is what Gilead is all about. As June says in a later episode, “Why can’t we be as furious as we feel?”
June’s obsession with finding other members of the Mayday resistance and, ultimately, bringing down Gilead leads her to take risks that have serious, even fatal consequences for other people who depend on her. That’s made devastatingly clear at the end of Episode 3, which Moss directed. It’s one of the moments, and not the only one, in which it feels like June straddles the line between hero and villain.
During a virtual Q&A with members of the Television Critics Association in February, showrunner Bruce Miller said this season is about delivering on things that were set up in previous seasons and it does that, based on the eight of 10 episodes I screened, which take June out of Boston and beyond the control of Gilead, at least part of the time.
The later episodes also start to dig into the question of who people are when they’ve lived through something as traumatic as Gilead and whether a so-called “normal” life is even possible anymore under those circumstances. It’s a question that’s explored not just for June but for former handmaids Emily (Alexis Bledel), and Moira (Samira Wiley), and former “Martha” Rita (Canadian actor Amanda Brugel), all adjusting to life in Toronto and demonstrating that the path from victim to survivor is anything but linear.
Moss and her fellow actors continue to be brilliant this season. Brewer, in particular, really gets a chance to shine.
Viewers have found the series bleak and difficult to watch, and there isn’t much respite in the first half of the season. Some light starts to filter through in the later episodes, albeit still shaded with suffering.
This is necessary. It was time to, as Miller said in February, “make shit happen.”
Miller also said he feels like “I can go on and on forever” with the series, which to me seems like a dangerous impulse.
It’s time to let June achieve her goal and let Gilead fall. I can see one or two more seasons to conclude this handmaid’s tale. Anything beyond that would be indulgence.
Ed Helms as Nathan Rutherford and Michael Greyeyes as Terry Thomas in “Rutherford Falls.” PHOTO CREDIT: Colleen Hayes/Peacock
If you like gentle comedy with a point to it you might want to spend some time in Rutherford Falls.
The show was co-created by Ed Helms and Michael Schur, who have applied their talents to beloved series like “The Office” and “Parks and Recreation,” and Indigenous writer-producer Sierra Teller Ornelas (“Superstore”).
Helms also stars as nerdy Nathan Rutherford, whose raison d’etre is preserving the history of his family and, particularly, town founder Lawrence Rutherford. His best friend Reagan Wells (Lakota Sioux actor Jana Schmieding) is equally devoted to sharing the history of her fictional Minishonka First Nation and the two support each other in their lonely quests.
So far, so good, but then the town’s mayor (Dana L. Wilson) proposes moving Lawrence’s statue, known as Big Larry, from its spot in the middle of the main street — not out of a spirit of anti-colonialism, mind you, but because drivers keep crashing into it. Nathan’s zeal to keep Big Larry in the exact spot where Lawrence signed a “uniquely fair and honest deal” with the Minishonka 400 years earlier sets him on a collision course with local Minishonka residents and, eventually I suspect, with Reagan herself.
One also suspects that as the show goes on (I screened four of 10 episodes), Nathan will have to come to terms with the colonialism that he obliviously embraces.
He’s not the only one facing an identity crisis. Reagan is an outcast from her tribe, who see her as a sellout to white culture. Her boss, casino owner Terry Thomas, is devoted to the well-being of the tribe but tends to value its traditions as something to be monetized.
Terry is played by Michael Greyeyes, a Canadian actor from Muskeg Lake Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, and he’s the real standout in the cast. Smart, ambitious and pragmatic, Terry is the most well-rounded character, at least from what I’ve seen so far, and Greyeyes lights up whatever scenes he’s in.
Nathan and Reagan don’t get much character development beyond their well-meaning devotion to their respective histories. Nor does Josh Carter (Dustin Milligan of “Schitt’s Creek”), the reporter who comes to town in search of a story and becomes a love interest for Reagan. The cast also includes non-binary actor Jesse Leigh as Nathan’s assistant Bobbie and Canadian Mohawk actor Kawennahere Devery Jacobs as Reagan’s cousin Jess.
It’s not laugh-out-loud comedy — at least it wasn’t for me — but the show has heart and things to say: about power and who gets to exercise it, and whose stories get to be told and by whom.
Catching a Serial Killer: Bruce McArthur (April 30, 9 p.m., Super Channel Fuse)
The victims of serial killer Bruce McArthur: clockwise from top left, Selim Esen, Soroush Mahmudi, Dean Lisowick, Abdulbasir Faizi, Majeed Kayhan, Kirushna Kanagaratnam, Andrew Kinsman and Skandaraj Navaratnam. PHOTO CREDIT: Toronto Police Service/The Canadian Press
I’m not sure that having a Canadian entry in the ever growing true crime genre is actually something to celebrate, but this documentary takes a fairly thorough look at a notorious Toronto case.
Grandfather Bruce McArthur pleaded guilty in January 2019 to murdering eight men, whom he dismembered and buried mainly in large planters that he had access to as part of his landscaping business. The plea came more than eight years after the first victim went missing.
This doc, which has already aired on pay TV in the U.S., lays out the case chronologically from that first disappearance, of Skandaraj Navaratnam, to the eventual arrest and conviction of McArthur, which took place only after a white victim who was well known in the gay community disappeared (the other victims, aside from one homeless man, were all South Asian immigrants or refugees) and after two previous police interviews of McArthur.
The police actually get off pretty easily in the doc, far better than in a recent report that itemized serious flaws in their investigations. You can read more about that in this Toronto Star article by Wendy Gillis.
Gillis appears in the doc along with other journalists, two police detectives, former friends of McArthur’s, a criminologist and members of the gay community.
Of particular interest is an interview with John Doe, a man whom McArthur tried to strangle in his van in 2016. Police let McArthur go when he told them it was a “misunderstanding.” He went on to kill two more men, Selim Esen and Andrew Kinsman, whose disappearance kick-started surveillance of McArthur.
One flaw in the doc is that we learn much more about McArthur than we do about his victims. That lack of attention unfortunately mirrors the lack of attention that allowed the disappearances of a group of gay men of colour to go unsolved for as long as they did.
Short Takes
John Simm as Roy Grace in “Grace.” PHOTO CREDIT: BritBox screen grab
Grace (April 27, BritBox)
If you’re running out of crime dramas to stream, this two-part series is worth adding to the rotation. Created by Russell Lewis, known for the addictive “Endeavour,” and based on the novels by Peter James, it stars John Simm (“Life on Mars,” “Doctor Who”) as disgraced detective Roy Grace, who in addition to being relegated to cold case files is still mourning the disappearance of his wife six years before. The series isn’t reinventing the wheel, but the episode I saw, about a groom-to-be who vanishes from his stag, has some clever twists, and Simm makes an engaging lead.
Headspace Guide to Sleep (April 28) and Pet Stars (April 30, both Netflix)
These two series seem particularly pandemic-appropriate given that COVID-19 has both done a number on sleep patterns and led to an increased focus on our animal companions. The first show purports to be a guide to better sleep, a joint project of Netflix and the Headspace meditation app that features animation and soothing narration by Eve Lewis Prieto. Each episode ends with a wind-down exercise meant to send you into slumber, but I watched in the middle of the day and skipped through that part so I can’t say if it works.
“Pet Stars” features Colleen Wilson and Melissa May Curtis of Los Angeles animal talent agency Pets on Q as they search out social media animal celebs. And that’s it really, but the animals are cute. OK, maybe not the ugly dogs in Episode 1, but still.
Netflix also debuts Yasuke (April 29), an anime series based on the real-life, 16th-century Black sumurai.
Odds and Ends
Hailie Sahar as Lulu and Indya Moore as Angel in “Pose.” PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Parmelee/FX
One of the shows I would have most liked to review for you is “Pose,” which debuts its third season May 2 at 10 p.m. on FX. Unfortunately, reviews are embargoed until tomorrow. Season 3 is set in 1994 and sees Blanca (MJ Rodriguez) in the thick of AIDS activism while Pray Tell (Billy Porter) deals with his alcoholism and Angel (Indya Moore) tries to move ahead with her wedding.
I didn’t watch enough of “The Mosquito Coast” (April 30, Apple TV Plus) to really review it, but I can say it combines family drama with TV thriller based on the pilot episode. It’s an adaptation of the 1981 novel by Paul Theroux, star Justin Theroux’s uncle.
Disney Plus debuts a prequel to the Oscar-winning “Soul” on April 30, “22 vs. Earth,” which explores what soul 22 (Tina Fey) has against life on our planet in a short film by Kevin Nolting.
Also on April 30, Amazon Prime Video releases the action film “Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse,” starring Michael B. Jordan of “Black Panther” and “Creed” as Navy SEAL John Kelly.
On the same day, CBC Gem has the documentary “The Donut King,” by Alice Gu, about the rise and fall of a Cambodian refugee who built a doughnut empire in America.
NOTE: The post on “The Handmaid’s Tale” has been altered because I felt there was more to say after finding time to screen all eight of the episodes made available to critics.
NOTE: The dates and times listed here reflect information provided to me and cross-checked where possible against broadcast and streaming schedules, but it’s always best to check listings for your own area. The selection of series reviewed reflects what I’m given access to by networks and streamers, whether reviews are embargoed, how many shows I have time to watch and my own personal taste.
SHOWS OF THE WEEK: Life in Color (April 22, Netflix) and Greta Thunberg: A Year to Change the World (April 22, 8 p.m., BBC Earth)
Host David Attenborough with colourful macaws in Costa Rica in “Life in Color.” PHOTO CREDIT: Humble Bee Films/SeaLight Pictures
On one level, these shows have nothing in common, other than the fact they’re both being released on Earth Day, but I see them as linked due to the preoccupations of their stars with saving the planet.
At 94, David Attenborough, who hosts and conceived “Life in Color,” is the old pro. The numerous nature documentaries he has presented are in one sense the carrot to the stick of environmental activism. They show us the wonders of our world in the hope we’ll be enamoured enough of their beauty to try to stop them from being wiped out.
This particular series uses special cameras to reveal the colours of nature, including ones that humans can’t perceive with the naked eye. Many of the species in the first episode are gorgeous birds — macaws, peacocks, pink flamingos, toucans, hummingbirds, birds of paradise — but also creatures you wouldn’t necessarily think of as beautiful, including fiddler crabs, peacock mantis shrimp and strawberry poison dart frogs.
Attenborough gives them all their due, explaining the function of each animal’s colours, to communicate, to attract mates, to warn off rivals and predators. Not a word was spoken, in that first episode anyway, about environmental destruction or species extinction, but I couldn’t help thinking back to the episode I had watched of “Greta Thunberg: A Year to Change the World,” in which a scientist said 20 to 30 per cent of the world’s species are “committed to extinction by 2050” if current climate warming trends continue.
Greta Thunberg with reindeer in Jokkmokk, Sweden, in “A Year to Change the World.” PHOTO CREDIT: BBC Studios
Quite honestly, I am in awe of 18-year-old Greta Thunberg, of her dedication to fighting climate change, which seems like a monumental and dispiriting task. But as she says, “Hope doesn’t come from words, hope only comes from action.” So when the UN Climate Change Conference in 2019 was relocated to Spain from Chile — to which Greta and her father had planned to drive from North America — she refuses to take a seven-hour flight to Madrid, instead enduring a 20-day journey by catamaran across the Atlantic Ocean in November.
By that point in the docuseries, Greta had already attended a climate strike in Edmonton, Alberta; visited dying pine forests in Jasper National Park; surveyed the rapidly melting Athabasca Glacier, which will never recover even if the world wakes the hell up and starts taking greenhouse gas reduction seriously; and travelled to Paradise, California, virtually wiped out by a wildfire in 2018, before setting out from Virginia for her ocean journey.
The series makes the point that people may be too exhausted from the COVID-19 pandemic to face another crisis, but it also makes the point that we are running out of time. Even if the 196 nations that signed the Paris Climate Agreement were to stick to their vow to keep the rise in global temperatures below 1.5 C, it’s already too late to undo some of the damage.
I honestly don’t know if the Earth can be pulled back from the abyss, but bless people like Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough for trying.
Cruel Summer (April 20, 9 p.m., ABC Spark)
Chiara Aurelia and Olivia Holt in “Cruel Summer.” PHOTO CREDIT: Bill Matlock/Freeform.
This YA drama, which has the distinction of being executive-produced by Jessica Biel (“The Sinner”), is really a story of two young women, told over three summers from 1993 to 1995.
Jeanette (Chiara Aurelia, “Tell Me Your Secrets”) is the quintessential nerd when we first meet her, right down to the glasses and braces, while Kate (Olivia Holt, “Cloak & Dagger”) is the stereotypical popular girl, blond and self-assured.
But identities and allegiances shift. After Kate is kidnapped, Jeanette becomes the popular one, to the point of taking Kate’s place with her boyfriend (Froy Gutierrez, “Teen Wolf”) and her best friends. And in 1995, after Jeanette has been accused of playing a role in Kate’s captivity, she is a pariah in her small Texas town.
What may seem straightforward in the first episode is anything but. As the story builds, shifting back and forth between timelines and points of view, the villain looks more like the victim and vice versa. The deceptions and obfuscations extend to the adults involved, including Jeanette’s mother Cindy (Sarah Drew) and Kate’s mom Joy (Andrea Anders). Allius Barnes and Harley Quinn Smith (Kevin Smith’s daughter) also play key roles as Jeanette’s friends Vincent and Mallory.
The standout here is Aurelia, who convincingly portrays Jeanette’s transformation from sweet, trusting teenager to cynical outcast. She gets help from hair and wardrobe, with three distinct looks for each time shift, but the evolution is more than just physical.
With its plot twists and layered characters, “Cruel Summer” is a YA show that grown-ups can enjoy too.
Short Takes
The cast of “The Parker Andersons” and “Amelia Parker.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Super Channel
The Parker Andersons/Amelia Parker (April 19, Super Channel Heart & Home, 8 and 8:30 p.m.)
These linked sitcoms about a Black man, a white woman and their blended family seem to have their hearts in the right place. They were created by Toronto producer Frank van Keeken (“The Next Step,” “Lost & Found Music Studios”), who is white, but overhauled by Toronto writer Anthony Q. Farrell (“The Office,” “Secret Life of Boys”), who is Black. He brought together a diverse team of BIPOC writers to redo the original scripts to make them true to the lives of their Black characters. The cast is primarily Canadian and the show comes from a Canadian production company, Marblemedia, in partnership with Mormon-owned BYUtv. (NOW Magazine has an interesting story about that unlikely pairing, if you’d like to read it here.) Whereas “The Parker Andersons” focuses on British widower Tony Parker (Arnold Pinnock, “Travelers”) and his new American wife Cleo Anderson (Kate Hewlett, “Degrassi”), who each have a son and daughter, “Amelia Parker” is mainly about Tony’s daughter (Millie Davis, “Odd Squad”), who has stopped talking since her mother died (which, in the episodes I saw, no one treated as anything to be alarmed about). Of the two shows, I found “Amelia Parker” the more interesting, engaging take. I found “Parker Andersons” a little saccharine, but then again so was “The Brady Bunch.”
L. Frank Baum, centre, with cast members of his Oz-themed “Fairylogue and Radio-Plays” stage show in 1908. PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Public Domain
American Oz (April 19, 9 p.m., PBS)
There is no question that American author Lyman Frank Baum left the world an enduring piece of art when he published “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” in 1900. But did you know he wrote 14 Oz sequels, among his dozens of other novels? I didn’t until I watched this episode of “American Experience.” Baum was a 44-year-old father of four who had failed at various careers — chicken breeder, theatre impresario, storeowner, travelling salesman, newspaper publisher — when he wrote the children’s book that fulfilled his dream of becoming a great author. “American Oz” paints Baum as a literary pioneer, a prolific creator, a dedicated father and a champion of women’s rights, but he was also a purveyor of the racism of his time. In his South Dakota newspaper, he called for the extermination of the Native Americans who remained after being robbed of their land, even slaughtered, in the name of white progress. That and the racial stereotypes in some of Baum’s other books are blemishes on a life otherwise lived in aspiration and imagination.
Odds and Ends
Even nine seasons in, it can be fun watching people cook on alarmingly tight deadlines. So yes, “Top Chef Canada” is back, despite the pandemic, with 11 new competitors (April 19, 10 p.m., Food Network Canada/StackTV). Unfortunately I can’t really tell you more than that because reviews are embargoed until after the show airs.
I would have liked to get a look at “Secrets of the Whales” (April 22, Disney Plus), executive-produced by Canada’s own James Cameron (“Titanic,” “Avatar”), but alas, I never got the chance. Still, it looks like the kind of nature show that will both exhilarate you and break your heart.
I haven’t checked out Netflix’s “Shadow and Bone” (April 23) because, frankly, there’s no point watching shows that I can’t write about due to embargoes, but if you like CGI-laden fantasy series full of telegenic young actors who speak with British accents then have at ‘er.
A new season of “Black Lady Sketch Show” comes to HBO and Crave (April 16, 11 p.m.), with Robin Thede and her cast of, well, Black ladies.
WHOOPS! I had “Top Chef Canada” listed as airing on Global TV rather than Food Network Canada. Apologies. Guess I was extra tired Monday morning.
NOTE: The dates and times listed here reflect information provided to me and cross-checked where possible against broadcast and streaming schedules, but it’s always best to check listings for your own area. The selection of series reviewed reflects what I’m given access to by networks and streamers, whether reviews are embargoed, how many shows I have time to watch and my own personal taste.
SHOW OF THE WEEK: Mare of Easttown (April 18, 10 p.m., HBO/Crave)
Kate Winslet, Evan Peters and Justin Hurtt-Dunkley in “Mare of Easttown.” PHOTO CREDIT: Sarah Shatz/HBO
Give me a detective, particularly a female one, who feels like a real human being and I’m a happy viewer.
“Mare of Easttown” does that with a lead performance from Kate Winslet that reminds us of why she’s an Oscar, Emmy and multiple BAFTA-winning actor.
In Winslet’s hands, detective Mare Sheehan is believable right down to the Delaware County accent, which the British Winslet told TV critics in February was one of the hardest she’s ever had to learn.
Mare has been beaten down by life, but she’s a survivor, devoted to both her family and her job. That job becomes more challenging after a teenage single mother turns up dead in the woods — just a year after another girl from Easttown went missing, an unsolved case that already had Mare under considerable pressure.
Stubborn, prickly and pragmatic, Mare tries to do the right thing but also does some boneheadedly wrong ones, though Winslet makes you understand the why of them.
She’s backed by an estimable supporting cast, including Jean Smart as her mother Helen; Julianne Nicholson (“The Outsider”) as her best friend Lori; Evan Peters (“American Horror Story”) as her police partner Colin; and Guy Pearce (Winslet’s “Mildred Pierce” cast mate) as her love interest Richard (although I note that Mare’s interactions with Richard struck the one false note in the show for me).
The show’s many characters make Easttown feel like a real community rather than just a place where bad things happen, which is also down to creator and writer Brad Ingelsby, who grew up in the Pennsylvania county next door. (Craig Zobel, known for “The Hunt” and “The Leftovers,” directed.)
But that wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans if the series didn’t work as a captivating crime drama, which it does. It has the usual tropes — the detective with personal demons, the interloper from another police force who becomes a trusted colleague, the reluctant witnesses, the red herrings — but that didn’t impair my enjoyment of the show and my eagerness for the next episodes (I’ve seen five of the seven), each of which ends with a twist that propels the plot forward.
If I had to compare “Mare of Easttown” to another series, I’d pick “Happy Valley” because of that show’s similarly flawed but dedicated female cop protagonist, but “Mare” is its own thing and a notable addition to the genre, one that’s worthy of your attention.
Kim’s Convenience series finale (April 13, 8 p.m., CBC/CBC Gem)
From left, Simu Liu, Jean Yoon, Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, Andrea Bang, Andrew Phung and Nicole Power of “Kim’s Convenience.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of CBC
Let’s be honest: Canada punches way below its weight when it comes to producing television. It’s not about lack of talent: it’s a combination, in my view, of the geographic inconvenience of being next door to the United States; lack of funding; and risk adverse TV executives, who’d rather spend money on U.S. imports than develop homegrown content that might fail. And when you look at the Numeris broadcast ratings week after week, you can understand their reticence.
Judging by those, Canadians would rather watch American sitcoms and by-the-numbers medical and police procedurals than anything made here in Canada, with the exception of news and hockey. In the last week of March, for instance, the only homemade TV that cracked the top 30 outside of those two commodities were “MasterChef Canada” and “Big Brother Canada.”
We Canadians also tend not to value anything made here unless someone else tells us it’s good, the most spectacular example of which is “Schitt’s Creek.” This week, we lose another well-made Canadian sitcom that gained fans outside the country thanks to the gargantuan reach of Netflix: “Kim’s Convenience.”
In case you haven’t heard, “Kim’s” is ending a season earlier than expected (stars Paul Sun-Hyung Lee and Andrew Phung talk about why in this Canadian Press article), so this season finale has become a series finale.
This episode won’t give fans the closure that “Schitt’s” fans got when that show ended on its own terms, but it’s a reasonable facsimile of a series ender.
The characters are looking ahead — Uma and Appa (Jean Yoon and Lee) to retirement, Jung (Simu Liu) and Janet (Andrea Bang) to their professional futures — while Kimchee (Phung) and Shannon (Nicole Power) resolve some personal issues.
When everyone gathers for dinner, Appa looks back to how he and Uma came to Canada from Korea and made a life for themselves, the most important part of which is family. That seems a fitting epitaph for a show that imbued its comedy with lots of heart.
My wish is that Canadians sit down and watch Tuesday, or at least catch up later in the week, and that the next “Kim’s Convenience” or “Schitt’s Creek” or “Cardinal” or “Trickster,” or any other quality Canadian show we’ve lost, is just around the corner.
Made for Love (April 16, Amazon)
Ray Romano and Cristin Milioti in “Made for Love.” PHOTO CREDIT: John P. Johnson/HBO Max
This HBO Max series is described as a dark comedy, but I’d say it’s more of a horror story.
It begins with Hazel (Cristin Milioti, “Palm Springs”) fleeing from her husband Byron (Billy Magnussen, “Tell Me a Story”). The tech billionaire — whose company is called, ahem, Gogol — has insulated himself, and her, from reality in a high tech hub where every material wish is granted but genuine human interaction is non-existent.
After a decade of having her every move monitored and controlled, the last straw for Hazel is the chip that Byron has had implanted in her head, a prototype of his latest invention, a means of connecting the brains of couples and thus eliminating independent thought.
If you’re thinking this is the sort of thing only a man could dream up, yes exactly. Byron describes his invention, called Made for Love, as a way to banish miscommunication, but it’s really patriarchal subjugation in technological form.
Though Hazel has escaped physically, Byron can monitor everything she sees, says and hears, and wages a campaign to wear her down and get her back to the hub, while Hazel is equally determined to get a divorce, lose the chip and gain her freedom.
Most of the series rests on Milioti’s shoulders and she acquits herself well. The other standout is Ray Romano, playing her widowed father Herbert. When Hazel returns to her rundown hometown she finds that he’s taken up with a sex doll, whom he treats as a living, breathing partner. One could argue that Herbert’s love for his inanimate companion is more authentic than what Byron claims to offer Hazel, which is surely what we’re meant to think.
Based on the book by Alissa Nutting and adapted for TV by her and Patrick Somerville (“Maniac”) it’s an odd and sometimes absurd series. What kept me watching was a desire to see Hazel break free of Byron’s smothering imitation of a marriage once and for all.
I won’t spoil things by telling you how it ends, but love plays a role, though perhaps not in the way you’d expect.
Amazon also debuts “Frank of Ireland” this week, on April 16. It boasts a decent Irish cast, including brothers Brian and Domhnall Gleeson, and Sarah Greene (“Dublin Murders,” “Normal People”), but personally I’m over comedies about irresponsible men-children. One episode of this was all I could handle.
Short Takes
Ginger and David, who are profiled in the first episode of “My Love,” have been married 60 years. PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Netflix
My Love: Six Stories of True Love (April 13, Netflix)
If you’re put off by the dysfunctional partnership in “Made for Love,” this docuseries could be your antidote. It profiles six senior couples in six countries. I watched the first episode, about David and Ginger Isham of Williston, Vermont. They met at a barn dance, married soon after Ginger graduated from high school and raised six kids while running the farm that had been in David’s family since 1871 and which they’ve passed down to their oldest son. Now in their 80s, we watch them over a full year, essentially just living, everything from preplanning their funerals and celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary to doing chores and napping over their afternoon newspapers. There’s beauty in the mundanity and poignancy in the ordinary, a portrait of love that’s both real and aspirational.
Netflix has a few other offerings this week, including Season 2 of social media reality competition “The Circle” (April 14); the Jamie Foxx sitcom “Dad Stop Embarrassing Me!” (April 14) and the animated film “Arlo the Alligator Boy” (April 16).
Odds and Ends
Lorna (Elvira Kurt) and Mom Persona (Jane McClelland) get married on the kids’ TV show “Miss Persona.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Treehouse
The Treehouse channel is getting a dose of LGBTQ Pride this week with two episodes of its Canadian children’s show “Miss Persona.” In the episode “Love Every Moment” (April 17, 11:45 a.m.) Miss Persona’s mom (Jane McClelland) marries her partner Lorna (Elvira Kurt). In “I Wanna Wear” (April 18, 11:45 a.m.), Miss Persona (Kimberly Persona) takes Brandon Bear to his first Pride parade, complete with drag kings and queens, including Toronto’s Baby Bel Bel.
On PBS, the documentary feature “Picture a Scientist,” about gender and racial biases in science, airs on “Nova” (April 14, 9 p.m.).
I didn’t get a chance to screen the John Stamos-led sports drama “Big Shot,” about a men’s NCAA basketball coach forced to coach a girls’ high school team, but it debuts April 16 on Disney Plus. The same day, the screener releases “Earth Moods,” a travelogue series with music that “gives the audience an opportunity to relax and reset,” according to the press materials.
BritBox has an odd couple comedy about a bigoted white woman who’s forced to re-examine her prejudices after meeting an African asylum seeker in “Kate & Koji” (April 13). Oscar nominee Brenda Blethyn is cafe owner Kate and Jimmy Akingbola (“Arrow”) is displaced doctor Koji.
For more Brit TV, Acorn TV has Season 3 of “Keeping Faith” (April 17), starring Eve Myles (“Broadchurch,” “Torchwood”), and CBC Gem has “The Secrets She Keeps” (April 14), starring Laura Carmichael (Lady Edith in “Downton Abbey”) as a troubled pregnant woman with a dangerous secret.
NOTE: The dates and times listed here reflect information provided to me and cross-checked where possible against broadcast and streaming schedules, but it’s always best to check listings for your own area. The selection of series reviewed reflects what I’m given access to by networks and streamers, whether reviews are embargoed, how many shows I have time to watch and my own personal taste.
SHOW OF THE WEEK: Exterminate All the Brutes (April 7, 9 p.m., HBO/Crave)
Director Raoul Peck and actor Josh Hartnett during the making of “Exterminate All the Brutes.” PHOTO CREDIT: David Koskas/Velvet Film/HBO
This docuseries by Raoul Peck, the Haitian-born filmmaker behind the Oscar-nominated “I Am Not Your Negro,” is fascinating, horrifying and deeply thought-provoking.
Peck, a Black man, upends what we think we know about the history of the western world, exposing the long and ugly pattern of racism, colonization and murder that is the basis of the capitalist system that governs our lives today, in which some people are seen, whether tacitly or overtly, as more important than others.
He does this through a combination of historical record, archival footage, clips of Hollywood films, animation, his own family photos and home movies, re-enactments of historical events starring actor Josh Hartnett, made-up dramatizations — a group of white children in chains, for instance, being herded through the jungle by their Black masters — and narration.
The title comes from the words spoken by the character Kurtz in the Joseph Conrad novella “Heart of Darkness” and also from a book written by Peck’s friend, late Swedish author Sven Lindqvist (authors Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Howard Zinn and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz also inspired Peck). The brutes are essentially anyone who is not white and of Western European origin: Blacks, Indigenous people, Muslims, South Asians — the list is long.
Among the many striking images in the series is a time-lapsed map of America, crammed with the the names of Indigenous tribes, which rapidly drop off the map as white settlements spread. In a heart-rending animation about the Trail of Tears, the forced relocation of thousands of Native Americans, Indigenous people are loaded onto a boat and their howling dogs jump into the Mississippi River in a vain attempt to follow them.
America, Peck says, was born as a colonial power (and although he doesn’t directly say so, Canada was as well). Genocide was not invented by the Nazis, he adds, but goes back centuries to the Crusades, which Peck argues were about taking over Muslim-controlled trade routes, while the Spanish Inquisition birthed the ideology of white supremacy.
There’s more, a lot more. The series is so loaded with ideas and imagery that it’s hard at times to keep up. Peck indicts everyone from Columbus and other explorers, to industrialists like Henry Ford, who helped fund the Nazi party, to politicians like slave-owning president Andrew Jackson, Winston Churchill and Donald Trump.
The series’ reach is so vast that it’s hard to adequately describe it in so few words, but it deserves to be seen and, unlike so much of pre-colonial history, to not be forgotten.
The Nevers (April 11, 9 p.m., HBO/Crave)
Laura Donnelly as Amalia True and Ann Skelly as Penance Adair in “The Nevers.” PHOTO CREDIT: Keith Bernstein/HBO
Victorian London seems to be a fertile setting of late for TV shows featuring female protagonists (“Miss Scarlet and the Duke,” “The Irregulars”) and the women very decisively drive the plot in “The Nevers,” a supernatural action drama created by Joss Whedon.
(Whedon, the subject of accusations of abusive behaviour on other productions, stepped away in November, citing exhaustion, leaving Philippa Goslett to take over as showrunner.)
You wouldn’t want to get on the bad side of Amalia True (Laura Donnelly of “Outlander” and “The Fall”), a fierce protector of a group of mostly women and girls known as “the touched.”
They developed supernatural abilities after an otherworldly (and in the three episodes I screened so far, unexplained) event in London on Aug. 3, 1896. Amalia, for instance, can see glimpses of the future. Her best friend, Penance (Ann Skelly, “Vikings”), can see energy, which enables her to invent things.
Amalia manages a refuge for the touched, who are regarded variously as curiosities, freaks or abominations by greater society — particularly since one of them, a woman known as Maladie (Amy Manson, “Once Upon a Time”), is a deranged killer.
The foes of Amalia and Penance and their charges are many. The government, under the influence of Lord Massen (Pip Torrens, “Preacher,” The Crown”), sees the touched as a threat; people like libertine Hugo Swann (James Norton, “Happy Valley,” “Grantchester”) are out to exploit them; a dangerous group of masked men is kidnapping them off the streets. Amalia also has to contend with the violent criminal known as the Beggar King (Nick Frost, “Shaun of the Dead”) and with police detective Frank Mundi (Ben Chaplin).
That all adds up to a lot of chances to see Amalia kick butt, which she does proficiently, against both men and women, though not without physical cost.
Amalia also has secrets, as do many of the characters, both touched and untouched.
Most of the protagonists in the series are white, although Zackary Momoh (“Harriet”) plays a doctor with special healing powers, Rochelle Neil (“Das Boot”) is a fire-wielding member of Maladie’s gang of touched assassins known as Bonfire Annie, and there are several people of colour among the residents of the touched orphanage, funded by the aristocrat Lavinia Bidlow (Olivia Williams).
Beyond the action scenes, “The Nevers” can be interpreted as carrying messages about the bonds of chosen families and the burden societies place on those who are seen as other, but it’s also just an absorbing adventure story told from a welcome female POV.
Short Takes
A view of one of the galleries of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum after the theft in “This Is a Robbery: The World’s Biggest Art Heist.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Netflix
This Is a Robbery (April 5, Netflix)
This docuseries is a worthy addition to the true crime canon, although it’s not a murder being dissected but the theft of extremely valuable works of art. In the early hours of March 18, 1990, as St. Patrick’s Day revels were still taking place in other parts of Boston, two men dressed as police officers entered the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The two guards were bound with duct tape and works by revered European painters were cut from their frames, among them several Rembrandts, including his only known seascape. Was it an inside job? Was the heist the work of a seasoned art thief or at the request of a greedy collector? Did the thieves realize the works would be impossible to sell? Not having got through all the episodes, I’m not sure what the series concludes, but it was interesting enough for me to want to watch more and find out.
Ernest Hemingway in his 1923 passport photo. PHOTO CREDIT: Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.
Hemingway (April 5, PBS)
The famous American author gets the Ken Burns and Lynn Novick treatment, which is to say exhaustive. Over six hours, this docuseries purports to uncover “the man behind the myth,” so it touches on the less heroic parts of Ernest Hemingway’s life, including his troubled family history, his philandering, his egoism, his occasional cruelty, while never losing sight of his towering talent as a writer. Toronto, Canada, and the newspaper I work for, the Toronto Star, claim a connection with Hemingway, who worked for the Star as both a correspondent and a staff writer in the 1920s, but it’s worth noting he only lasted four months in Toronto, finding neither the city nor the job to his taste, before fleeing to Paris.
Lucky (Deborah Ayorinde) and Ruby Emory (Shahadi Wright Joseph) in a screen grab from “Them.” PHOTO CREDIT: Amazon Prime Video
Them (April 9, Amazon Prime Video)
Like “Lovecraft Country” before it, this horror drama created by Little Marvin makes the point that the daily indignities experienced by Black Americans are as unsettling as anything the supernatural can throw at them. Deborah Ayorinde (“Luke Cage”) and Ashley Thomas (“24: Legacy”) star as Lucky and Henry Emory, a middle class Black couple who move with their daughters Ruby (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Gracie (Melody Hurd) into a hostile white 1950s neighbourhood in Compton, California. Outside, the neighbours, led by vicious housewife Betty Wendell (Canada’s Alison Pill), are scheming to get the Emorys out. Inside, other malevolent forces, otherworldly ones, are at work.
Alison (Charlotte Ritchie), left, and Mike (Kiell Smith-Bynoe), right, have unexpected company in their new home in the comedy “Ghosts.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of CBC
Ghosts (April 9, CBC Gem)
The pack of ghouls that haunt Button House won’t scare you, but they’ll probably make you laugh. The motley paranormal crew, who all appear more or less as they did at death, includes a caveman named Robin; Mary, who’s a little singed from being burned as a witch; lovelorn Romantic poet Thorne, who died in a duel; Lady Fanny Button, who was murdered by her cheating husband; sweet-tempered Georgian noblewoman Kitty; cheery Scout leader Patrick, with the arrow that killed him still stuck in his neck; headless Tudor nobleman Humphrey; bossy World War II soldier Captain; and perpetually pantsless politician Julian, who died in a sex scandal. At first the spirits want no part of Alison (Charlotte Ritchie, “Call the Midwife”), who inherits the dilapidated English manor house from a step-great-aunt, or her husband Mike (Kiell Smith-Bynoe). But after a fall and near-death experience — thanks to a nudge by Julian (Simon Farnaby) — Alison can see her paranormal roommates and they eventually learn to co-exist. Besides, ghosts can be useful in getting rid of interlopers, like a greedy neighbour or a rapacious hotelier. The series, created by cast members of the Brit comedies “Horrible Histories” and “Yonderland,” is both clever and charming.
NOTE: The dates and times listed here reflect information provided to me and cross-checked where possible against broadcast and streaming schedules, but it’s always best to check listings for your own area. The selection of series reviewed here reflects what I’m given access to by networks and streamers, whether reviews are embargoed, how many shows I have time to watch and my own personal taste.
SHOW OF THE WEEK: Staged (April 1, 9 p.m., Hollywood Suite)
David Tennant, left, and Michael Sheen play themselves in “Staged.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Hollywood Suite
We could all use a laugh right about now, couldn’t we? Then let me direct you to fine British actors David Tennant and Michael Sheen, who play exaggerated versions of themselves in this series set and filmed in lockdown.
Scottish thespian Tennant (“Doctor Who,” “Broadchurch”) and his Welsh counterpart Sheen (“Frost/Nixon,” “The Queen,” “Masters of Sex”) are among the best U.K. actors out there, with Shakespearean and other stage credits as well as film and TV under their belts, but they’re not too lofty to take the piss out of themselves.
In “Staged,” they communicate via Zoom calls from their respective homes, alternately squabbling and commiserating as they battle pandemic boredom and unruly hair.
The premise is that they’re attempting to virtually rehearse the Pirandello play “Six Characters in Search of an Author” with director Simon Evans (the real-life director and creator of “Staged”), which proves to be an uphill battle — until they’re put in their places by Judi Dench.
Along the way, they display actorly egos and neuroses. There’s a running gag about who’ll get top billing on the play, with Tennant at one point reverting to his birth name of McDonald just so he can precede Sheen alphabetically. Sheen, worried about the evidence of all the extra wine he’s been drinking, tries to pawn off his recycling on his 80-year-old neighbour with unexpected results.
The guest stars include Tennant’s and Sheen’s real-life partners, Georgia Tennant and Anna Lundberg, as well as Evans’ sister, Lucy Eaton, and actors Nina Sosanya, Adrian Lester and Samuel L. Jackson.
It’s a more entertaining version of what the rest of us have experienced trying to transfer our lives online. Our Zoom calls would be far more amusing if Tennant or Sheen was on the other side of the screen.
The six-episode series went over so well in Britain that a second season was ordered and has already aired on BBC One, but it hasn’t been as well received by critics, so never mind that and just enjoy this one.
The Serpent (April 2, Netflix)
Jenna Coleman as Marie-Andree Leclerc and Tahar Rahim as Charles Sobhraj in “The Serpent.” PHOTO CREDIT: Roland Neveu/Mammoth Screen Ltd
Evil doesn’t always look the part. It can wear a smile and a fancy shirt and extend a helping hand.
This eight-part limited series tells some of the story of Charles Sobhraj, a serial killer suspected of murdering at least 10 people in the mid-1970s. Many of them were young “hippie” tourists who were charmed into Sobhraj’s orbit while backpacking around Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries, then drugged, robbed and killed.
Sobhraj, who posed as a jewel merchant named Alain Gautier, was aided by girlfriend Marie-Andree Leclerc, a Quebec woman who met and fell in love with Sobhraj on a vacation in India. French actor Tahar Rahim (“The Mauritanian,” “The Looming Tower”) plays Charles while British actor Jenna Coleman (“Victoria,” “Doctor Who”) portrays Marie-Andree, a.k.a. Monique.
The other real person who’s prominently featured in the series is Herman Knippenberg, a Dutch diplomat who independently investigated Sobhraj after tying him to the murders of a Dutch couple in Bangkok. He’s played by Billy Howle (“Outlaw King,” “MotherFatherSon”).
The series is described as inspired by true events, so some liberties are taken with the facts; all the dialogue is imagined and some of the victims’ names have been changed.
I found the three episodes I watched quite engrossing, but note that the show requires close attention as it jumps back and forth in time, sometimes revisiting the same event from different points of view.
Rahim is suitably chilling as Sobhraj, like a dead-eyed spider in the midst of a web of hedonism that ensnared young victims keen to experience foreign lands.
Also new to Netflix this week is “Worn Stories” (March 25), a docuseries from Jenji Kohan (“Orange Is the New Black”) and Morgan Neville (“Ugly Delicious”) about the meaning that people attach to clothing — or lack of clothing, seeing as the first episode features several nudists.
My Grandparents’ War and Atlantic Crossing (April 4, 8 and 9 p.m., PBS)
Eduardo Propper de Callejon, grandfather of Helena Bonham Carter. PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Family Archive
Both these series concern themselves with the Second World War, the bloodiest and largest conflict in global history but one that seems largely abstract today, given that it started more than 81 years ago.
Even for someone like me, whose grandfather fought in World War II (my other grandpa fought in World War I), it’s uncharted territory. My grandfather never talked about it and, as a child and then a self-absorbed teenager and young adult, I never thought to ask. So “My Grandparents’ War,” in which four British actors explore what their grandparents did during WWII, hit home for me as someone who would love to know more about her own family’s war history.
Helena Bonham Carter is first up. Her paternal grandmother, Lady Violet Bonham Carter, was a Liberal politician and renowned public speaker, so outspoken against anti-Semitism that she was on the Gestapo’s black list, and an air raid warden during the Blitz. Her maternal grandfather, Eduardo Propper de Callejon, was a Spanish diplomat who personally helped perhaps thousands of French Jews escape the Holocaust by giving them visas for passage through Spain, against the direct orders of the Spanish government.
So it’s a particularly heroic history that Bonham Carter is revisiting. She even gets to meet descendants of people who were spared death by the efforts of her grandparents.
Future episodes feature Mark Rylance, Kristin Scott Thomas and Carey Mulligan.
I felt less of a direct emotional connection with “Atlantic Crossing.” It’s a period drama whose main character is Norwegian Crown Princess Martha (Swedish actor Sofia Helin). The early episodes portray her happy marriage to Prince Olav (Tobias Santelmann) and the flight of the couple and their three children from Norway when the Nazis invaded in 1940.
The family was divided, with Olav and his father, King Haakon (Soren Pilmark), fleeing to London, and Martha and the children to Sweden, under the protection of her uncle, King Gustav V, who had uncomfortably close ties with the Germans. After Gustav tried to broker a deal with the Nazis that would see Martha return to Norway and her very young son Harald made king, she went instead to the United States, where she stayed for the rest of the war.
“Atlantic Crossing” then pivots to the relationship between Martha and U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt, played by Kyle MacLachlan of “Twin Peaks,” a friendship that was rumoured to be romantic, at least on FDR’s part.
American actor Harriet Sansom Harris co-stars as Eleanor Roosevelt.
Whether viewers take to a story about people and events that are little known on this side of the Atlantic remains to be seen. It’s certainly a beautifully made series, but based on the two episodes I had time to watch I found it strangely unaffecting.
Short Takes
Evie Macdonald, second from left, as Hannah Bradford in “First Day.” PHOTO CREDIT: Ian Routledge/Courtesy of CBC Gem
First Day (March 31, CBC Gem)
There’s a good chance you will find your heart going out to Hannah, the transgender lead character of this Australian miniseries, played by trans actor Evie Macdonald. She’s about to start high school and the jitters that transition would normally arouse are compounded by her fear that her classmates will find out she was born a boy. It’s a valid fear given that a bully from her old school, who insists on calling Hannah Thomas, has followed her to the new one. And the principal refuses to let her use the girls’ washroom despite boasting about his school’s openness to trans students, an infuriating example of the type of obstacles thrown in the path of people like Hannah. Only one episode was provided for review, but it was touching and very relatable.
CBC Gem also has Season 2 of “Farm Crime” (April 1), which concerns, yes, criminal activity of an agricultural nature. Mind you, there’s nothing in Episode 1, about an invasion of murder hornets in Nanaimo, B.C., that would stand up in a court of law, which doesn’t make it any less interesting.
New to CBC and CBC Gem is “Miss Scarlet & the Duke” (March 29, 8 p.m.), starring Kate Phillips (“Peaky Blinders”) as a Victorian-era female detective. The public broadcaster also has “Us” (April 4, 9 p.m.) about a British man (Tom Hollander, “The Night Manager”) trying to win back his wife (Saskia Reeves, “Belgravia”) during a European vacation.
The United States of Al (April 1, 8:30 p.m., Global)
The latest sitcom from Chuck Lorre’s laugh factory, created by “Big Bang Theory” scribes Maria Ferrari and Dave Goetsch, is about the relationship between a Marine who fought in Afghanistan (Parker Young) and his Afghan interpreter, Awalmir or Al (Adhir Kalyan), whom he helped bring to the U.S. and away from the reach of the Taliban. It undoubtedly means well, but the episode I watched traded in stereotypes about masculinity (Young’s stoic, heavy drinking Riley) and being Muslim. Perhaps it will improve as the series go on, but nothing in the pilot made me so much as chuckle out loud.
Gangs of London (April 4, 10 p.m., AMC)
I’m no prude when it comes to violence — I have eagerly consumed “Peaky Blinders,” for instance, through every bloody twist and turn — but this ultra-violent series about criminal organizations jostling for power in England’s biggest city left me cold. Despite a good cast — including Joe Cole (“Peaky Blinders”), Colm Meaney (“Star Trek”), Michelle Fairley (“Game of Thrones”), Lucian Msamati (“His Dark Materials”) and Paapa Essiedu (“I Will Destroy You”) — I didn’t feel invested enough in the characters to care who they were brutalizing and why.
SHOW OF THE WEEK: TINA (March 27, 10 p.m., HBO, Crave)
Tina Turner performing in 1990 in Versailles, France, when she was 50. PHOTO CREDIT: ARNAL/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
I confess I haven’t paid a lot of attention to Tina Turner over the years, but I came out of this documentary about her life and career with a new appreciation for the 81-year-old entertainer.
Most people are likely at least nominally familiar with her troubled relationship with former husband Ike Turner, who died in 2007. Although it’s a part of her life that Tina has repeatedly said she wants to move past, it’s covered in depth in the doc, mainly through tape recordings made for her blockbuster 1981 People magazine interview about the abuse she suffered.
The doc traces that history from 1957 when 17-year old Anna Mae Bullock moved to St. Louis, Missouri, and began performing on weekends with Ike’s band. Their relationship was at first platonic, but they became romantically involved in 1960, the same year the single “A Fool in Love” was released. Ike changed her name to Tina and created the Ike and Tina Turner Review.
Tina told People that was also around the time Ike first hit her, beating her with a shoe stretcher because she didn’t want to tour while pregnant.
She stayed for 16 years in what she called “a life of death,” blaming it on fear and also guilt about what would happen to Ike’s career if she left.
Katori Hall, who wrote the book for “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical,” notes that Tina grew up seeing violence between her father and mother. She was also abandoned as a child by both parents, first her mother, then her father. That’s got to have a devastating impact on a kid.
Tina also recounts on tape a suicide attempt, which came after the success of “Proud Mary” in 1971.
Surviving that kind of trauma is one thing — Tina finally ran from Ike in 1976 after he left her bloody on the drive from the Dallas airport to their hotel, literally fleeing across a freeway and almost getting hit by a truck — what impressed me most was what came after Ike. That Turner, pushing 40, supporting four children and with debt from the dissolution of the Ike and Tina Review, hustled and toiled and sweated (literally) her way into a new career.
Turner says in the doc she didn’t view her ascendancy as a solo artist in the 1980s as a comeback; it was “Tina’s debut.”
Whatever you call it, it was phenomenally successful: over 100 million records sold; 12 Grammys; the first Black artist and first woman to front Rolling Stone; a record-breaking 1990 tour when she was 50 years old.
Tina says this documentary (directed by Oscar winners Daniel Lindsay and TJ. Martin) is her goodbye to her American fans, along with the Broadway musical about her, which she is seen attending in 2019 in the doc. She has retired to Switzerland with her German husband Erwin Bach, and I hope she has finally found the peace and happiness missing in the early part of her life.
UFO Town (March 26, 9 p.m., CBC and CBC Gem)
The road to Carp, Ont., a.k.a. “UFO Town.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Blue Ant Media
Did alien aircraft visit the Ontario township of West Carleton in the late 1980s and early 1990s? As with anything involving unidentified flying objects there’s no such thing as a definitive answer.
This documentary from Toronto producer Saloon Media focuses in particular on the “Guardian case.”
In 1989, someone using that name mailed documents and photos to UFO investigators purporting to show evidence of a UFO landing in the area, including blurry pictures of an alleged alien. In 1991, more material was mailed, including a video of an alleged flying saucer in a swamp in Carp, Ont.
The case put this part of Ontario on the map in the early ‘90s, with the TV shows “Unsolved Mysteries” and “Encounters” doing segments on it.
No one has ever figured out whether “Guardian” was someone with genuine knowledge or a crackpot. But the doc includes interviews with locals who saw unexplained phenomena around that time: bright lights shining directly into second-floor windows or above a road; a craft with spinning lights rising silently out of the trees before taking off in a blink; military-type helicopters landing in the vicinity of sightings.
One woman, the late Susan Gill, even claimed to have seen beings with glowing skin disembarking from a UFO.
As author Ian Rogers says, a UFO case is never really closed. No one has definitively proved or disproved the existence of extraterrestrial life, but it’s a subject that continues to fascinate us.
If you’re in the mood for more TV with creepy undertones, CBC Gem has the web series “Something Undone” (March 26). Jo (Madison Walsh) is alone in her mother’s old house after her mother, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, has committed suicide. As she cleans out her mother’s belongings and records sounds for the podcast she’s making with her boyfriend Farid (Michael Musi) — which is about the gruesome murder of a family in Newfoundland — she hears odd noises, and things just get spookier from there. Although it presents on the surface as a haunted house drama, the press materials say “Something Undone” is about isolation and mental health struggles. Directed by Nicole Dorsey and shot in and around Harriston, Ont., it was created through CBC’s Creative Relief Fund, which supports artists in the pandemic.
CBC Gem also has “The Slowest Show” on March 26, which is described as an “experimental comedy series” from Pat Kelly, known for the CBC Radio show “This Is That.” I would describe it as extremely subtle comedy. A single, stationary camera records actors in a mundane situation, for instance, attending an exhibit at an art gallery.
Finally, the period drama “Victoria,” starring Jenna Coleman (“Doctor Who”) as England’s longest-serving monarch before Queen Elizabeth II came along, makes its CBC and CBC Gem debut on March 22 at 8 p.m.
Short Takes
Model Richie Shazam and musician Lucas Silveira are the hosts of “Shine True.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Fuse and OUTtv
Shine True (March 22, 10 p.m., OUTtv)
There’s a “Queer Eye” vibe to this reality series, with each episode focused on an American or Canadian transgender or gender non-conforming individual being guided to express their authentic self. Trans Toronto musician Lucas Silveira and nonbinary New York model Richie Shazam are the ones doing the guiding, which includes makeovers but also frank, sometimes painful but also rewarding conversations. In Episode 1, nonbinary Mexican-American artist Azul is still mourning the death of their father and navigating a strained relationship with their mother while trying to feel more comfortable in their own skin. With a new suit, a new haircut and dye job, and support from people who’ve been in their shoes, Azul gets a boost of confidence that’s heartening to see.
For Real: The Story of Reality TV (March 25, E!)
This series surveys the history of reality TV with clips, interviews and even cast reunions. Hosted by “Real Housewives” host and executive producer Andy Cohen, it’s more admiring than critical, although it does touch on the scandals. The first episode profiles “The Osbournes” (2002), precursor to shows like “Gene Simmons: Family Jewels” and “Run’s House”; the tragic “Anna Nicole Show” (2002); “The Simple Life” (2003), which made Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie “hot”; “The Girls Next Door” (2005), which begat reality star Kendra Wilkinson; trainwreck TV “Breaking Bonaduce” (2005); and reality behemoth “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” which just began its 20th season (and is available in its entirety on Hayu in Canada). If all that hasn’t turned you off, Episode 2 promises a “Real World” reunion.
City on a Hill (March 28, 10 p.m., Crave)
If you like complex, character-driven drama with a lot of moving parts, then “City on a Hill” is worth a look. Set in early 1990s Boston — Boston buddies Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are executive producers — it tackles crime, drugs, politics, police corruption and race relations through a sizable ensemble cast. Kevin Bacon stars as FBI agent Jackie Rohr, prolific womanizer, boozehound and dirty cop. His main foil is idealistic assistant district attorney Decourcy Ward (Aldis Hodge, who played Jim Brown in “One Night in Miami”). Reluctant allies in Season 1, they seem to be back to adversaries as the second season begins. It’s not as riveting as “The Wire,” but the acting is top notch. Be warned that you’d best catch up on Season 1, also on Crave, before diving into Season 2.
Odds and Ends
There are a couple of shows I wasn’t able to review due to embargoes. “The Irregulars,” a YA drama that posits that a group of impoverished adolescents in Victorian London were the ones solving Sherlock Holmes’ cases, debuts March 26 on Netflix. (Netflix also has “Who Killed Sara?” on March 24, a Mexican series that’s part revenge drama and part murder mystery about a brother trying to find out who was behind his sister’s death 18 years ago.)
Disney Plus has The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers (March 26), the series sequel to the 1990s films about a hapless pee-wee hockey team and their coach, with Emilio Estevez returning to the role of Gordon Bombay.
FX has Season 2 of “Breeders” (March 22, 10 p.m.), starring Martin Freeman and Daisy Haggard as frazzled parents.
NOTE: The dates and times listed here reflect information provided to me and cross-checked where possible against broadcast and streaming schedules, but it’s always best to check listings for your own area. The selection of series reviewed here reflects what I’m given access to by networks and streamers, whether reviews are embargoed, how many shows I have time to watch and my own personal taste.
Host Emmanuel Acho and Bachelor Matt James on “After the Final Rose.” PHOTO CREDIT: All photos Craig Sjodin/ABC
SPOILER ALERT: IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW HOW “THE BACHELOR” SEASON ENDED DEFINITELY DO NOT READ THIS YET.
Remember all those times we were told a “Bachelor” or “Bachelorette” season finale was the most dramatic ever? Or those “After the Final Rose” episodes that seemed really tense because the couple had broken up or weren’t getting along?
Those seem trifling now compared to what we saw Monday, which at times was searing, gut-wrenching and heartbreaking — and I’m not talking about Matt James and Rachael Kirkconnell breaking up.
With one question — “How much pressure was it being the first Black Bachelor?” — Emmanuel Acho started a conversation on “After the Final Rose” that laid bare the unfair burden placed on Black men, of “making people comfortable with your blackness, and going above and beyond to show that in stature and in personality you’re not as threatening as you come off as,” as Matt put it.
Whereas any other Bachelor (i.e. white, though Matt didn’t use that word) would have to worry only about finding love on the show, Matt said he felt like he carried the weight “of everything that was going on in the country at that time frame regarding social justice, everything going on in the franchise surrounding diversity and inclusion.”
Add to that he had to be on his best behaviour, he said, because “for a lot of people that was the first time having someone like that in their home,” by which he meant having a Black man on their TV.
All that was sobering enough, but things got really raw when it came to Rachael. She and Matt didn’t get engaged at the end of filming, but they were in a relationship and Matt told Emmanuel that when allegations first started going around about racist social media activity on her part he dismissed them as “rumours.”
When Rachael acknowledged the activity and apologized for it, Matt said he realized that “Rachael might not understand what it means to be Black in America.”
As tough as it was to break up with her, “if you don’t understand that something like that is problematic in 2018 there’s a lot of me that you won’t understand,” he said, noting that he grew up in the South, with memories of events, people and places that weren’t welcoming to him.
Host Emmanuel Acho with Rachael Kirkconnell on “After the Final Rose.”
2018 was, of course, the year that Rachael posed for a photo at an antebellum-themed party. As Emmanuel told Rachael when she had her time in the hot seat, antebellum in Latin means “before the war,” as in the U.S. Civil War, which means it’s about honouring the South at a time when slavery was still practised.
A contrite Rachael said she was living in ignorance when the photo was taken without thinking about who her actions might hurt, and she seemed sincere in her desire to rectify that ignorance, but it also seemed clear that whatever she does isn’t going to win back Matt, not that I’m suggesting that should be a priority for him.
Rachael and Matt had an uncomfortable reunion.
When Matt joined Rachael onstage, she apologized for hurting him and for not understanding at first how hurt he had been by her actions, and he just nodded. When Emmanuel asked Matt what he wanted to share with Rachael there was an uncomfortable almost minute-long silence during which he seemed to be struggling with some painful emotions.
Finally, after Emmanuel urged him again to share what was on his mind, Matt told Rachael, “The most disappointing thing for me was having to explain to you why what I saw was problematic and why I was so upset . . . when I questioned our relationship it was on the context of you not fully understanding my blackness and what it means to be a Black man in America, and what it would mean for our kids when I saw those things that were floating around the internet, and it broke my heart.”
Heartbroken or not, Matt said he couldn’t be “emotionally responsible” for Rachael’s tears even though it hurt to see her shed them — she was crying after having told Matt she’d never love anyone the way she loved him — and that he could play no part in the work of reconciliation that she was doing.
Emmanuel invited them to share one last embrace and Matt made no move toward her side of the couch.
Now that we know how it ends, and since this is technically a recap, I should probably say something about what came before “ATFR.”
The episode began with the usual business of the final two meeting Matt’s family. His mother Patty and brother John were charmed by both Rachael and Michelle Young, and vice versa. But Patty went from being ready to welcome one of them into the family to telling Matt that “people fall in and out of love, and love is not the end-all, be-all,” nor did it automatically have to mean an engagement.
That in turn sent Matt to “a very dark place,” thinking about his father not being ready for marriage and destroying his family, which led to Matt thinking he himself wasn’t ready to get engaged.
This being “The Bachelor,” it was hard to tell if Matt was genuinely having second thoughts or this was just a finale fakeout.
Matt and Michelle rappelled down the hotel, which was the easy part of the date.
He seemed attentive enough during his final date with Michelle, which involved rappelling down the front of the Nemacolin. Little did Michelle know walking down a building on a rope would be the easy part of her time with Matt.
Later, in her suite — after she gave Matt matching Mr. and Mrs. James basketball jerseys, signifying their status as life “teammates” — Matt delivered the very bad news that he was having doubts and he didn’t think he could “get there” with Michelle.
They parted with tears on both sides. When then host Chris Harrison showed up to commiserate, Matt reiterated that he wasn’t going to put any woman through what his mother had gone through by rushing into marriage and that he needed time to think things over.
What that meant in practice is that Rachael’s final date was cancelled, but it didn’t stop jeweller Neil Lane from visiting or Matt from picking out an engagement ring.
The pear-shaped beauty, however, stayed in his pocket when Rachael arrived at the lake the next day to learn her fate. There was a certain irony, given the “ATFR” conversation, to hear Rachael talk about knowing Matt had been hurting the day before and how “when you’re hurting I’m hurting.”
Rachael and Matt during the finale non-proposal. There was still a final rose.
Matt told Rachael that he couldn’t propose to her, but he also said he loved her and could see her as his wife and the mother of his children. So it seemed about as idyllic as an ending could get, with Rachael and Matt exchanging giddy “I love you’s,” oblivious to the reality that everyone watching already knew was coming.
As for Michelle, she is indeed, as was reported last week, one of two new Bachelorettes. Katie Thurston is the other one. Her season will air first this summer, with Michelle’s in the fall.
A not so secret Bachelorette reveal: there are two of them, Michelle and Katie Thurston.
Michelle had one bit of unfinished business with Matt on “After the Final Rose.” She told Emmanuel that after their breakup she’d asked production for two minutes to speak to Matt, but Matt refused.
When Matt joined her onstage, Michelle told him she hadn’t been trying to change his mind or to fight for him, but just to find some inner peace before she left Pennsylvania.
Matt apologized for not talking to her. He also praised her both for the way she carried herself through the show and for the “emotional weight” she had carried as a Black woman. Michelle told Matt, “I hope you find your happiness; I hope you move on, kissing with your eyes closed, and I hope you come up with more phrases than just ‘thanks for sharing.'”
I hope that sense of humour is on full display in Michelle’s “Bachelorette” season. I expecting I’ll be recapping that one too.
James Nesbitt, front, as Tom Brannick, with Charlene McKenna as Niamh McGovern in “Bloodlands.” PHOTO CREDIT: Steffan Hill/AcornTV
I love British detective dramas, but there are so many of them that they can seem to blend together until something like a “Broadchurch” comes along.
“Bloodlands,” from producer Jed Mercurio, known for the enormously popular “Line of Duty” and “Bodyguard,” distinguishes itself both with its strong sense of place and its surprising plot twists.
It’s set and filmed in Northern Ireland (coincidentally, also where some of “Line of Duty” shoots, filling in for the British Midlands), which is where lead actor James Nesbitt (“Murphy’s Law,” “Jekyll,” “The Missing”) is from.
Here he’s Belfast detective and widowed father Tom Brannick and his personal past is intertwined with his investigation.
The drama turns on the apparent kidnapping of a former senior IRA member. That case is already sensitive enough — a firebomb outside the police station makes the point that the Troubles may be over, but they’re not forgotten — but the fact it might be connected to a two-decades-old cold case makes it even more of a hot potato.
The older case involves the kidnapping and possible assassination of four people by a killer nicknamed “Goliath.” The case was never fully investigated since the crimes happened at a particularly volatile time, just before the signing of the Good Friday peace agreement in 1998, but Tom is as determined to dig it back up as his boss (Lorcan Cranitch) is to keep it buried. Tom is backed in this by partner Niamh McGovern (Charlene McKenna, “Ripper Street”).
Part of the enjoyment of “Bloodlands” is that it doesn’t go where you think it’s going to, at least in the two episodes I was given to review. And there’s something to be said for keeping viewers guessing.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League (March 18, Crave)
Aquaman (Jason Momoa), Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) and Cyborg (Ray Fisher) prepare to do battle in “Zack Snyder’s Justice League.” PHOTO CREDIT: HBO Max/Bell Media
I can’t believe I watched a four-hour superhero movie. I don’t even particularly like superheroes — unless you’re talking about the gloriously campy 1960s TV “Batman” — but because of all the talk about the “Snyder cut” I devoted most of my Saturday afternoon to this film. And my verdict? It was . . . a four-hour superhero movie.
If you like CGI smash-’em-up action, superhero mythology and the oeuvre of Zack Snyder (“300,” “Wonder Woman,” “Batman v Superman”) then this is the movie for you.
I never saw the 2017 version of “Justice League,” the one Joss Whedon finished directing after Snyder had to step away due to the tragedy of his daughter’s suicide, so I can’t compare the two. But it’s my understanding the story is basically the same: after the death of Superman (Henry Cavill), Batman (Ben Affleck) gathers a group of superheroes, including Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), Aquaman (Jason Momoa), Cyborg (Ray Fisher) and the Flash (Ezra Miller) to defeat an otherworldly villain named Steppenwolf (Ciaran Hinds). The evil one has come with his band of parademons (which remind me a bit of scarier, high-tech versions of the flying monkeys from “The Wizard of Oz”) to destroy Earth.
This involves finding and reuniting three “mother boxes” containing alien technology that have been hidden for centuries by the Amazons (Wonder Woman’s tribe), the Atlanteans (Aquaman’s people) and humans, specifically scientist Silas Stone (Joe Morton), father of Cyborg, a.k.a. Victor Stone.
We also glimpse Martian Manhunter (Barry Lennix), Deathstroke (Joe Manganiello), Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg), the Joker (Jared Leto) and Darkseid (Ray Porter) among other characters, superpowered and not. The movie is seriously packed with serious actors, including a high ratio of Oscar winners and nominees: Jeremy Irons (Alfred), J.K. Simmons (Commissioner Gordon), Willem Dafoe (Vulko), Amy Adams (Lois Lane), Diane Lane (Superman’s mother Martha).
It’s also packed with back stories, exposition and tangents that have nothing to do with the plot. And did I mention the action scenes? The Amazons fight Steppenwolf, the Atlanteans fight Steppenwolf, the Justice League fights Steppenwolf more than once and at great length. There are also action sequences that have nothing to do with the plot, like Wonder Woman saving a building full of schoolchildren that’s about to be blown up.
And just when you think the movie has reached the end — world saved, job done — there’s another sequence and another sequence and another sequence and a dream sequence and a final sequence that seems to be setting us up for the sequel.
The one useful message we can take from all this is that working together is better than going it alone, an apt lesson in these COVID times, but you don’t need four hours to get that across.
Q: Into the Storm (March 21, 11 p.m., HBO, Crave)
8Chan founder Fredrick Brennan, who says he’s definitely not Q, prop notwithstanding. PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of HBO
You’re going to need time and focus for this docuseries, accurately described in the press materials as “labyrinthine.”
It documents the three-year quest of filmmaker Cullen Hoback to unmask the person or persons behind QAnon, the internet movement connected to extremist conspiracy theories and the riot at the U.S. Capitol building. Is it a high ranking former Trump aide? A member of the military? A troll who’s just messing with people?
I’m not sure what Hoback concluded because I had time to screen only two of the six episodes, in which Hoback interviewed Q true believers, some of the Qtubers who interpret Q’s cryptic “drops,” members of the mainstream media (considered the enemies of Q); and the people behind internet boards like 4chan and 8chan where Q spread his message, including Paul Furber, Fredrick Brennan, Jim Watkins and Ron Watkins, a.k.a. Codemonkey.
If the foregoing paragraph leaves you saying “What? Who?” — yeah, it’s a lot to take in and, like I said, that’s just two episodes.
What I saw left me alternately depressed, alarmed, fascinated, perplexed and wondering what the hell to make of a world in which people seriously believe that U.S. political institutions were run by a cabal of child-eating pedophiles until Trump came along.
Short Takes
Matthew Modine as William “Rick” Singer in “Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal.” PHOTO CREDIT: Adam Rose/Netflix
The rich are different from you and me, F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously wrote. That’s abundantly clear in “Operation Varsity Blues” (March 17, Netflix) about the American college admissions scandal, in which 33 well-to-do parents were charged with using bribery to get their children into elite colleges. The focus here is mainly on Rick Singer, the mastermind of the scheme. His “side door” into the institutions involved giving the offspring false athletic credentials in exchange for donations to his “foundation,” which then found their way to the school officials who put the “athletes” up for admission. The film is a combination of documentary and drama, with actors, including Matthew Modine as Singer, portraying the people who were part of the scheme. Singer’s “side door” was a bargain for the parents, who would pay much more to get their kids in through the “back door,” i.e. steep donations to the schools of their choice. Singer’s plot may have been shut down, but the film makes clear that the back door remains wide open.
Also coming to Netflix this week is “Waffles + Mochi” (March 16), in which a pair of puppets teach kids about food and culture with the help of former first lady Michelle Obama. “Country Comfort” (March 19) has Katharine McPhee of “American Idol” fame starring as an aspiring country singer who becomes nanny to a hunky widower (Eddie Cibrian) with five kids. So “The Sound of Music” with a twang?
Ryan McMahon interviews Casey Oster at the Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung Historical Centre in “Stories From the Land.” PHOTO CREDIT: CBC Gem
These days my appreciation of nature is mostly limited to looking out the window at the handful of trees in my backyard, so the beautiful landscapes featured in “Stories From the Land” (March 19, CBC Gem) are a welcome sight. The series is a continuation of the “Stories From the Land” podcast by Anishinaabe comedian Ryan McMahon. Its four episodes take us to various parts of Ontario and explore the connection between its subjects and nature, and how it nurtures their sense of identity as Indigenous people. It may also spark curiosity about things you’ve never considered, like the burial mounds at Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung Historical Centre in northwestern Ontario or the traditional importance of the birch tree to the people of Fort William First Nation as a source of shelter, transportation, medicine and art.
Sofia Banzhaf with Nadine Bhabha in “The Communist’s Daughter.” PHOTO CREDIT: LoCo Motion Pictures
Take the classic high school preoccupations of romance and popularity, add the pressure of trying to stay true to your proletarian roots while fitting in with your capitalist school mates, and you’ve got “The Communist’s Daughter” (March 19, CBC Gem). Sofia Banzhaf (“Bitten”) is Dunyasha, the daughter of devoted, Lada-driving communists Ian (Aaron Poole) and Carol (Jessica Holmes). Ryan Taerk is brother Boris and Oleg (Vieslav Krystyan), who might be a former Soviet hitman, lives in the basement. It’s 1989, TV and any other forms of “American imperialism” are banned in the McDougald home and Dunyasha can’t even get support from the family council for a haircut so she can compete with her rival, Moscow transplant Tatiana (Zoe Cleland). The web series was created by Leah Cameron (“Coroner”) and is produced by LoCo Motion Pictures, the company behind “How to Buy a Baby” and “My 90-Year-Old Roommate.”
Matt James ended up with a final two on Monday night and I’m sure you can guess who one of them was. PHOTO CREDIT: All photos Craig Sjodin/ABC
Here’s a “Bachelor” pop quiz for you about “fantasy suite” week. One woman got a spa day and then a night in a huge luxury suite; another woman got to make pottery with Matt James a la “Ghost” and enjoy a fireworks display from a tastefully appointed room; the other woman got to hike through the chilly woods, pitch a tent, roast marshmallows then spend the night in a small wood-panelled space.
Which one do you think got the short end of the stick . . . with burnt marshmallow attached?
Yes, Bri Springs’ misgivings about being the last one to get a rose two weeks ago proved to be prescient. Matt sent her home, keeping Michelle Young and Rachael Kirkconnell as his final two.
I’ll be honest: I was hoping he’d get rid of Rachael, as unlikely as that seemed.
I mean she whinged, moped and cried throughout much of the episode over the fact Matt was spending “intimate” time with the other two women, so I was hoping she’d melt down and send herself home. It’s what the producers encouraged us to think by showing promo footage two weeks ago of a teary Rachael saying she “can’t do this anymore” and a teary Matt telling Chris Harrison he didn’t know if he could do it anymore either. But guess what? We didn’t see either of those scenes in this episode.
Rachael goes into next week’s finale as the clear favourite to get engaged to Matt and as Matt very eloquently said after Serena Pitt dumped him: “It sucks to hear that.”
Maybe Rachael is a lovely human being; maybe she and Matt are perfectly matched, but she’s tainted as a contestant for many of us because of the controversy over her social media posts, the one that has, for now, cost Harrison his job (although he vows he’ll be back).
There’s also the fact she just seems so young to me, even though at 24 she’s the same age as Bri.
Before Monday’s dates kicked off, there was someone else Matt had to see: his father. In an emotional conversation, Matt and dad Manny both aired their hurts: the fact that Manny hadn’t been there for Matt as a child; the fact Manny’s own father was killed when he was 5; the fact Matt’s mom walked out on Manny over his cheating when Matt and his brother were 2 and 3.
“I remember growing up he’d come around every now and then, drop off some shoes . . . pizza. I didn’t need any shoes, I didn’t need pizza, I needed a dad,” said Matt with tears running down his face in a heart-wrenching confessional.
In the end, Matt and Manny seemed to make their peace, exchanging hugs and I love you’s and saying they wanted to be in each other’s lives.
Matt framed the conversation as one he needed to have to convince himself he wasn’t like his father and could commit to getting married, so I’ll take his word for it. He brought it up on each of his three dates.
Matt and Michelle check out the milk bath, part of their spa day.
Michelle, 27, was first up. She got a “traditional Pennsylvania Dutch spa day,” which involved she and Matt soaking their feet in oatmeal, slathering each other with butter and taking a milk bath. Hey, supposedly it worked for Cleopatra.
Michelle is my favourite — if not to end up with Matt, at least to be the next Bachelorette — because she just seems so worthy: fun-loving but mature, warm and wise.
Take the conversation with Matt in which she talked about the importance not just of falling in love and being in love but of “staying” in love and how you had to plan ways to keep showing your love as life changed it. So smart.
Michelle told Matt she was in love with him. He did not say it back and when she repeated it in the morning his response was “Thank you for sharing that,” which did not inspire confidence considering he’d already told Rachael he was falling for her way before the fantasy suite.
On the other hand, Michelle didn’t have to strap on a heavy backpack and hike through the woods, then put up a tent and sit around a campfire, which is what Bri did. If you thought that tent was going to be Bri’s fantasy suite you’re not alone, but luckily she did get to sleep indoors albeit in a room that was more rustic than swanky.
Why did Bri and Matt have to put up a tent if they weren’t sleeping in it?
Nonetheless, Bri was ecstatic after spending the night with Matt. Like Michelle, she told Matt she loved him and was ready to get engaged. But Matt foreshadowed what was to come in his confessional when he said he could see a life with Bri but also that it was going to be hard sending someone home.
By the time Rachael’s date came around she’d convinced herself she was the one getting dumped. She was supposed to be throwing pottery on a wheel, but instead she was spinning herself into a funk.
I’m going to guess that, given how happy Rachael looks, this was taken after her talk with Matt.
She and Matt left the studio for a chat during which Rachael expressed her fear that Matt’s feelings for her had changed after his dates with Michelle and Bri. Not only did Matt bring up Rachael’s parachute mishap again and how much the thought of losing her had scared him, he said he had fallen in love with her. “I’m completely in love with you,” Rachael responded.
At dinner, Matt was practically bursting with excitement as Rachael told him she was “100 per cent completely ready” to have a life with him.
“Tonight, I’m just thinking about what life would look like with Rachael,” enthused Matt in his voice-over. “She’s smart, beautiful; she’s articulate, she’s sexy and everything she embodies, it’s incredible.”
It sure sounds like a done deal to me. The fireworks outside their window as they passionately kissed were like an exclamation point.
So it was obvious Rachael was getting a rose at the next day’s ceremony. And when Matt handed the first one to Michelle it was clear that Bri was done.
(Rachael is also Harrison’s favourite, it seems. He greeted her before the rose ceremony as Rach and told her it was “so good to see you.”)
Bri left tearfully but told Matt she couldn’t be upset or angry with him. At least we know that Bri’s mother, who promised to help mend her broken heart if things didn’t work out, will have her back. And she’s now free to join the Bachelorette race.
Next week we’ll go through the motions of seeing Matt pretend to choose between Rachael and Michelle. It looks like there’ll be tears all around.
You can watch Monday at 8 p.m. on Citytv. And you can comment here, visit my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter @realityeo
CLARIFICATION: I edited this Tuesday afternoon after reading a couple of other recaps that said Matt told Rachael he had “fallen” in love with her. I swear I heard him say “falling.” I even played that bit over again to double check, but when I listened again today with the volume cranked way up I did hear the word “fallen,” so yeah, sorry Michelle.
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