Series creator and star Mark Critch needed to replicate the bridge of the original Star Trek Enterprise for a fantasy sequence on his St. John’s-based sitcom Son of a Critch. The episode airs this Tuesday, January 16 on CBC. Who did Critch beam aboard to do the job? None other that my guest this week on
Winter finally arrived in much of Canada Tuesday night. The good news is so has CBC’s trio of Tuesday night comedies. I interviewed the casts of all three shows last month at the Winter Media launch at CBC’s downtown Toronto broadcast centre. Later this month over at brioux.tv: the podcast, you can listen as the
When you are casting a he/she series, chemistry is everything. The producers behind the new Vancouver-based cop/caper hour Wild Cards struck gold with their leads: Vanessa Morgan (Riverdale) and Giacomo Gianniotti (Grey’s Anatomy). He plays a by-the-books, wrongfully accused cop trying to clear his name after being demoted to harbour duty. She plays a daring schemer who
Two thousand and twenty-three was a challenging year in the TV business. Inflation and higher interest rates had consumers thinking twice about streaming subscriptions. The writers and actors strikes put a cork in the content pipeline. Peak TV seemed to slip back from the summit. The big success story in Canada, however, was the rapid
If you’ve been waiting until the Steve Martin, Martin Short, Selina Gomez comedy Whodunnit Only Murders in The Building came to an old-fashioned broadcast network, well, congratulations. Starting tonight, the Hulu/Disney+ streaming series premieres from the beginning on ABC and CTV. This is a shrewd bit of re-purposing by networks still reeling from a lack
I always resented the series M*A*S*H. This had nothing to do with the merits of the multiple Emmy Award-winning series, or the fact that, when my career began at TV Guide Canada shortly before the series ended, it was a pain having to shift keys and type an asterisk every time in between capitalizing the
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour had a profound effect on this 10 to 12-year-old. You watched TV as a family back then, in front of the one screen in the house, in our case, a 25-inch Clairtone. “From Television City in Hollywood,” said announcer Roger Carroll. “Ladies and gentlemen, The Smothers Brothers.” Shot from above,
Every year I plan on taking a short cut by posting this list with the idea of simply cutting and pasting something I wrote from a previous year. Every year, however, a few shows jump to the top of the list that were overlooked in the past. This year is no exception, starting with the