TV Season Report Card - Oct. 11, 2008

ON SCREEN:
PRELIMINARY REPORT CARD ON THE NEW TV SEASON

BOTTOM LINE:
THERE'S GOOD AND BAD AMONG THE NEW AND OLD.


Cheers and jeers

The new TV season is only a month old. 

And, already, it's clear there are things on 

the tube that are - and aren't - working well.


By Eric Kohanik

It has only been a few weeks since thenew TV season officially got rolling. But it has already become clear. There are shows, both new and old, that are – and are not – working for me this fall.

So, what’s doing it for me?

✔ Dancing With the Stars (Mondays andTuesdays; ABC, CTV): The calibre of talent is better than ever. In fact, the first week saw routines that were already miles ahead of the final weeks of some earlier seasons.

✔ The Big Bang Theory (Mondays; CBS): Jim Parsons’ stints as the socially clueless Sheldon get more ingenious each week.

✔ Californication (Mondays; The Movie Network, Movie Central): Hank Moody (David Duchovny) and those around him keep hitting one wall after another. It’s so much fun to watch them pick up the pieces.

✔ 90210 (Tuesdays; The CW, Global): OK, don’t laugh. Nobody expected it to be good because it didn’t have to be; the show had a built-in audience. And that actually makes it kind of a pleasant surprise.

✔ The Rick Mercer Report (Tuesdays;CBC): Mercer is a brilliant satirist, even if the elements of each instalment of his show are getting way too familiar and predictable. At least the federal election is providing plenty of new ammunition.

✔ Survivor: Gabon (Thursdays; CBS, Global): OK, if ever there were a show made for HDTV, this is it. Too bad it took so long.

✔ Weeds (Sundays; Showcase): Quite simply, it stars Mary-Louise Parker. Enough said.

✔ The Bonnie Hunt Show (weekdays; Citytv): Despite its cheesy opening titles, Hunt’s warmth on this daytime gab showputs TV’s latenight talkers to shame.

There’s plenty that’s not working for me this season, too. The leading offenders?

✘ Mad Men (Sundays; AMC, A): The first season was so fabulous. But sometimes, there are such long, silent moments this season that you can’t figure out what’s up.

✘ Desperate Housewives (Sundays; ABC, CTV): Executive producer Marc Cherry reset the clock, moving things ahead five years to get rid of story screw-ups. After only two episodes, though, the show has already painted itself into a creative corner again.

✘ Knight Rider (Mondays; NBC, E!): Sorry. Maybe a supercharged car would be way more appealing if gas were cheaper.

✘ Saturday Night Live (Saturdays; NBC, Global): No matter how good it gets, how come cast members still don’t know how to read lines on cue cards without making it so obvious that they’re reading cue cards?

✘ So You Think You Can Dance Canada (various days; CTV): I LOVE it, but I feel sorry for it. As the debut week of Dancing With the Stars and Grey’s Anatomy illustrated, if CTV’s American shows have something big going on, the network will quickly treat this as a second-class refugee. If only Canadian broadcasters had the balls to put Canadian shows ahead of American ones …

Corner Gas - Oct. 4, 2008

ON SCREEN:
CORNER GAS
MONDAYS; CTV

BOTTOM LINE:
MEMO TO PRODUCERS: ERIC PETERSON IS AVAILABLE.


Gas Pains

The final season of Corner Gas will mean 

a return to square one for its cast members. 

Even for a veteran like Eric Peterson.


By Eric Kohanik

I’ve always had a tremendous respect for Eric Peterson.

No, it’s not because of his first name. It’s because he is truly one of Canada’s most compelling actors.

My respect for Peterson stretches way back to the late 1980s and early ’90s, when I would simply gobble up his performances as Leon Rabinovitch, the scrappy, left-wing lawyer he played on Street Legal, a CBC drama series that was set in a downtown Toronto law office.

You can still catch reruns of Street Legal on cable, every weekday on Canada’s version of Bravo. Originally, though, CBC aired the show on Friday evenings, as a lead-in to its simulcasts of CBS’s Dallas.

Yes, this was back when TV was worth staying home for on Friday nights.

Peterson has done a ton of TV guest stints since his Street Legal days, popping up on shows ranging from Touched by an Angel and Da Vinci’s Inquest to Puppets Who Kill and two Trudeau miniseries, in which he portrayed the legendary Tommy Douglas.

Peterson has done a lot of theatre work, too, which he refers to as his “steady employment.” For the past few years, though, his steady employment has been the role of Oscar Leroy, the crabby dad of Brent Leroy (Brent Butt) on CTV’s Corner Gas.

Oscar has become a Canadian TV icon. His exclamations of “jackass!” have become as much of a signature for him as “meathead!” became for Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor) on All in the Family.

Corner Gas begins its sixth – and final – season on Oct. 13. According to Butt, the show won’t be going out with a bang. When the final episode wraps up, it will be just the end of another day in the fictional Saskatchewan town of Dog River.

For Peterson, though, the end of Corner Gas will mean things have come full circle.

“I’m a Canadian actor, you see,” the amiable Saskatchewan native told me as we huddled in the corner at a CTV media event in Toronto back in June. “Now, I go back to square one again. Once the series is over, I go back to looking for work. I’m back to scale salaries. But that’s my life.”

It will be the life of most of the Corner Gas cast. But then, it’s the plight all actors face – even a respected veteran like Peterson.

“People aren’t banging my door down, Canadian producers, to get me to do things for them,” Peterson smiles. “So, on that level, when the series is over, it’s quite a bucket of cold water in the face again.”

Like most actors, Peterson says he is “always thinking about what the next job is going to be.” So, is the next role he wants to tackle going to be a comedy or a drama?

“The next role I want is just a role,” Peterson laughs. “I don’t even dare think of choosing, making a demand. Basically, you never get far above, ‘I’ll do anything they want me to do.’ “