SHOW OF THE WEEK: The Big Door Prize (March 29, Apple TV+)
Skeptics vs. believers, realists vs. dreamers: the small town of Deerfield is divided between the two when a strange blue machine that looks like a photo booth suddenly appears in the general store, spitting out cards for a couple of quarters that promise to reveal the user’s life potential.
Actually, it’s far from an even split. Most of the town goes gaga for the Morpho — named after and bearing the symbol of a butterfly — and changes their lives accordingly: everything from taking up relatively harmless hobbies to drastic decisions like quitting jobs, ending marriages or jumping willy nilly into new relationships.
Dusty (Chris O’Dowd), the high school history teacher, doesn’t understand the compulsion to alter lives because of words on a blue card but can’t avoid the temptation to get a card of his own. But the result is far from comforting — especially when his wife, Cass (Gabrielle Dennis), reveals a card that suggests a destiny far loftier than Dusty’s.
The machine also brings unease to Dusty and Cass’s daughter, Trina (Djouliet Amara), who has a guilty secret involving her dead boyfriend Kolton, killed in a car crash, whom the rest of the school has canonized as an “angel.” Nor is it of much comfort to Kolton’s twin, Jacob (Sammy Fourlas); to Cass’s mother, Izzy (Crystal Fox), the mayor of the town; or to Father Rueben (Damon Gupton), the high school chaplain.
And what is the Morpho? A magic trick? A scam? Divine intervention? What does cynical bartender Hana (Ally Maki) know about the machine that everyone else doesn’t?
Those questions are never answered, but the machine undergoes a transformation at the end of the 10 episodes that makes it clear a second season is planned.
The questions the Morpho cards raise aren’t ones that you need a machine to help you ask: Who am I? Am I doing what I’m meant to do with my life? How well do I know the people around me? How well do I know myself?
But they’re also questions that are unlikely to get asked when the status quo seems to be working.
Irish immigrant Dusty, for instance, who just turned 40, seems to have the world by the tail when the series starts: a happy marriage, a family, a job he seems to enjoy and to be valued for in a friendly community. But when cracks start to appear in that facade it’s clear they’ve been there for a while and been papered over in the interests of getting on with life.
The Morpho gives people permission to colour outside the lines, whether that’s Principal Pat (Cocoa Brown) buying a Harley and marrying a man she’s known for a week, or storeowner Mr. Johnson (Patrick Kerr) launching a second career as a magician.
But it also brings on sometimes painful self-reflection as when restaurant owner Giorgio (Josh Segarra) acknowledges that he peaked 20 years ago and has been pumping himself up ever since on past glories.
Still, I wouldn’t want to give you the impression this show is a downer. It has moments of genuine humour and of connection between the characters.
O’Dowd and Dennis give a winning portrayal of a couple who geuninely love each other even if they don’t know one another as well as they thought. Segarra is both annoying and endearing as the bombastic Giorgio. And Amara and Fourlas strike the right notes as teenagers who blend heart with snark.
This is series creator David West Read’s first TV project as a writer and producer since the Emmy-winning “Schitt’s Creek.” And it’s one that aims for the brain as well as the heart.
Apple also has the film “Tetris” (March 31), about the popular 1980s video game.
Short Takes
Streams Flow From a River (March 28, 9 p.m., Super Channel Fuse)
A family of Chinese immigrants who run a laundromat manage to reconnect despite shared hurts and hardships. No, I’m not talking about the Oscar-winning “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” but about this six-episode web series by Christopher Yip. The queer Chinese-Canadian writer and director made the series with an all-Asian lead cast and writers room, the first digital series to debut as part of the Canadian Film Fest. It follows the Chow family: father Gordon (Simon Sinn), mother Diana (Jane Luk), daughter Loretta (Danielle Ayow) and son Henry (Liam Ma). When Gordon has a stroke, Loretta and Henry return to the small Alberta town where they grew up and helped their parents run a combined liquor store and laundromat. Forced to stay together in the family home when a snowstorm closes highways, they all revisit past conflicts and disappointments before eventually finding a new way to co-exist. The Canadian Film Fest also includes nine feature films and 25 shorts airing on Super Channel Fuse from March 28 to April 1.
Emergency NYC (March 29, Netflix)
The sight of a tiny, premature baby having surgery to push her liver and intestines back into her belly is enough to make your heart flip, but it’s also one of the success stories in this fascinating docuseries from Adi Barash and Ruthie Shatz, the same team behind the docuseries “Lenox Hill,” which followed four doctors at New York City’s Lenox Hill Hospital. Some of those docs are back in this show, which expands to follow staff at Lenox Hill, Lenox Health Greenwich Village, Cohen Children’s Medical Center and North Shore University Hospital, as well as nurses, technicians and paramedics who transport the patients via ambulance and helicopter. The common theme as the series jumps from hospital to hospital, from case to case, is the dedication of these health-care professionals, whether they’re dealing with a 29-year-old opera singer with a huge blood clot in her brain, a 17-year-old boy shot at a party, or a homeless man who had neck surgery and has nowhere to be discharged to. Their jobs have become harder post-pandemic (as they have for medical professionals all over the world): people who stayed away from hospitals during lockdowns are showing up in even worse shape; violence is increasing in the city; already gaping disparities between haves and have-nots are widening. The social issues can’t help but bleed into the exam and operating rooms, but it’s the medical issues that keep you glued to the screen. No matter how graphic the surgeries, how painful the conditions, how sad some of the outcomes, the series is absolutely life-affirming.
Netflix also has “Unstable” (March 30), a comedy series starring father and son Rob and John Owen Lowe as a father and son at a bio research company; South Korean film “Kill Boksoon” (March 31), about a single mother assassin; movie sequel “Murder Mystery 2” (March 31), with Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston as private eyes; and the WWII film “War Sailor” (April 2).
Odds and Ends
Classic animated series “Raccoons” is returning to TV. PHOTO CREDIT: Corus
The nostalgia factor is high for the return of animated series “Raccoons” after 32 years, debuting March 27 at 3 p.m. on Boomerang. The Canadian show featuring raccoons Bert, Ralph and Melissa; aardvarks Cyril, Cedric and Sophia, and sheepdog Schaeffer first aired in the late 1980s and early ’90s, and has been restored in 4K from the original hand-drawn, cel animation film.
Paramount+ appears to be trying to remake the fashion competition show with “The Fashion Hero: A New Kind of Beautiful” (March 31), which has “diverse” contestants of all ages working in teams to complete “character-building” challenges with coaches and guest mentors. Eventually one will be named the face of an international brand campaign. Paramount also has Season 2 of “Queen of the Universe” (March 31), a musical drag competition show featuring queens from different countries.
Prime Video has “The Power” (March 31), in which teenage girls around the world develop the ability to electrocute people and things at will and, having been a teenage girl once, I find this terrifying.
Sorry to say I didn’t get a chance to screen the third season of “Staged,” debuting on BritBox March 28, but given how funny David Tennant and Michael Sheen were playing versions of themselves in the first season, I’m willing to give it a go.
I had a quick peek at “The Dreamer” (March 30, Viaplay), a period drama inspired by the story of Karen Blixen, the Danish author immortalized in the 1985 movie “Out of Africa.” In the series, Karen (Connie Nielsen) has returned to her mother’s estate after the failure of her coffee plantation in Kenya, the death of her lover, Denys Finch Hatton (Lochlann O’Mearain), and her own suicide attempt.
Hollywood Suite is featuring films about or by women on March 30, including “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” “The Witches of Eastwick” and “The Virgin Suicides,” curated by indie director of the moment Chandler Levack of “I Like Movies” fame.
And finally, CTV Life Channel and Crave have the docuseries “Evolving Vegan” (March 30, 8 p.m.), in which actor Mena Massoud (“Aladdin”) explores the vegan food scene in Los Angeles, Austin, Mexico City, Vancouver, Portland and Toronto.
NOTE: The listings here are in Eastern Standard Time and I’ve verified the times where possible, but it’s always best to check listings for your own area. The selection of programs 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. The Odds and Ends section includes shows that I have not watched.
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