Funding cuts, broken business models, end-of-the-world network scenarios be damned. Jonathan Torrens keeps making TV shows.
The P.E.I. native is back with a second season of TV With TV’s Jonathan Torrens, returning Saturday night at 10:30 p.m. on TVTropolis.
I’ve been writing about this guy since he was an apple-cheeked punk co-hosting CBC’s old kids for cash show, Street Cents. Since then, he’s been an afternoon talk show dude down with the ‘tweens on Jonovision, been an impossibly white rapper dude on Trailer Park Boys, was the “Got to be Gay Guy” on the cheezy bait-and-switch U.S. reality show Joe Schmo and even tricked CBC into following him around with a camera as he drove across Canada. Basically he’s done everything but repair TVs.
So goofing on the medium seems like a good fit. On the screener I saw, Torrens has fun scraping the bottom of the reality barrel, especially when he takes aim at all those stoopid TLC shows. I thought his sketch “Normal Sized Man, Tiny House” was pretty damn funny, all about a guy living in one of those big yellow plastic Playschool yard ape houses.
Torrens was telling me he was supposed to appear as “TV’s Jonathan Torrens” in the upcoming Trailer Park Boys follow up Drunk and on Drugs Happy Funtime Hour (shot in Halifax, where Torrens resides) but just couldn’t clear 11 days in June. Besides editing the first 13 second season TVTropolis shows and prepping the next 13, he’s also just been named one of the hosts of Wipeout Canada (where, if you just have to take one in the nuts and land face first in the Argentina mud, you can apply here).
As a freelancer, Torrens hates to say no to work (I know the feeling) but had to draw the line somewhere. “We have a six month old at home,” he says, “and I just imagined having a constant low grade heart attack trying to do all of that at once.”
I wrote more about Torrens and all his latest shenanigans for The Canadian Press this week, you can check out that article here.
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5 Comments
Two heads are better than one. ............................................................
Torrens didn’t host the Joe Schmo Show — he was one of the castmembers/improvisors of Joe Schmo 2 as the “Gotta Be Gay Guy” competing for the love of a fake bachelorette-style contestant (against a real Schmo). He had some very memorable scenes with current Castle co-star Jon Huertas, including a hilarious dance-off!
You sir know your Joe Schmo.
Haha yes. I always looked at it as an improv show, and was fascinated by the idea of these actors essentially having to LIVE their characters all day, every day.
I even re-watched both seasons last year.
(I watch too much TV.)
I must say torrens doing a great job and show is really awesome, i love it a lot, I just came to know that its being produced by Arcadia TV can some one confirm it?