CBC Pays the "...Rent."

Today's Globe & Mail has a story by Henrietta Walmark chronicling CBC's latest programming move. This is hard on the heels of a hoity-toity speech by CBC Prez Robert Rabinovich at the Empire Club.

When last we checked in with the CBC, chickens, The Prez chose to outline a major address about how they're going to reach out to the people by speaking to a crowd of the most priveleged insiders in the country. Sigh. When the CBC doesn't get it, you have to admit, they don't get it hard.

I'm reminded of Louis Armstrong's response when someone asked him to define Jazz:

"Man, if you gotta ask, you'll never know."

Apparently, they've ordered two new half-hour pilots of one of the new comedy pilots CBC showed this past January. The lucky (very) show is called This Space For Rent.

Excerpted from the article:

It didn't achieve the highest ratings of the three pilots that aired that week (only 188,000 viewers, compared to Rabbittown's 251,000). And the new episodes won't go directly to air -- they'll be tested with focus groups before any decision is made about turning the show into a permanent series.

But according to Anton Leo, CBC Television's head of comedy, This Space for Rent is an example of the kind of show the network is looking for. Last month in Ottawa, Richard Stursberg, CBC's vice-president of English-language television, told a conference of independent film producers that CBC's mix of genres will henceforth be driven by a new "audience-first" development strategy, with shows that aim to attract a minimum of one million viewers and are "fast-paced, accessible and escapist."

This Space for Rent, says Leo, "possesses a number of characteristics that are in line with what Richard was talking about. It has some lovely comedic situations, strong character and some outright funny lines. So much comedy now comes from either extreme discomfort or tremendous darkness. That's not what this is and not where we want to go."

Television critics were deeply divided about the pilot episode, even here at The Globe and Mail. Henrietta Walmark called it a "knockout comedy" in Globe Television, the paper's Toronto-area TV magazine. Critic John Doyle, on the other hand, found the show's "stoned-slacker" attitude "deeply irritating."

Full Globe article available here... For Americans or others struggling to parse that one million figure -- Canada's population hovers around 30 million right now. Subtract roughly 7 million francophones (mostly in Quebec, who watch Radio Canada, CBC's French service) and you're talking a pool of roughly 23 million potential viewers. Roughing it, that means CBC says it expects to pull audiences that would be, if we were expressing this in American market terms, about 10 million viewers.

That's ambitious, certainly. But it's not impossible. Corner Gas on private network CTV draws 1.5 million viewers a week. (Coincidentally or no, that show is escapist, and certainly anything but dark -- but not particularly fast-paced.) CBC has, in the past, achieved those kinds of numbers for their comedy shows, newscasts, and (it's Canada) Hockey.

The question is, is This Space for Rent the right horse to back, right now?

Here's what I had to say about it when it aired back in January:

I wanted to like the third show, This Space for Rent. (Wed, Jan 4, 9pm) A comedy based in Vancouver could work. There's one great scene with actor Jason Bryden, where he haggles with a Chinese street vendor in perfect Cantonese over the price of fish. At least I think it was Cantonese. Might have been Mandarin. Anyway, that was a funny scene. It's an incidental scene going on while two of the female characters lay pipe for the main plot. As he drives away on his Vespa, Bryden says, "Your life makes me sad." Funny line. Good scene. Is he the main character? Er...no.

There's also some good business with actress Emily Hampshire, playing a junior lawyer forced to be one of the boys in her new firm. There's some funny slapstick to be had there as she struggles to "act like she's got a pair." Is she the main character? Er...no again.

Ulitmately, This Space For Rent is pretty impossible to love. First of all, it's an hour long. And you feel every second of that hour. Jerry Seinfeld once opined "I'm not sure comedy wants to be a movie." Well, the one thing I'm sure of is that unless you're prepared to go the comedy-drama route, comedy doesn't really want to be an hour. The hour long epsiodes of Frasier, Seinfeld, Cheers, and Friends were always deadly.

The second problem is the main character, Lucky. (Dov Tiefenbach) Tiefenbach's got a comedy face, that's for sure. He took a very small role in Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle and made it memorable. But, alas, his character here is a twentysomething writer trying to find himself. He gets depressed, whines, stays in his apartment for thirty days, gets static from his impossibly understanding doctor girlfriend, then writes a letter to the editor and gets a monthly column to bitch in Vancouver magazine. Yay, Lucky. Good for you! Now where's my glock? BLAM! I'm dead. Sorry, Lucky.

Twentysomething angst is something everyone goes through. It is not inherently interesting. When will writers and commissioning editors learn this? This can be your character's viewpoint, but it is not funny in and of itself. You need funny things to happen.

The kind of journey Lucky goes through in this pilot, might have been the plot of a middling Canadian film. But it does nothing to set up the central conflict or template for an ongoing series. And with an hour to establish character and tone (which is also all over the place -- from trendy film-effected montage and manipulation shots to slapstick to loopy drug humor; it's all in the pot: "let's cook it and see if anything sticks once we heat it and it explodes onto the wall,") the closest I can come to an idea of template is that from week to week we'd get to see Lucky write his column, Hate Male, (yup, I know) while his friends all try to find themselves. Which is pretty much a one-minute pitch. I would think that after 48 minutes of TV, I'd know more. I don't. If you can't make me fall in love with your characters and your world in 48 minutes, I don't think you should get to make a series.

The full post is here.

The problem here is that a lot of new things are being said, but in the end they add up to the same old same old. CBC has, forever, been obsessed with drawing younger viewers/listeners, yet they never really seem to come up with anything that sticks.

Rent condescends. Contrary to what Anton Leo thinks, the characters are all pretty whiny and mopey. This is not Friends in Vancouver. There’s no unified point of view.

Funny thing about Canada. We don’t really have that many series that are recognizably set in Toronto, even though it’s our largest city. Regional resentment runs that high. In fact, the ratio of Newfoundland-set series to Toronto set series on the CBC in the last few years probably hovers around 3:1.

Imagine not setting a series in New York, because people resent New York. Well, welcome to Canada.

Vancouverites are the worst for resenting Toronto. Seriously – the cliché that Vancouverites pull out is that in Toronto, someone will ask you what you do within five minutes of every conversation. (That’s true.) Vancouverites don’t see the flipside of that equation, though – every conversation with every person I’ve ever met from the West Coast turns within five minutes to some serious Toronto-hatin’. The funny thing is that, when you point out the former to a Torontonian, they’ll laugh and nod. Yup. That’s what we’re about.

Vancouverites? Can’t laugh about anything to do with themselves. Go on. Try it. Make a joke to a Vancouverite about their city. Then duck. Yup. Those are mountains. They’re beautiful. Can we just move on?

Vancouver, in other words, isn’t the most universal setting for a Canadian series. It’s a very strange place, and it doesn’t translate. I think Canadians, most of us, have a far easier time imagining Montreal or Newfoundland or hell, Calgary, than Vancouver. It’s a place unto itself. So making it the base for your big comedy splash? Iffy. Pitching your series to a demographic that’s used to Friends, and doesn’t watch CBC? Iffier. Giving TWO more pilots to a show that already had one-hour – well…that’s just…I don’t know. Words fail.

If there was really something so unbelievable, so original about the concept for This Space for Rent, then I could almost see going with TWO HOURS of test material to try and tinker and get it right. But there isn't.

However, now that they’ve gotten the call, I wish them nothing but massive karmic success. Seriously. Another failure for CBC does no one in the Canadian TV industry any good.

But I can’t help but feel, having read a couple of really funny, tightly constructed, unique and accessible half-hour scripts currently in development at other Canadian networks, the question that nags at me is this:

Is anyone good even going to approach CBC anymore? Or have we all given up?

They may have the space for rent, but is talent really buying anymore?