Andrea Martin in "Working The Engels"

ON SCREEN:

WORKING THE ENGELS
Global -- Wednesdays


On Set With "The Engels"

Andrea Martin Is Playing Things
For Laughs Again

By Eric Kohanik

It doesn't happen as often anymore. Every once in a while, though, people still come up and tell Andrea Martin they're surprised she isn't actually a Canadian.

“It used to happen a lot more,” the 67-year-old Martin concedes. “I have a house in Toronto. And my kids were born here. And my career started here, really. I guess I'm a 'landed immigrant.' I consider myself to be a 'North American.' I feel privileged to have worked all over North America.”

Born in Maine, Martin has been surrounded by Canadians for years. She got her big break in Toronto in a 1972 stage production of Godspell that featured such Canadians as Eugene Levy, Victor Garber, Martin Short and Paul Shaffer. After that, she worked with the likes of Dave Thomas and John Candy in the Toronto chapter of Second City. That, in turn, led to a sketch-comedy series called SCTV: Second City Television, where Martin's roster of characters most notably included the indomitable Edith Prickley.

It's been almost 40 years since SCTV first hit TV screens. And Martin admits she often looks back fondly. As for a possible SCTV reunion, Martin waves off the idea.

“It was a special time,” she reflects. “We are all very protective of what we accomplished then.”

Martin has assembled many credits since those days – on TV, in movies and on stage. She is now back on TV in Working The Engels, a comedy series for Global that was also picked up in the U.S. by NBC.

The chance to do TV again was something Martin had been thinking about for a while. “I had spent a lot of time on Broadway doing Pippin,” she says. Her work as the title character's grandmother, Berthe, in the revival of the play won a Tony Award last year for best performance by a featured actress in a musical.

“Before that, I had done my one-woman show on stage,” Martin continues. “Doing all of that for such a long time was exhausting, so I was looking for something different. But I wasn't sure how long I would be able to be in Toronto. Then, this came along and it all worked out.”

Working The Engels is a broad comedy that casts Martin as Celia “Ceil” Engel, the matriarch of a family left in the lurch when Ceil's husband dies and leaves his law firm without a leader. Fortunately for Ceil, her youngest daughter, Jenna (Kacey Rohl), is qualified to run the practice. Unfortunately for Jenna, Ceil insists on working there, too. So do Jenna's pill-popping sister (Azura Skye) and her bad-boy brother (Benjamin Arthur).  

For Rohl, whose credits include mostly dramatic roles in such series as Hannibal and The Killing, the chance to tackle something comedic was a dream. “There aren't a lot of comedy productions in Vancouver,” the 22-year-old B.C. actress says. As for working with Martin, Rohl beams: “I've been like a sponge. I've learned so much.”

Meanwhile, Martin has lots of praise for her co-stars. “The chemistry was there instantly,” she says.

On this particular day, the show is near the half-way point in its 12-episode production schedule. Martin and Skye have been blocking out a hip-hop routine for an episode, improvising something different for every take. In the director's chair, trying to piece it all together, is none other than Jason Priestley.

Working The Engels also has an impressive guest roster in front of the camera for its debut season. Among the pack: Short, Levy, Jayne Eastwood, Colin Mochrie, Jennifer Irwin and Wendy Crewson.

Having familiar friends come back to work with her is something special for Martin.

It also makes her feel like things have come full circle.

“I feel almost like I've gone back to the beginning of my career,” Martin smiles. “We used to shoot SCTV at Global; this is for Global. I used to drive myself to the studio then; I drive myself to the studio now. Not much has changed in 40 years.”

Working The Engels – Global – Wednesdays 

(First published in Channel Guide Magazine -- April 2014.)

The TCA Press Tour

Wow.

I can't recall a Television Critics Association Press Tour so newsworthy in years.

At least not so early in the proceedings.

I should know. This is the 43rd time I've attended the semi-annual Hollywood gathering of TV critics and columnists from across the U.S. and Canada.

The news has certainly been coming fast and furious out of the grand ballroom at the posh Langham Huntington Hotel & Spa in stately Pasadena, Calif.

Well, the buzz hasn't all taken place at the Langham.

There was CBS's huge Survivor reunion party on Saturday night, for instance. Geared to mark the upcoming 2oth season / 10th anniversary of the reality show, the event was the biggest collection of the longrunning show's contestants ever in one place, filling a massive soundstage at CBS's famed Television City complex with a rockin' case of jungle fever.

Back at the ballroom, though, there was NBC's confirmation announcement on Sunday about its upcoming plans for Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien once the Winter Olympics have finished their run next month. That caused a media frenzy that made it to the front page of USA Today and countless other papers.

On Monday, it was Fox's turn to do the big reveal. The announcement: That Simon Cowell will leave American Idol at the end of this season in order to focus on the Fall 2011 arrival of Cowell's own pet TV project, The X Factor.

As Cowell signed the deal on the ballroom stage at the Langham, there was an almost-deafening cacophony of chattering keyboards as reporters raced to blog, tweet and otherwise get stories transmitted to their assorted media outlets.

All of which means ABC, which is up next on Tuesday, will really have its work cut out for it.

That is, if it hopes to come anywhere close to the buzz that its network rivals have already been generating at the TCA Press Tour.

TV Variety Shows - Oct. 18, 2008

ON SCREEN:
THE RETURN OF PRIMETIME VARIETY SHOWS
COMING SOON

BOTTOM LINE:
EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN.


On with the show

They say that variety is the spice of life.
Now, some networks are hoping that variety
can spice up an otherwise bland TV season.


By Eric Kohanik

There was once a time when the primetime variety show was a big mainstay in the TV world.

It was a holdover from the days of vaudeville houses and the early years of network radio.

Every TV network tended to have at least one primetime variety show to spice up its scheDule. There were classics like Your Show of Shows and The Milton Berle Show, better known as The Texaco Star Theater. And there was Toast of the Town, which was later much more widely known by its new title: The Ed Sullivan Show.

There were many others over the years: The Dean Martin Show, This Is Tom Jones, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, The Jackie Gleason Show, The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, The Hollywood Palace…the list goes on and on.

The last of the big network variety shows? That was probably The Carol Burnett Show, which actually finished its run 30 years ago.

These days, TV variety shows tend to take the form of talent competitions – shows like Dancing With the Stars or America’s Got Talent. Or they are sketch-comedy shows that have found a niche during latenight hours – shows like Saturday Night Live.

But the bigtime network variety show may be in for a primetime comeback before long. In July, Fox announced plans to roll out a traditional TV variety show with a rather untraditional twist.

The network recruited Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne and two of their dizzy offspring, Jack and Kelly, for a new show tentatively titled The Osbournes: Loud and Dangerous. Set to debut during the holiday season, it is supposed to mix music performances with comedy sketches and what Fox describes as “game-show competitions.”

Fox signed up for six episodes of the Osbourne project. Whether there will be more after that will depend on how audiences take to the first batch of shows.

Over at NBC, meanwhile, network executives announced a couple of weeks ago that they had signed Rosie O’Donnell to host Rosie’s Variety Special, a primetime effort that is scheduled to hit the air Nov. 26. The live, hourlong special is supposed to feature musical acts, comedy skits, celebrity guests and what NBC is billing as “a giant primetime give-away.” If the special proves to be popular, NBC plans to turn it into a regular weekly show in 2009.

Can O’Donnell and the Osbournes turn variety shows back into the TV mainstays they once were? Hey, you never know. After all, who’d have thought that quiz shows and amateur talent competitions – both powerhouse genres during TV’s early years, too – would make the big comebacks they have?

One thing is certain. Networks are always looking for new ideas that can become hits. And, in the TV world, you know that, at some point, everything old is new again.

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 …

Boston Legal / The Shield / ER - Sept. 27, 2008

ON SCREEN:
BOSTON LEGAL
MONDAYS; ABC, E!
THE SHIELD
TUESDAYS; SHOWCASE
ER
THURSDAYS; NBC, CTV

The long goodbye

A lot of new TV series will fall by the wayside 

this season. But there are three trusty veterans 

that are on their way out, too.

By Eric Kohanik

Call it “the long goodbye.”

The fall season is barely under way. And, by the time Thanksgiving rolls around (either the Canadian or American one), a number of new series will have bitten the dust. It’s just the way TV does business.

But this season will also say goodbye to some trusty veterans. And the TV landscape will be a little less vibrant without them.

Boston Legal will close the law offices of Crane, Poole & Schmidt for good after the 13 episodes of its fifth season finish up their run. This is a comedy/drama that has always been one of ABC’s most underappreciated shows – by viewers and network bosses – ever since its debut in October 2004.

A spinoff of a much more serious legal drama called The Practice, the saga of lawyers Alan Shore (James Spader), DennyCrane (William Shatner) and the rest of their colourful crew started off on Sunday nights, in the primo slot after Desperate Housewives. The show was elbowed out of the way midseason by ABC, which wanted to introduce viewers to a hot new medical drama: Grey’s Anatomy.

Of course, Grey’s Anatomy caught on and Boston Legal was shelved, returning the next fall on Tuesdays before being shuffled to Wednesdays and then back to Tuesdays.

This season, it airs on Mondays. At least it has Dancing With the Stars as a lead-in.

Maybe ABC brass never got Boston Legal’s offbeat sense of humour. Or maybe the occasional pink-flamingo costume simply hit too close to home. In any case, we’ll miss Denny and Alan’s Scotch-and-cigars ritual at the end of each episode.

Over in the cable world, the transgressions of Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) and his unorthodox squad of cops have been simply mesmerizing ever since The Shield made its debut in 2002. Finding where they were has often been a difficult task, though.

Although The Shield enjoyed a steady American cable home on FX, it was bounced around on broadcast and cable channels in Canada before landing on Showcase, where it is now serving up its seventh season.

Producers and actors say Mackey will finally get what he deserves when the final 13 episodes wrap up in November. Just what he deserves, though, is still debatable.

When it comes to TV longevity, though, there aren’t many series with the staying power of NBC’s ER. When it began in 1994, few predicted that the action inside Chicago’s fictional County General Hospital would win the head-to-head clash with CBS’s rookie hospital drama, Chicago Hope. Even fewer could ever have foreseen that ER would last for 15 seasons, thanks to ongoing transfusions of new acting blood.

Some of the old blood – like Dr. John Carter (Noah Wyle) – will be back for ER’s farewell crop of caseloads. Even so, there’s no escaping the fact that “the long goodbye” will finally fill the halls of County General, too.

NBC Movie Of The Week - May 12, 2007

ON SCREEN:
NBC MOVIE OF THE WEEK
SUNDAYS; NBC

BOTTOM LINE:
POPCORN, ANYONE?


Everything old is new again

It's not surprising to see NBC bring
movies back to Sunday nights.
In the TV world, everything that
goes around comes around.


By Eric Kohanik

There was a time when Sunday nights were huge movie nights for all TV networks.

Those were the days when ABC, CBS and NBC ruled the roost on the American TV scene. They were the days when the “world television premiere” of a theatrical movie was a really big deal for a broadcaster – the days before cable channels, pay-per-view, video on demand, DVDs, cellphones and the Internet came along to milk every last drop out of any flick around.

During the mid-1980s, all three of the big American networks had movies on their Sunday-night schedules. The practice began to change with the arrival of the Fox network. In 1987, Fox turned Sunday – its only evening of primetime programming at the time – into a showcase for TV series.

The success of that move gradually prompted other networks to slot series into Sunday nights. NBC steadfastly resisted the change, however, even as ratings for movies continued to spiral downward.

In fact, during a casual conversation on a TV press tour in Los Angeles back in the mid-1990s, I asked a top NBC executive at the time why the network didn’t try airing series instead of movies on Sundays.

The guy laughed in my face. Series just don’t work on Sunday nights, he said. 

Of course, it’s a much different Sunday night on the tube these days. NBC finally relented in the fall of 2001, becoming the last big American network to drop the Sunday movie tradition. 

In the TV world, though, everything that goes around comes around. And programming trends always swing back and forth, particularly if a network is struggling.

So, it’s not surprising to see NBC making the switch to big Sunday-night movies again. Along Came Polly got the ball rolling a couple of weeks ago. Shrek jumps into the berth this weekend. And Nicolas Cage’s escapades in National Treasure will fill NBC’s movie slot next Sunday. 

The decision comes from Vince Manze, an old-school NBC veteran recently named to a newly created position of “president of program planning, scheduling and strategy.” 

Sunday is “the place where we used to do events and miniseries,” Manze explained to The Hollywood Reporter recently. According to Manze, putting movies back onto Sunday nights “accomplishes two things: building events and serving as counter-programming to what the others are doing.” 

Manze claims that NBC doesn’t have big ratings expectations for its Sunday-night flicks, particularly since they’re up against such shows as Desperate Housewives and Brothers & Sisters on ABC and Cold Case and Without a Trace on CBS.

If NBC’s strategy proves successful, who knows? Others may follow suit. And that old programming pendulum may just swing back the other way yet again.