Tag: TVO

Happy Canada Day and 4th of July! This week’s list is a “to be continued” situation since reviews of “Little Voice,” from Apple TV Plus, are embargoed until Monday morning. In fact, I’m running into embargoes more and more these days, so starting next week I’m going to transition “Watchable” from a Sunday to Saturday list, to a Monday to Sunday list since Mondays seem to be the day many of the embargoes lift. In the meantime …

SHOW OF THE WEEK: Above the Law (July 11, 8 p.m., CBC Docs POV and CBC Gem)

This doc is both infuriating and disheartening: infuriating because it shows lives lost or maimed through the actions of violent Calgary cops; disheartening because the stories the victims and their families tell are all too familiar to anyone paying attention to the news across North America.

In December 2013, Godfred Addai-Nyamekye, an immigrant from Ghana, was acting as a designated driver for his friends when their car got stuck in the snow. When police pulled up and told them to move on, Godfred explained that they’d tried to push the car to no avail. He was wrestled to the ground, handcuffed, driven away and dropped off in an industrial area he wasn’t familiar with, in minus 28 C temperatures, in a tracksuit. He repeatedly called 911 for help and when the cops finally responded he was punched in the face, kneed in the back and then HE WAS CHARGED with assaulting police. Sound familiar?

Godfred now suffers from post-traumatic stress, hasn’t been able to work because of his back injuries and a once promising future has been derailed thanks to a police officer’s anger management issues.

The only thing that likely saved Godfred from being convicted — because we all know who judges and juries believe when it’s the suspect’s word against officers’ — was a video from a police helicopter that clearly shows the vicious assault on Godfred.

Let’s move on to 2015. The same cop who assaulted Godfred is still on duty, despite Godfred filing a complaint against him, and is caught on video removing a handcuffed man from a cruiser, punching him from behind several times in the head and slamming him to the ground. The man, Daniel Haworth, who’d been arrested for breaking into his ex-girlfriend’s house, suffered a traumatic brain injury. He later died of a fentanyl overdose, which the cops say isn’t connected to the assault, except the brain injury caused memory loss, which led to Daniel being kicked out of drug treatment, so you can connect the dots.

At least in that case, officer Trevor Lindsay was charged with and convicted of aggravated assault, and was still awaiting sentence when the documentary was made.

The doc also profiles a third case, involving a man named Anthony Heffernan, a drug addict who’d had a relapse after a couple of years clean and had refused to vacate the hotel room he was in, which led to police being called. Anthony wasn’t armed, but apparently the five officers who responded found one drug-addled white guy such a threat that one of them had to shoot him in the head several times.

ASIRT, Alberta’s version of Ontario’s SIU, referred the case for charges against the officers, but the deputy minister of justice refused to prosecute, saying there wasn’t sufficient evidence the use of force was “unjustified.”

I’ll just echo what Anthony’s brother, Grant, says in the doc: this is “complete bullshit.”

I’ll also quote Anthony’s father, Patrick: “This must never happen again in Calgary or Canada.” Except incidents like this are still happening across Canada and the United States and will continue to do so until somebody finds a way to rein in police violence.

Employable Me (July 5, TVO, 10 p.m.)

This is both doing good and feel-good television. The series, which is in its third season, features subjects with physical or neurological impairments who just want to work. Through interviews with them and their families, and professional assessments of their skills, it’s proven — both to potential employers and to viewers — that they are indeed employable. And if you’ve never interacted with someone who’s what society regards as disabled, you might learn a thing or two. The episode I watched featured an intelligent young man named Jordan on the autism spectrum, who is mad about trains; and a charming young woman with Down syndrome named Ariana with untapped people skills.

An Inspector Calls (July 7, BritBox)

The play on which this TV movie is based was first performed in 1945, but contempt for the poor and downtrodden is ever with us, perhaps even more so today than in J.B. Priestley’s time or the Edwardian era in which this is set.

The inspector of the title (David Thewlis) calls on a rich family in the midst of a self-congratulatory dinner: father Arthur Birling (Ken Stott) is expecting to be knighted soon and daughter Sheila (Chloe Pirrie) has just got engaged to the son of a rival captain of industry. But their smugness dissipates when the inspector, who gives his name as Goole, delivers news of a young woman who has just committed suicide. He then demonstrates how each member of the family, including mother Sybil (Miranda Richardson) and son Eric (Finn Cole), contributed to her downfall.

The victim, Eva Smith, who goes from being a worker in Birling’s factory to pregnant and utterly destitute, is played by the ever reliable Sophie Rundle (“Peaky Blinders,” “Gentleman Jack”), who’ll soon be seen in Acorn TV’s “The Nest.”

There’s a twist at the end that I won’t give away if you’re not familiar with the play.

Odds and Ends

Canadian actor Kim Cattrall, who will forever be known as Samantha from “Sex and the City,” stars as a woman coming to terms with aging in “Sensitive Skin,” a Canadian remake of a British series. It’s still viewable on Crave TV, but if you’re an Acorn subscriber, Season 1 will also be available there as of July 6.

Netflix has several debuts this week that I’d love to tell you all about, except preview episodes weren’t provided — not to me, anyway. They include “Stateless” (July 8), a drama set in an immigration detention centre in Australia co-created by Cate Blanchett and starring Yvonne Strahovski of “The Handmaid’s Tale”; “Down to Earth With Zac Efron” (July 10), a travel documentary about finding healthy, sustainable ways to live; and “The Twelve” (July 10), a Dutch drama about jurors adjudicating the disturbing case of a woman charged with murdering her own daughter and her best friend.

“Tough as Nails” (July 8, 8 p.m., Global and CBS) was created by U.S. “Amazing Race” host Phil Keoghan. The contestants are Americans who do physically demanding jobs and whose strength, endurance and mental toughness are tested in a series of “real-world” challenges until one is left standing.