Making a television program shot in Montreal appear as if it could transpire in any city in North America is the oldest game in Canadian television. Without US production, Canada would have a much slimmer film and TV industry. But when the creators of The Foundation decided to film a comedy in Montreal, the tables were turned to produce a show that fulfills what Canadian content should be about: filming wildly comic situations in whatever city has the balls to put up with what the writers dish out.

In a riff on contemporary times, creators Michael Dowse and Jennifer Wilson have taken the rich man’s favourite tax evasion vehicle – the charitable foundation – and turned it into a farce of epic proportions. The Foundation is not so much about the causes it funds, but rather, the people who are responsible for the day-to-day running of the organization.

Started by a tobacco baron with oxygen mask in one hand and lit cigarette in the other, the foundation of this show is a vehicle that bears its founder’s name in perpetuity accompanied with the loosely defined mandate of ‘the betterment of mankind worldwide’. Good intentions, indeed. Presided over by his son-in-law, Michael Valmont-Selkirk (stand-up comic Mike Wilmot), who has the position for his natural life as part of a divorce settlement, one soon realizes that this foundation gets itself involved in causes on an egotistical whim rather than by any rigorous process related to need.

Foundations, like their benefactors, compete for causes and Valmont-Selkirk has decided that a competing good Samaritan across town, represented by Rejean Lemlaire (played by veteran francophone actor Yvan Ponton), is taking too much of the limelight. So he decides to one-up the man. He, too, will enter the one-night challenge, spending an entire night living on the streets without shelter and by his wits with the noble goal of contributing a million dollars to a local homeless shelter.

The ensuing competition is a contrast of parodies. Lemlaire does it the honest way, showing his gang of homeless how to build better cardboard shelters. Valmont-Selkirk shows up on the street wearing a fur coat with a pocket full of cash that gets used to buy up a block-party sized supply of wine and beer for the street people. Soon, he is buying them not just booze but shots of crack from a local street dealer. News spreads and even Lemlaire’s homeless jump ship and run for the freebies.

Outrageous? Perhaps, but it is effective at poking a rather large stick in the eye of all those good intentions enunciated in sober, reassuring tones by our leaders of business today. It does nothing to denigrate the good work the foundations do, but it does make you take a second glance at what they claim is good for the targets of their beneficence. After all, when the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is intelligently criticized in Harpers for perpetuating world hunger, rather than preventing it, shows like The Foundation provide a welcome escape valve of humour to lighten our collective misgivings.

The Foundation, appearing on Showcase on Sundays at 10:40 pm, starting on September 13, 2009.

What, perchance, do former politicians do with their lives once they are no longer politicians? If you’re Mario Dumont – whose ADQ party almost became extinct in the last provincial election, you become a TV personality. The man has been a figure in Québec politics since he first sprang into prominence as President of the Québec Liberal Party’s youth wing. Such lengthy exposure to the ravages of political life should serve him well as he takes up the helm of his own current affairs show in the weeks to come.

Dumont has joined the newly christened “V”, until a few days ago the perennially failing TQS network in Québec. Short of cash and losing money ever since it was founded in 1986, TQS was purchased by Remstar from a bankruptcy trustee at the beginning of 2008. A television network purchased on the cheap. In order to get the network back on its feet, Remstar is filling up the schedule with a lot of US shows such as Fringe, Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles and Dirty, Sexy Money, a move not necessarily welcomed by all given their decision to axe the news department in an effort to stop bleeding red ink. The addition of Dumont should, therefore, provide some badly needed credibility that V has not entirely abandoned locally produced current affairs programming.

Dumont is serving in an advisory capacity until the autumn when he takes the helm of Dumont 360. The name is a rip off from Anderson Cooper 360, the award-winning, hard-hitting public affairs and interview show on CNN. The idea of Dumont 360 is to focus on one specific current theme and look at it from all angles, hence the reference to 360 degrees. Dumont will make decisions regarding which elements of an issue reporters will cover, conduct interviews with citizens and major actors and, at the end, provide commentary that will sum up his findings.

The similarities between Cooper and Dumont stop there. Cooper has more than 15 years of experience as a journalist in the field, reporting from major disaster and conflict areas. His experience demanded that he look at issues from an objective stance and not support one side of a story or another. Dumont, on the other hand, is a politician, a career that has exposed him to the machinery of government and the issues of the day that affect ordinary citizens. As a result, his questions will likely be delivered as if he were Mr. Everyman. Indeed, in an appearance on Tout le Monde en Parle earlier this year, the host graciously gave him the centre seat and his questions were, indeed, from the citizen’s mouth. Concerning a charitable foundation, for example, he asked those piercing citizen questions: “If I give ten dollars, where will it go? What will it be spent on?”

While Dumont is a known figure and will certainly attract viewers to V, it remains to be seen if this choice will lead to inspired journalism or insipid talking heads. Only time will tell. In the meantime, one hopes that Dumont’s university degree in economics will help V survive the most difficult operating environment broadcasting has yet faced.

Dumont 360 is scheduled daily from 5-6 pm. Anyone interested in checking out V’s bold new colours, go to vtele.ca/.

Defying Gravity is trying to defy the normal bounds of television. By the title the series is Sci-Fi but you wouldn’t know it given where it is being launched. By premiering the show on CTV and ABC, the creators are hoping to rope in regular, mortal viewers, rather than the rabid fans of any show with a space-bound hunk of metal. Judging by the first two episodes – characterized by taut writing, flashbacks and mystery a la Lost, and the creative genius behind Grey’s Anatomy – they just might do it.

Make no mistake, this is a series that takes place in the deep black of space. Eight astronauts from five countries are on board the Antares, a ship that resembles the long girder-like structure from 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is a ten trillion dollar gamble, an international effort to send humans on a six-year tour of seven planets of the solar system. But while the mission sounds noble enough, there is something else that is driving the whole enterprise, something cryptically called Beta that is confined to a section of the ship that is off limits to all the crew except the Mission Commander.

The series starts predictably enough. The ship is in a high orbit around Earth and ready to go, the media is also in high gear as the eight astronauts are ferried up in an Aries V rocket. But the principal characters are bedevilled by history. Flight Engineer Maddux Donner (Ron Livingston) and Mission Commander Ted Shaw (Malik Yoba) led the first manned mission to Mars, where they were forced to leave two astronauts behind on the surface, an episode that haunts them still.

While they trained as alternates for the Antares mission, they’re pretty sure they won’t be going. Except that, as the Antares is powering up to leave orbit, both Flight Engineer Ajay Sharma (Zahf Paroo) and Mission Commander Rollie Crane (Ty Olsson) are diagnosed with a plaque build-up in their arteries, something that evaded medical scans during the previous five years of training, leaving mission controllers on Earth scratching their heads. Donner and Shaw are quickly ferried up to replace them and the ship heads out.

More trouble quickly develops. A routine check of a new space suit to handle the harsh conditions of Venus – the first stop in the Antares’ mission – almost means the loss of the ship’s geologist, Zoe Barnes (Laura Harris). Like Lost, there are flashbacks to the training period, when the team is first assembled, providing valuable character background and depth, and dividing the screen time between space and earth. Donner and Barnes had a fling that led to Barnes getting pregnant, even though Donner supposedly had had a vasectomy.

Livingston does a credible job playing a James T. Kirk-like character – simple, crude but intuitively intelligent and thoroughly knowledgeable of the ship’s systems. He will be the rock the other characters gravitate to as their confined world gets darker and more dangerous as the Earth shrinks in size, not just physically, but psychologically as well. There is enough mystery and tension to keep audiences coming back, wondering just who or what is driving them on. A pioneer metaphor if there ever was one.

Defying Gravity, premiering on CTV and A! August 2, 9pm and Space on August 7 at 8pm.

There is a fine balance to achieve between a straight thriller where action is the lead and characters secondary, and a serious film where character is more important than plot or action. When a director manages to slide up the middle, the result is captivating, engrossing and scrumptiously entertaining. Millénium: Le Film, based on Steig Larsson’s crime thriller trilogy of the same name, is all that and with an excellent Swedish cast that is fresh and talented to boot.

The long title of the film is Millénium, les hommes qui n’aimaient pas les femmes and it is an important element to keep in mind as you watch the action unfold. Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) is a disgraced financial journalist whose latest scoop for the magazine, Millenium, has landed him in court and a six month term for libel. He’s released on a promise to serve his term in a half-way house. Meanwhile, a security firm is hired by the Vanger Group to suss out his background. The investigator assigned to his case is Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) whose methods to acquire information, while efficient, are not legal. She is a hacker who, after delivering her report to Vanger, continues to shadow Blomkvist’s computer out of interest.

The elderly patron of the Vanger Group, Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube), hires Blomkvist to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Hariett Vanger 40 years before. Blomkvist agrees and begins to plaster the walls of a house loaned to him with pictures and documents in an attempt to solve the disappearance. It’s when he gets stymied by some notations in Hariett’s bible that Salander takes an interest and figures out that piece of the puzzle. She sends Blomkvist an email and they team up to solve the mystery.

As they get closer to the truth, they come across an even more horrible crime and that’s where the longer title of the film becomes apparent. Men in this film, with the exception of Blomkvist and the senior Vanger, are a despicable lot. They extort women, they rape them and make them the victims for their twisted and tormented acts. Salander’s guardian extorts her by forcing her to have sex with him in exchange for money to survive. He rapes her (in a scene that made most audience members squirm in their seats) but she captures that on film and turns the table, gaining the upper hand. And as Blomkvist and Salander delve deeper in the Vanger history, they discover new meaning to the term ‘family secret’.

If Larsson wanted to write a book about how shabbily men treat women in a supposedly enlightened Western, democratic country, and wrap it in the gloss of a cold case murder mystery, he succeeded. Director Neils Arden Opley has skillfully adapted the book, finding the balance between revealing bits of key information to keep the underlying plot moving and revealing aspects of the principal characters’ total makeup to provide depth and justification for the choices they make. The result is a fine piece of filmmaking, whose pacing is just right, and the performances of the main actors fresh, startling and a joy to the eyes to watch.

Millénium: Le Film, dubbed in French, in limited release at Cineplex Odeon Quartier Latin & Beaubien.

It would be hubris indeed to proclaim the iconic status of one particular film but Ce qu’il faut pour vivre (The Necessities of Life) comes awfully close to fulfilling the role as a masterpiece of Canadian cinema. The ingredients for modern drama are there: two cultures colliding, ignorance and bigotry as the starting point for the relationship, leading to a denouement of understanding and appreciation. But more than that, this film’s greatness and strength rests squarely on the shoulders of an Inuit actor who is almost completely unknown.

From the opening frame to the last, Natar Ungalaaq’s face telegraphs emotion like no other. Pain, loss, anguish, joy, desire – they’re all there in such copious quantities that you become a part of the drama unfolding. Ungalaaq’s character, Tivii, is an Innu hunter on Baffin Island during the 1950’s. There has been an outbreak of tuberculosis and the Canadian government is out scouring the bays and fjords in an ice breaker conducting lung tests of all the Innu. Tivii is diagnosed with the disease but not his wife or children. He is forced to leave them behind and the question of who will hunt for them is left unanswered by the medical team.

Tivii is transported to a sanatorium in Quebec City to receive the treatment of the day – long months, sometimes years, bedridden and under constant medical supervision. While such isolation with fellow sufferers is bad enough, for Tivii, it is doubly so, as no one on the medical staff or any of the other patients understands Innu. Tivii meekly submits to the treatment, all the while thinking of his wife and daughters. But even that is not enough to keep him going. He decides to stop eating. The staff become desperate.

The solution to their problems comes in the form of a young Innu boy who not only speaks the language but French as well. Kaki (Paul-André Brasseur) gradually builds a bridge between Tivii and the staff and is so successful that Tivii wants to adopt the boy as his own.

This film unfolds in a bare, minimalist style. Benoit Pilon’s camera shots are slow and lean, heightening the effect of the dislocation Tivii feels when moving from the sparse and craggy land of Baffin to the treed and built-up landscape of Quebec. He marvels at the size of one tree when he arrives at the sanatorium. More than half of the dialogue is in Innu, and that creates its own dislocation on the part of the audience watching the film, matching that felt by Tivii.

The film rests on Ungalaaq’s performance, and he does this so well that the other characters are mere props to support where he goes next, what he says next, how he acts next. And while the film takes place in the 1950’s, the themes it explores are still valid today with outbreaks of Swine Flu in Northern communities with no medical facilities.

We quickly forget the Innu exist. Their population is so small and they live in an immense area of the country where we just don’t go. This film is a healthy reminder of their existence and their deep culture. It is also a healthy reminder that they, too, are a part of this country. Lest we forget.

Available on DVD.

The writers of Weeds have done for television what Victorian authors did for the novel – turned the genre on its head. Like their 19th century predecessors, the scribes at Weeds focus on what happens after a calamitous personal event, in this case, a death in the family. This is a series that began airing in the middle of Bush’s eight-year nightmare and poked him and his war-on-drugs entourage right in the eye. It put enough comic spin on the world of illegal drugs to make us all consider becoming dealers.

Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) is a desperate woman. Her husband has died, leaving her a mansion (and no doubt a toxic mortgage) in the southern California hills, a Range Rover and two kids to feed. While she doesn’t sound hard up, she has no occupation. She was content to leave it all to him, to play mommy and hang with the neighbours, ruminating in the afternoon sun about existence, California style.

It doesn’t take long before the bills begin to pile up and, as she finishes a meeting with her personal accountant, Doug Wilson (Kevin Nealon), he fishes a joint from his desk and lights up. It’s for the stress, you see. Before you can say ‘illegal substance,’ she’s figured out that her whole neighbourhood smokes the stuff and she knows them all. Instant market. Now all she needs is a supply, which she finds down the hill in the person of Heylia James (Tonye Patano). Presto! A dealer is born.

The series artfully uses the prop of marijuana dealing and consuming as a way of attacking the dreariness in suburban life. Each episode opens with a rendition of ‘Little Boxes’, a song written by Malvina Reynolds in 1962 that mocks suburbia. As the credits role, the houses are of the same style, repeated into the smoggy horizon. Men dressed identically enter and leave the Daily Grind, the local coffee shop. Identically dressed school kids spill out of identical SUVs. No wonder they all wanna get high. The marijuana scene is the only thing out of the ordinary, the thing that puts the ordinary and bland into stark perspective.

But all is not the same once you go behind the faux-oak panels of all those front doors. Like Mad Men, the show is successful at revealing the pain, candor, rage and humour of ordinary people. Nancy’s younger son, Shane (Alexander Gould), still thinks he can see and talk to his father. The performance leaves Nancy speechless and she is unequipped to solve his problem. Her older son, Silas (Hunter Parrish), is 16 going on 20 and soon figures out his mother’s secret occupation, demanding a cut of the action. They muddle through, as do all families, but there is no mushy sentiment here. Nancy starts to believe that Shane can see his father and Silas is let in, becoming a junior dealer. Just life, Weeds-style, raw and unadulterated.

With the fourth season already available on DVD, and the show’s fifth season premiering this week on the US cable network Showtime, the show is adding Canadian content. Alanis Morissette is joining as Nancy’s obstetrician for seven episodes, a spoiler if there ever was one. Nancy? Pregnant? The only steady guy she had since her husband died was a Drug Enforcement Agency officer who was later murdered by rival dealers. The plot is thickening, just like a jungle of hydroponically-grown marijuana plants.

Seasons 1 to 4 available on DVD. The opening episode of Season 5 can be seen tonight at 9:30pm on Showtime.

CTV continues to change Canadian television. Not content to produce series in Canada for simultaneous release on both sides of the Canadian/US border, now it is premiering series in international markets first. The Listener is a genre series that is not only eligible for mainstream viewing, but has also taken on almost 180 international markets before it even hits the airwaves in Canada or the United States.

With shows such as Heroes and The 4400 paving the way, a series with a telepath as its leading character is no longer a stretch. The Listener features Toby Logan (Craig Olejnik), a Peter Parker-type character with the ability to ‘listen in’ on the thoughts of others. While the usefulness of this for his job as a paramedic is obvious, it’s in discovering the secrets of others where Toby both shines and gets into trouble.

He spends most of each episode tracking down some criminal or another (like the police officer in the first episode who accidentally shoots his partner, and tries to get rid of the witnesses to his own mistake), and giving the good guys a leg up where he can without giving himself away. It’s a delicate balance for Toby as he expends a lot of energy explaining how he’s figured something out, all the while keeping his ability secret.

Through Toby’s childhood, it seems, a kindly neuroscientist, Dr. Ray Mercer (Canada’s own iconic Colm Feore, appearing in Stratford this summer), took an interest, helping him control his ability so that all those random thoughts didn’t drive him insane. As an adult, not only can he control that ability, he can focus the effort, getting front row seats – or ‘surfing privileges’ as he sardonically calls them – into the pertinent secrets needed to help bring the perp to justice. And he’s decided that his power, rather than being a curse, is actually a gift, there to help others in trouble.

His EMS partner Osman “Oz” Bey (Ennis Enser) keeps him grounded, while his love life is kept hopping between the winding up of one relationship with ER doctor Olivia Fawcett (Mylène Dinh-Robic) and the start of another with Detective Charlie Marks (Lisa Marcos), who, with each episode, gets closer to figuring out his ability. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Toby possesses smoldering green eyes and a buff physique to go along with that hidden talent.

The problem a genre series of this type faces with mainstream audiences is the believability factor. Can someone with such powers really exist in our world? The Listener skirts this by keeping the powers centred on one individual – he’s an abnormality in a sea of so-called normal humans, and has to deal with those humans on their own terms. Toby’s powers get trotted out only occasionally, and it also helps that he doesn’t get the full picture every time. His ability is extraordinary, but not boundless.

Feore wasn’t all that present in the first two episodes. Like a convenient walking encyclopedia, his appearances seemed carefully timed to provide a crucial piece of information Toby needed so he could move on to the next phase of his current pursuit. And the police narrative is not well structured. Their utility is borderline, providing just enough slack in the storyline so our telepathic friend can leap to the challenge.

The Listener doesn’t play up its purely science fiction pedigree, preferring instead to focus on the all-too-human relationships among the various characters. This should bode well for its commercial success, both in North America and abroad.

The Listener, premiering tonight June 3rd on Space at 7 pm, and CTV at 10 pm.

Windowing is a film term referring to the ability of a single product to generate revenues in different viewing ‘windows’. Television has adopted the strategy, windowing its content by crossing platforms, first showing it on the small screen (window one), then over the Internet (window two), then re-broadcasting it at a later date (window three). All to squeeze as much revenue from the product as possible. With Leonard Cohen: Live from London, the CBC takes the concept of ‘windowing’ content a step further, giving the latest CD from Canada’s best known modern songwriter-troubadour exposure on television, radio, the Internet and its own specialty channel, Bold.

The CBC, with its multiple platforms, is better positioned than most Canadian media companies to engage in windowing and, potentially, to give a single product the greatest amount of exposure. Cohen’s concert in London, UK has already been broadcast on CBC television and radio. But don’t worry if you missed it. Excerpts are available on the Radio Two web site, and the month of April is looking like Leonard Cohen month, with a one-hour interview with Cohen on CBC radio on April 16th (Radio One) and the 23rd (Radio Two) and available as an audio and video podcast thereafter. Further appearances of Cohen will be shown on CBC’s The National this evening, and the entire concert will be re-broadcast on Bold, the CBC’s very own channel dedicated to the performing arts, on April 16th.

Cohen’s concert performances are laid back events. For the London sets, Cohen looks dapper on stage, dressed in a full, double-breasted suit (but no tie) and slim fedora, eyes closed, crooning his magical words into a microphone clasped firmly in his hands, that voice so dark, deep and cool. He is well backed up with three female singers, singing some of his now-classic tunes such as Suzanne (where he plays guitar), Hallelujah, I’m Your Man, First We Take Manhattan, I Tried To Leave You, Dance Me To The End Of Love and Bird On The Wire. When he sings “Repent, Repent” on The Future, you believe him, as he sounds no less than a preacher of doom descended from the mountain as the bombs rain down on what’s left of the world. In between songs, he tells the audience about the last time he was in London as a ‘mere kid’ at age 60, joking darkly about how, despite all the Prozac and other anti-depressants taken, ‘cheerfulness continued to break through’.

For the interview, the CBC’s Jian Ghomeshi asks the man questions on ageing, mortality, love and financial loss in his own home in Montreal, a treat for local audiences who realize that Cohen still manages to come back to his place of birth from time to time, taking a break from his globetrotting concert tours.

Cohen is magical on stage, magical and simple, making one glad that the cheerfulness breaks through and that such wonderful songs continue to get written and performed. He is a cultural icon that deserves all the windowing this country can provide.

Leonard Cohen: Live in London, Interview on Radio One April 16th, Repeated on Radio Two on April 23rd and available as an audio/video podcast after the 16th. Concert to be broadcast on Bold, April 16th, 8pm.

The talk show is a venerable and long-standing TV content filler. The challenge for erstwhile hosts is to develop a theme, or a schtick, that rejuvenates the form so viewers turn their eyeballs in their direction. Johnny Carson had his sidekick and his stand-up comedy experience and it went on for a record run. David Letterman has his wit, at times so dry viewers are left parched. The common denominator is celebrity. Elvis Costello is not what one would think of as a natural talk show host. But he is an articulate, intelligent musician with a long, eclectic career. And that’s the theme, the schtick, of the new weekly Bravo! show, Spectacle: Elvis Costello With . . .

Taped at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem and at Rockefeller Centre, Elvis delivers each show’s musical introduction – a cover of a song that points to the evening’s particular theme, say indy music, or famous politicians – and then segues into the week’s guest. He peppers them with a few well-researched questions before letting them rip with their own performance. Elvis doesn’t need a back-up band to provide the musical interludes. That’s his job.

For the program profiling Diana Krall (his wife), he graciously steps back into the shadows citing his obvious conflict of interest to allow Sir Elton John (one of the executive producers) to fill in by discussing music with the jazz wunderkind from Vancouver Island. It’s all very light, and chummy, with Diana tinkling a few tunes on the piano, the both of them remembering Oscar Peterson, and then singing a duet of one of Elton’s songs that is uncomfortable to watch. It looks forced, with Elton standing awkwardly beside the piano instead of sitting at it playing his own tune. Costello comes back out near the end and they strike up in song together, as if to remind people who really hosts the show.

The interview with Bill Clinton sticks to music – how music is an influence in the former President’s life, how it helped him manage the stress of high office – and includes a discussion about his collection of saxophones, vintage instruments that, while he no longer plays as avidly as he used to, he still takes revered care of. It reveals a side of Clinton that is little known and helps explain in great part his commitment to arts education.

Spectacle is not gossip television. Elvis is trying to expose for the live studio audience, and the audience watching at home, the essential strength of music and the people who create it, appreciate it and interpret it. And rather than stick to only the well-known, those who have made it and maybe don’t really need the exposure, he sprinkles his guest list with some of the newer artists (She & He, Jenny Lewis) and provides them a one-hour platform to demonstrate their talent, while still giving time to the classics, such as Herbie Hancock. With a style of questioning centred around his extensive musical knowledge, making it both revealing and intimate without being prying or embarrassing, Costello pulls off his own television marvel, a talk show that not entertains and delights but also educates.

Aired originally in the U.S. and Britain, Spectacle: Elvis Costello With . . . premiers on CTV tonight at 10 pm and on Bravo! tomorrow at 8 pm and runs weekly.

ONE THING’S FOR CERTAIN following the Academy Awards: We know what films will fill the racks at our local video store. That’s a shame because lost amid the hype are movies with a more local flavour that cannot count on the marketing muscle of Oscar. Take À l’Ouest de Pluton, for instance. It appeared on a mere ten screens in Quebec last fall as the lead-in film for the Festival de Nouveau Cinema. Too bad it didn’t stay around longer, or get talked about more. This film is a heartfelt exploration of what it is like to be a teenager, with genuine dialogue, an amateur cast that steals the show and a frank examination of the issues which preoccupy our youth.

Shot on a shoestring budget, Henry Bernadet and Myriam Verrault have put together a film that explores 24 hours in the lives of 12 adolescents living in a contemporary suburb that could be anywhere in North America. These characters go to school, hang out behind a building during a break taking a hit of weed and discuss the pros and cons of Quebec independence at a physical education class. After school, they all meet up at a friend’s place for a party that degenerates into a house invasion. Then they wander the deserted streets in the wee hours of the morning dodging cops and eventually, after the sun comes up, end their day subtly changed. It’s as if they passed through some gauntlet of life and have come out the other end hardened, or more understanding, or dazed and wondering about the stupidity of the adult world.

In order to get the dialogue and feel of what it means to be an adolescent right, Bernadet and Verrault wrote a script but then gave it to the amateur actors recruited in suburban high schools. The result is wonderful to watch, as if the camera had been invited into the everyday lives of real teenagers — like the scene of two young men trying to work out what their band will be called (Wet Dreams) or the discussion between five of the young women about the subject of love (one believes in love before sex while the others laugh at her naiveté). The teenagers have essentially appropriated the text, made it their own. This leads to the exposition of scenes with a gritty, realistic feel that can make an audience of parental age squirm as it hits so close to home, particularly as parents are almost totally invisible throughout the film.

Like Gus Van Sant has done with the lives of American teenagers in such works as Elephant and Paranoid Park, Bernadet and Verrault have given us a distinctly Canadian glimpse into the lives of our teenagers. If you’re a parent and you live in the ‘burbs, you should probably watch this just to understand what it is that drives your kids. If you’re an adolescent, you can take comfort that some filmmakers have actually got it right when it comes to representing your lives on screen.

À l’Ouest de Pluton, available now on DVD, in French with English subtitles.

One of the sturdy myths of Canadian television holds that only the CBC can produce quality drama that sells internationally. Commercial broadcasters, despite their regulatory obligations, are painted as stingy with originality and quality, producing instead lowest common denominator content that rarely garners Gemini or Emmy awards. CTV’s Flashpoint proves otherwise. The January debut of this edgy series about elite police officers in Toronto drew 1.27 million viewers here and 10.6 million in the United States on CBS, making it the most watched program in that time slot in North America.

Centred around the Strategic Response Unit (modeled after Toronto’s Emergency Task Force), Flashpoint is an action series that makes an honest attempt to go beyond the bread-and-butter drama of a police show and delve more into the human element of the men and women who make up the SRU. Members of the team are highly trained. They know tactics and weapons beyond the ordinary foot patrol officer. But they also are trained in negotiation, crowd control, and are picked for their intuition and ability to read emotion, sense the direction of a stressful event, back it up with hard intelligence and take the necessary action to bring it all to a close.

Ed Lane (Hugh Dillon) is the team leader, a tactical wizard, and the group’s lead sniper. He is assisted by Sergeant Gregory Parker (Enrico Colantoni), the team’s head negotiator, who possesses the requisite emotional intelligence to compliment Lane’s brute force. Rounding out the team is Julianna ‘Jules’ Callaghan (Amy Jo Johnson), the sole female member of the team who backs up Lane as second sniper, and team newcomer (fresh from a stint in Afghanistan) Sam Braddock (David Paetkau). Call it Brawn, Brain, Heart and Soul.

The story lines are your standard fodder for shows of this type – an unstable man is holding a woman hostage and cannot speak English; a girl is beat up in a shopping mall washroom and accidentally shoots one of her female attackers, leading to a mall lockdown and a coolly executed process to find both the victim and attackers. But the show thankfully strays off the well-beaten path of its predecessors by focusing on the emotional and psychological impact on the SRU team members themselves in defusing such highly stressed situations.

Lane is haunted – stunned mentally really – by his successful takedown of the aforementioned hostage-taker. He repeats to all who will listen that he is ‘alright’ in his typical alpha-male way, but his eyes – his whole body – reveal that he is clearly not. Each successive kill strips him a little rawer each time. Similarly, Jules successfully talks down the girl off a ledge by digging into her own past of being raised the only girl in a tough prairie family of boys. By focusing on the emotional, the characters become more like your neighbours than stock killing machines in flak vests.

From the start, Executive Producers Anne Marie La Traverse and Bill Mustos wanted to sell the program into the US television market. They’ve succeeded brilliantly. Flashpoint is the first primetime Canadian TV series to air simultaneously on both sides of the border since Due South in 1994. Not only is it successful TV, it happens to be good.

Flashpoint, Friday nights at 9 p.m. on CTV and streamed online at CTV.ca

Five years ago, Tout le monde en parle debuted as the darling in an already crowded field of Quebec talk shows, most of them aimed at promoting showbiz personalities. TLMP’s concept, modeled closely on a popular French show of the same name, promised controversy. Personalities would face probing questions from the tough-minded host, Guy A. Lepage, humorous barbs from the Fou du Roi, Dany Turcotte, and direct comments from other invitees. Judging by Sunday night’s show, the formula appears to have lost much of its freshness and vigour as it dips into a shrinking pool of invitees in an effort to remain relevant.

Jean-Francois Mercier, one of the brains behind the widely panned Bye Bye 2008, was invited on to defend himself. He came up with little new, except to point out that, because 4.5 million Quebeckers watched the program, it was popular and therefore, good. Tell that to the black community in Montreal, which is suing the producers.

Richard Martineau, a columnist writing for Le Journal de Montréal, and union president Raynald Leblanc, were invited to discuss the lockout of 250 Journal employees by Quebecor. A quiet spoken man, Leblanc, confidently and knowledgably argued his case but was drowned out by hyperbolic inanities shouted by Martineau, who repeated the same phrase three times in a row, as if his audience was deaf. He only demonstrated that his ego was considerably larger than his hosts’ – a pyrrhic victory in the battle for camera time.

The appearance of Denis Villeneuve and Karine Vanasse, speaking about Polytechnique, their film based on the shooting at L’école Polytechnique 20 years ago, would have been an interesting exchange, but Martineau’s ego shoved aside anything intelligent they could have said, making it an embarrassing moment for Villeneuve, who looked like he wanted to crawl under the table and hide.

The hosts, Lepage and Turcotte, have come under fire in the past as they shredded guests with questions that were too personal or jokes that made the guest look foolish or downright silly. Author Nelly Arcand was demolished early on in the show’s life and no one thought she would return, but there she was again last year, promoting her new book. Like recalcitrant schoolboys, Lepage and Turcotte went after her again and succeeded in creating more news about their antics than about what Arcand had to say. Since then, they’ve backed off a bit. As a result, the show has become more blasé than controversial, more tedium than tenacity.

In its prime, ratings were high and TLMP had people lining up to appear. But even with Mercier on last week’s program, it drew fewer viewers than Le Banquier and Dieu Merci!, two programs on rival TVA.

After years of being verbally trashed, some guests are now refusing the honour, forcing Lepage to make more of an effort to find guests, or invite back people who have appeared often. Case in point – Sunday’s episode will have Bernard Landry who has been on at least twice. And although three black actors will discuss the upcoming SOBA gala and black culture in general, their message may well be drowned out by the appearance of Anne-Krystal Goyer, a Playboy cover model.

Watch for a surge of adolescent hormones from Lepage and Turcotte.

Tout le monde en parle, Sundays at 8 p.m., on Radio Canada.

TIME MAGAZINE called it one of the best dramas on television today. Newsday went one further, declaring it the best show on TV. Mad Men? Six Feet Under? Dexter? None of the above. They were talking about the Sci-Fi Channel’s first bona fide original series Battlestar Galactica. Like no other television show, BSG captures the essence of a particular brand of fear stirred up during the G. W. Bush & Co era. Terrorists. Sleeper agents. The destruction of due process. Water boarding. Human rights thrown into a dustbin.

Head writer Ronald Moore and Executive Producer David Eicke are unabashed political junkies. They successfully took a campy, badly acted 1970s series by the same name and turned it into something darker, gloomier and relevant for contemporary audiences. The series revolves around a population of humans inhabiting 12 worlds who, forty years after fighting one war with the robot workers they created – called Cylons – are attacked again by their creation and very nearly wiped out. Billions of humans nuked to barely fifty thousand on sixty space ships fleeing for their lives. And all protected by a super warship called a Battlestar, bristling with guns and capable of launching smaller ships to fight one-on-one with the enemy. Think of a space-based aircraft carrier only more heavily armed, and you have the picture.

Moore and Eicke got rid of the actors clad in shiny robot suits, the laser guns and the clunky dialogue. They were replaced with top-notch special effects, (such as Cylon robots that actually looked like robots), space-based camera shots that looked as if filmed by a person floating out in space with a hand-held camera, a cast that could carry the complete range of emotional intent and guns that fired bullets, even the ones on the space-based fighter planes.

But where Moore and Eicke really made a difference was in the story lines. Cylons could be engineered to look like humans and that opened up the possibility of sleeper agents and suicide bombers in the midst of the small, human population. The Battlestar was run by the military, but what about the rest of the human population? Would they have a civilian government, and if yes, would it be elected? Would constitutional protections prevail or would they be suspended to better fight the enemy? If the human race is close to extinction, would abortion continue to be permitted? Should it?

All of these questions, and more, are explored in an intelligent way reflecting the complexity of human and political relations. BSG is a show about the human species pushed to near-extinction, asking fundamental questions about how it would conduct its affairs. And that’s where the show really connects with audiences. Yes, it takes place ‘out there’ in a fantasy world of space ships and artificial life. But it hits home at a subconscious level, pricking at the issues that are defining our own time. The result is quality television. So much so that at least one law professor (my wife) has used BSG in the classroom to demonstrate how a military tribunal can run off the rails and become a witch hunt.

If you watch one sci-fi series, watch this one. You won’t be disappointed.

Battlestar Galactica, Seasons 1-4 available on DVD. The final ten episodes started January 16th. Episode 2 is tonight at 10 p.m. on Space.

THERE’S A BUG GOING AROUND the US television industry. Reality shows are still popular and cheap to produce, since any half-asleep writer can pen the two-page outline behind each episode. But the quality bug started by HBO has spread to a raft of other independent networks, notably Showtime and Bravo.

AMC (formerly American Movie Classics), an under the radar channel has come up with Mad Men, a lavishly produced, well-written, period piece about Madison Avenue advertising executives, set in the 1960s. Created by Sopranos’ writer Matthew Weiner, the first season received a slew of awards and is now available on DVD. From the opening frames, you know you’re in for a treat.

The camera pans a trendy, downtown bar, where every patron is smoking a cigarette, smoke billowing up and around their heads in such copious quantity that it feels like a walk in the London fog. Authenticity is everywhere, décor, clothing, cars and dialogue. Women wear hip-hugging pencil skirts; men, single-breasted suits with narrow lapels and narrower ties, their hair packed with Brylcreem. It’s a man’s world; women serve either as secretaries or wives or mistresses. As Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks), the head secretary says to a new hire, Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), “The executives here want something between a mother and a waitress.”

While the visuals are rich and engaging on their own, it’s the writing and the characters that make this series hum. Within the first ten minutes of the opening scene, we know that racism is still prevalent in the United States, most execs drink hard liquor at their desks, women are second-class citizens and the principal character, Don Draper (Jon Hamm) has a mistress, all of it communicated through graceful camera shots and the minimalist, but smooth, conversation of the everyday.

Draper’s wife Betty (January Jones) suspects. At home with two kids, her life is a monotonous routine, broken by meeting local wives for lunch or tea to chat about their men. They slag a divorced woman who has moved in down the street, mooning convincingly about how difficult her life must be without a man.

But while some women remain trapped in the ‘traditional family’ bubble, others are spreading their wings for the first time. Draper is entranced with the owner of a large, Fifth Avenue department store, a woman of elegance, sophistication and style, who oozes power and self-reliance. Characters grow, change and run off in odd, unexpected directions.

Draper questions his wayward ways and wonders at the mental capabilities of the trophy-wife he married. Betty seeks extra-familiar activities, constantly brushing up against men who want to bed her. Peggy takes a risk and moves from a secretary to copywriter, much to the chagrin of her office colleagues. Set in an era when the hawking of product was equated with the making of capitalist empires, when men felt on top of an (artificial) world and women struggled to make their voices heard, it makes for compelling television.

Season one of Mad Men is now available on DVD. Season two is available for streaming online at www.ctv.ca and on DVD in July, 2009. Season three will be broadcast in 2009.

What if you could go back in time and relive events in your past? Would you do things differently? And if you did, would it change the present? A new CBC series, Being Erica, taps into these universal questions, offering us all the chance to reflect on what we’ve done in our pasts and if we could have done things differently.

Erica Strange (Erin Karpluk) is living a sorry life, selling insurance to pay the bills despite having a Master’s degree in literature. She found her latest boyfriend on Lavalife and gets dumped on the third date – on her cell phone. Rain begins to fall, forcing her to escape into a coffee shop where she absent-mindedly samples a new coffee, only to discover that it had nuts in it, and ends up in the hospital, barely surviving an allergic reaction. There she meets Dr. Tom (Michael Riley), a mysterious man who claims to be a therapist and seems to know an awful lot about her life. His therapeutic method is unorthodox – he offers to send her back in time, an opportunity to correct what she perceives as the errors of her past.

Her first journey is to her high school prom, where the show’s writers make an effort to challenge stereotypes. She vows to have sex with her boyfriend (an activity she missed out on the first time because of a drunken binge) but when she pushes the issue with him, he pushes back, citing bad timing and the inappropriate location – not behaviour normally attributed to men. When she returns from her journey into the past, her problems have not disappeared in the fog of a fable’s happy ending. Rather, Erica realizes she has the chance to look at her life from the perspective of what she thinks, rather than living life through the optics of others.

Being Erica straddles the line between kitsch and serious television. It has its funny moments (like Erica using an electric leg-hair shaver) but it does not rely on them. Nor does it stoop to neatly wrapped-up endings. It lets just enough of the complexity of human relations seep in to spark a reasonable after-show conversation.

Karpluk’s performance is up to the task, although it is a bit disconcerting to see her 32-year-old self shunted to the 80’s with no change in her physical appearance. Mind you, the audience gets it. Dr. Tom, on the other hand, is a little too glib and not nearly nuanced enough. He goes from mysterious to forceful in a heartbeat, but hopefully, as the show develops, his character will have more screen time and, subsequently, more meat. In the meantime, this one definitely deserves a look.

Starting tonight at 9pm on CBC, continues for the next nine weeks on Monday nights.

IF SOMEONE WERE TO WALK UP TO ME RIGHT NOW and say there are no barriers at all, what do you want for Christmas? I’d ask for a flight to New Mexico and a lift to the Santa Fe Institute, to an adobe-coloured building perched on a tree-shrouded hill where the elusive novelist Cormac McCarthy is an unofficial writer-in-residence. I’d like an hour with the author of No Country for Old Men and The Road. I can imagine the conversation, it would be simple and to the point.

McCarthy has not taken the easy road to greatness. He’s lived in poverty for much of his adult life. He doesn’t have a teaching gig. He doesn’t write for national magazines. He is what I would call a classic writer – working on nothing but his writing, honing his craft, refusing to commercialize his talent and shunning publicity to provide the ideal environment for writing. In the hardscrabble of his life, it is not too much to imagine that violence may have played a role.

More than any other writer, McCarthy speaks to my soul. His words hit my senses like a tsunami, showing the brutality of men, and fray my nerve endings to such an extent it can become painful to read for long periods. But this is success, not suffering. As a reader, I am sucked in. Reading as a writer, I am agog and want to know just how he does it.

“Everybody wants to know about that these days,” he’d say. “I’ve been writing the same way for forty years and only now they pay attention? It’s a funny business, this.”

“Why do you write about violence? What is it that attracts you?”

“All men are violent. Our history is full of it. It’s only very recently we’ve made a conscious decision to condemn it as a means to solve problems. But it’s still there, just under the skin and just under the veneer that we call civilization.”

I ask if he has experienced that first hand. “Not really,” he says. Not a definitive no.

Soon enough, the conversation is over. I’m standing outside the white-paneled doors of the Institute and looking at the setting sun that bathes Santa Fe in gold. I’d like more time with this man. What writer wouldn’t?

In today’s culture where words are looked at with suspicion, the drive to get the right words, set out the right way, to be successful at showing what you really want to say, is yet something worth striving for. An hour with Cormac McCarthy probably wouldn’t make writing easier, but it might provide the motivation to continue on in what Winston Churchill called the horrible, exhaustive struggle. It might give me the tenacity to keep trying.

ON A RECENT TRIP TO BC, I was surprised to learn that my brother – an otherwise honest guy – and his son routinely rip content off the Internet and pipe it directly into their television. They’ve been doing it for two years, storing up programs to watch at a convenient time. The household still pays for cable connection, but much of what they watch is … well, I’m tempted to say, pirated.

So prevalent is this trend that the TV giants themselves are increasingly putting content on the web for free. Just what is the future of a mega-buck industry bent on embracing the Robin Hood ways of the web? Viewers want to know. Shareholders too, you can bet.

On-line, on-demand TV is the way of the future as the recent US Presidential election brought to light. According to Integrated Media Measurement, twice as many people saw the three Tina Fey Saturday Night Live sketches of Governor Sarah Palin online than watched it broadcast live by NBC. Forrester Research reported that 90% of prime-time network and 20% of cable television shows in the United States are now available online.

Content producers are leaping on the bandwagon. The producers of 30 Rock offered the first episode of their current season as a free iTunes download a week before it was broadcast. All four major US broadcast networks are now making available full-length episodes of their content in High Definition on iTunes. If its older content you want, Yahoo, YouTube and Hulu (a joint venture between NBC Universal and NewsCorp) are all streaming older television episodes direct to computers, although content from Hulu is restricted to US residents.

Canadian content producers are also getting into the act. Canada’s venerable National Film Board has created a separate web site – www.nfb.tv – to allow patrons to view the Board’s extensive library of content online. CTV and CBC are also allowing their viewers to download selected full-length episodes of prime-time content. Art TV in Quebec put all 15 episodes of Mange ta Ville online before the season started.

While the total number of viewers watching their favourite programs exclusively online is quite small – 1% of all viewers by some estimates – the ease at which such content is available has suddenly expanded the number of screens per household from one to three or more: streaming content direct onto a PC, downloading and then ‘re-broadcasting’ it within the home to the television – in addition to watching regular content direct on the TV. And then there’s the mobile. 

The introduction of the iPhone, coupled with the 3^rd Generation mobile network deployed by Rogers – where the Internet download speeds in major urban centres are as fast as a WiFi hotspot – are creating ideal conditions for consumers to watch video content on their cellular device, or on a laptop with an embedded SIM card (such as is the case in Europe and Asia), wherever, whatever time of day.

With such a confluence of mobile devices and affordable laptops, increased Internet speeds both at home and on the go, we may be heading for what Kevin Kelly in the New York Times calls ‘screen ubiquity’ – and it is shaking the very foundations of the traditional television network. 

Putting massive amounts of video content online and increasing its mobility is causing a profound rethink of the current business models for delivering content, whether advertising supported as with commercial broadcasters, subscription as with specialty channels or state-supported as with the CBC. While erosion of viewers to the Internet is limited, traditional television networks are not waiting to re-value their assets. 

Canadian media conglomerate Canwest Global Communications Corp. recently wrote down over $1 billion from its television asset base, reflecting what they say is a diminishment in the value of its television network licenses. CBS did the same thing two weeks previously, writing down over $14 billion in value. While traditional television networks are de-investing in the old, they are re-investing heavily in the new. 

Canwest is beefing up their video streaming capabilities and online content licensing deals, increasing the amount of video-on-demand content available and investing in additional content production through the creation of additional specialty cable channels. CBS has purchased CNET (a consumer technology website) and are now poised to be a top ten Internet content company as well as continuing to be a leading producer of broadcast content in the United States. 

In addition, content distributors and producers are rushing to adapt to the new reality by expanding video on demand content, offering more high definition channels, funding and producing content for online viewing only and offering more interactivity for their audience. Radio-Canada launched a web-only series on TPTC.tv, while Montreal’s  Just For Laughs comedy festival produced two online series – Wake Up and Les Bulles de Cyr. 

CBS has launched the Social Viewing Room where Internet users can simultaneously listen to their program and be in contact with the other people. Users can see each other on-line, chat, answer questionnaires, interact virtually with the program and send ‘tomatoes’ or kisses on the screen. ABC, in partnership with Lycos, has also recently offered collective viewing for some episodes of Wildfire and The Secret Life of the American Teenager. 

Beyond entertainment, Sportsnet is offering ‘NanoGaming’ to NHL Canadian hockey fans. This service offers viewers the ability to play while watching the game live and offering a forum for viewers to interact with each other, generating a community environment on Sportsnet.ca. Viewers can make their predictions, answer trivia questions and take part in polls. In addition, fans are able to chat with other hockey fans, and create groups with their friends in order to establish mini-competitions amongst themselves for points, prizes (including HDTV’s and prize packs), and a position on the leaderboard.

Where television as a production vehicle – and cable and satellite as delivery vehicles for that content – are going is uncertain. Where content is going, however, is pretty clear – to whatever screen will take it. The big challenge is how to monetize the screen ubiquity that is rapidly eroding traditional business models, so that content producers can make the Mad Men and Wired and Little Mosque on the Prairie of the future. 

Len Eichel is Rover’s television critic. Please send us your experiences, tips and thoughts on internet TV viewing by leaving a comment.

SINCE THE LITTLE pay television network Home Box Office started up in the mid-1970’s, Canadian viewers have been envious. Showing exclusively dramatic and sports content, HBO pioneered the subscription-based television service, allowing it to eschew the commercial broadcast model replete with advertising on the quarter hour. Original programming was commercial free, giving writers extra airtime to create characters with much more rounded personalities and stories with more complex themes. The gamble has paid off with untold awards and a library of content that is held up as the one to beat. Finally, HBO is available to Canadians. 

Since the end of October, HBO Canada has been included as part of the The Movie Network channel line-up (Videotron dumped the channel Movie More to make room for it). Viewers across the country can now access a plethora of HBO content. New series, True Blood, (Rover 11.10.08) and OZ (about life in a maximum security prison), documentaries and movies such as Recount, the story behind the 2000 US Presidential election starring Kevin Spacey, and mini-series, such as John Adams, winner of 26 Emmy awards, are all now available, commercial free.

A limited amount of this content was available to Canadian television viewers with the birth of The Movie Network. The channel would purchase the content from HBO and re-broadcast it around the same time as the source did in the United States. But not all the content was there. Choices were made based on the network’s opinion of quality, and some series just never made the cut, such as the afore-mentioned OZ. The only other option for Canadians was to purchase the content when it arrived on DVD. 

The lack of HBO was frequently criticized as evidence of our highly controlled, inflexible broadcast system, one that coddled Canadian channels and networks, or even forced such content down our throats when all we really wanted was HBO, and A&E, and Showtime, and the list went on. At the public hearing in April this year in front of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), the three letters HBO were bandied about with great regularity by major content distributors Telus and Rogers. Our viewers tell us they want HBO and we can’t give it to them, they said. Canadians want and deserve more choice. 

The CRTC listened. Starting in 2011 (when analog signals get phased out in favour of digital), viewers will have even more flexibility to choose individual channels,  provided individually they have a 50% plus one Canadian channel line up. You want HBO? Fine, just make sure you have a Canadian specialty channel beside it. 

In the meantime, HBO Canada is here and it’s better than what we’ve had till now. It’s not the full HBO channel line-up (there are six other channels, some themed, some not, plus a mobile version and international channels that span the globe) but finally Canadians can see what everybody’s been talking about for years – cutting edge dramas, edgy films, no commercials. 

In a time of a looming economic downturn, could we ask for more?

HBO Canada is available from your local cable or satellite television provider as part of The Movie Network subscription. In Montreal, that’s Bell and Videotron.

PHOTO: Ricky Gervais: Out of England – The Stand-Up Special Taped live before a sold-out Madison Square Garden audience, two-time Emmy Award winner Ricky Gervais stars in his first HBO stand-up special, a high-spirited hour of offbeat and unique observations from the master of squirm. HBO Canada: Dec. 6,10,11,22,23. 

TELEVISION AND POLITICS are uneasy bedfellows. Politicians need television to spread their message to a wide public. Television relies on politicians and political issues to attract viewers and advertising dollars. This symbiotic relationship has been the standard since the 1960’s by which politicians raise awareness and money, and attack their opponents. But if the evidence from the Canadian Federal election and the US Presidential election are any barometer, the end of television’s prominence as the fundamental bridge between elector and politician may be just around the corner.

There is no doubt that over the past few months, television has enjoyed a resurgence in the political process on both sides of the border. The Conservative ‘Pooping Puffin’ attack on Stéphane Dion started on the Internet and became headline news on multiple prime time news programs. Tina Fey’s dead-ringer caricatures of Sarah Palin pushed her into the celebrity stratosphere. Barack Obama purchased 30 minutes of prime time television on seven networks in the United States and over 30 million people tuned in.

Elections act as catalysts for original programming designed to galvanize opinion and provide vital information. The Color of Money, a documentary investigating the financial backers, organizers and the amount of money deployed in the US Presidential race appeared on CBC on the 27^th of October. The Presidential race cost US citizens and taxpayers at least $1.5 billion over the almost two years of the race – over $400 million to purchase television advertising between April, 2008 and the end of October, 2008, raising legitimate questions about the price of democracy. In Canada, political parties spent $300 million to generate the lowest voter turnout on record and a Parliament that looked more or less the same. Television may be perceived as a powerful medium, but it appeared to come up short, in this country at least.

In the United States, voters are haunted still by the disaster that was the Florida recount in 2000. The HBO film Recount, starring Kevin Spacey, ran in saturation rotation on all of HBO’s networks, East and West, English and Latino, just prior to the election. The gory details of hanging chads, dimpled chads, machines that miscounted the ballots, legal actions, manual recounts, time limits and the Supreme Court decision are all revisited in a tight, two hour film that makes the United States look a little backwards when it comes to running a federal election. The obvious questions: will it happen again? Can it happen again? Early voting turnout problems in the United States – long line-ups, voting machine malfunctions, under-trained personnel – are nightmare echoes of that time, raising the specter of a repeat of 2000.

Despite these clear examples of television’s power and reach, the Internet may turn out to be the big star this time around. Back to Tina Fey. Her sketches of Palin have been seen online more than 40 million times – a higher audience number than watched the actual sketch live on television – a viral marketing dream for the execs at NBC, who are using the boost in status to swing viewers to Fey’s sitcom, 30 Rock. Obama has re-written electoral campaigns by harnessing the power of social networking and online donations. He has raised more than $250 million in single online donations of $200 or less. His supporters have used the Internet to schedule over 30,000 events across the country to raise awareness and money. He has used viral email campaigns to counter rumors spread by the Republicans, updated YouTube regularly with fresh video content, solicited ideas from individuals for his policy platform and has used cell phone texting to get out the vote.

Television is not giving up. All the major networks in the US are investing heavily into their election night coverage. NBC, ABC and Fox will have their content available on jumbo screens in New York City and will have journalists stationed around the world for reaction. But they also recognize shifting viewing preferences as they will also beef up their Internet presence, streaming content live and, in the case of CBS, once off air at 2 am, shifting the whole news program to the Internet to continue the coverage.

As a recent Harris/Decima survey revealed, 16% of Canadians are actively contemplating replacing their cable or satellite service for viewing television programs with the Internet. There is some clear evidence that this is already happening and, further, that the Internet has far greater influence than television regards political matters because of its interactivity and capacity to rally large numbers of individuals.

Television’s dominance as the keeper of the relationship between the citizen and the politician is coming to an end, and as such, it will need to re-define just what its role will be in the civic lives of individuals.

ACTION SERIES AND CANADIAN TELEVISION have not generally been phrases associated with each other. Kudos then to the CBC and creators of The Border for tackling real-life security issues facing this country. Episode one was sparse and the action scenes too strident to be taken seriously. A series of tense, short takes of two-dimensional characters left one a little breathless trying to keep up. However, by episode three the writing was smoother, the music toned down, leaving room for the principal characters to say more, making the drama real.

The Border taps into global terrorism networks, illegal immigrants, sleeper cells, international drug and people trafficking – the modern threats to national security. The first season survived last year, garnering ten Gemini nominations and three nominations at the international Monte Carlo Television festival, including best television dramatic series. Despite competition from CTV’s Dancing with the Stars (1.7 million viewers), The Border’s ratings have jumped to an impressive 704,000 since the season began.

The plot so far: three members of the US Army swam across the Niagara River, got picked up by the Immigration and Customs Security (ICS) squad, a fictional unit (the tip of the sword in dealing with security threats in Canada) and claimed refugee status. Major Mike Kessler (James McGowan) leads ICS. In addition to dealing with the repercussions of US-Canada relations from the desertions, he has an adult daughter protesting in front of his office in support of the Army boys. Throw in a psychotic US army Sergeant who is using ‘off-label’ drugs, pressure from the Minister of Immigration and US Army and a sneaky investigation by CSIS – the dreaded rival agency that gets in the way – and you had a crowded, intense first episode.

The Border has great characters. Major Kessler is equally adept at coordinating a take-down of a US army deserter holding prisoners, stimulating loyalty and camaraderie amongst his team and dealing with the Minister of Immigration, Suzanne Fleischer (Alberta Watson). He’s backed up by Detective Sergeant Gray Jackson (Graham Abbey) – the Gen Y alpha male who is always present in this type of show – and Sergeant Layla Hourani (Nazneen Contractor), a straight-laced, but modern, Muslim woman, a refreshing Canadian touch.

And of course, there is a computer geek, Agent Heironymous Slade (Jonas Chernick), who can read the license plates of cars from geosynchronous orbit. Add in a US Homeland Security agent (to be played by Grace Park, of Battlestar Galactica fame) and one from MI-6 (Daisy Beaumont) and there’s plenty to keep everyone on their toes.

By episode three, when viewers learned of the threat of poisoned heroin smuggled in from Africa, the effort of following The Border’s breathless start began to pay off. This series is becoming interesting television. Continues tonight.

CBC, Mondays at 9 pm.