But once in a very long while, a Canadian series somehow makes its way across the border to be embraced by an American audience: SCTV. Red Green. Kids in the Hall. Due South ... Add to that list Slings & Arrows, the third – and for all intents and purposes, final – season of the smartly satirical Stratford spoof now set to air on, and partially financed by, the American Sundance Channel.
For which we can thank Canadian Laura Michalchyshyn, Sundance's executive vice- president and GM of programming and creative affairs, hired away in 2005 from a similar position at Alliance Atlantis.
"When Robert Redford and I hired Laura two years ago," recalls Sundance CEO Larry Aidem, "she had only one condition and it was that we permit her to buy as much Canadian programming as she wanted, with a floor of 50 per cent and a ceiling of 90 per cent.
"And we said very quickly, `Number one, what's the catch? And two, where is Canada?'
"But seriously ... our audience does not distinguish between the kinds of original programming that we make and the kinds of acquired programming that Laura and her team selects, often from around the world. At the end of the day, they're either good or not and they're exclusive to us, and in this case the audience just loves it."
As do the American critics, at least a half dozen of whom have come up to me this week to rave about the show (as if I had anything to with it, aside from being born in the same country)
(It will be interesting to see if they can resist the siren call to do a Season 4. Between that and the news that the LOST producers are trying to negotiate an end date with the network, somebody's gotta ask: Is U.S. tv finally ready to change a bit and embrace something other than the open-ended 22 episode season?)
Or are Canada's newspaper writers ready to be a little less provincial? Back to that Lost presser again: looks like, um...no.
19 comments:
I can't remember who it was who said that being Canadian is like living in a small town, but it’s true. It's like watching TV with friends and someone gets all excited and says, "Hey, I went to school with that guy!", or "Hey, my cousin used to live next door to her!" It happens all the time here because there just aren’t that many of us.
Nobody from the U.S. gets excited when the U.S. is mentioned in the news or when a celebrity is from New York because it happens all the time. But if you’re from some burg in Oklahoma and some guy from your high school shows up on TV, then of course it’s a big deal.
So I refuse to apologize for the giddy rush I get whenever Canada or Canadians gets some attention in the foreign press. It's part of what makes being Canadian fun!
I'm thrilled that the good people at Sundance like Slings & Arrows. But as I don't have cable, and if I did Comcast wouldn't give me Sundance Channel, I want to know when the Season 3 DVD is coming out. How long after 1 and 2 aired in Canada/US did those sets release?
And why the Hell did Rachel McAdams have to leave the show? She was really cute. And I liked that.
Hollywood Schmollywood.
Oh, a floor of 50 percent? Is there really that much Canadian programming to choose from?
Jennifer,
IN THIS CASE, the definition of "provincial" I'm looking to is "Limited in perspective; narrow and self-centered."
I don't think, particularly, that there is anything wrong with mentioning or feeling pride in recognizing that someone is from Canada when you watch a show.
The attitude I'm talking about is the propensity we have in this country for embracing talent only after it has been vetted elsewhere. When you don't know, or like, or follow an actor until he shows up on 24 -- that is provincial. When you subscribe to the idea that "Canadian TV sucks and that's why I don't watch it" -- as many Canadians do, and then you find yourself picking up the DVD set of Slings and Arrows because it got good reviews from U.S. critics -- that is narrow and limited in perspective. You've allowed your critical sense to be given over to another.
This example is at play at various levels in Canada when it comes to TV. IT's there when casting directors cast the same few people instead of finding new talent, forcing a lot of that new talent to take their wares to the U.S. You see it when now, years later, they want to claim people like Paul Haggis and David Shore -- even though those people were not encouraged while they were here.
Rachel McAdams, who Tom talks about, is a rare example -- and of course, it's Slings that did it - of somebody looking at a young actor and saying, "this ones' going somewhere, we should cast her." they cast her at exactly the right time -- just before she broke. Because Slings, on all levels, was not done "the same way" with that narrow, provincial attitude that only recoginzes success when others validate it first.
Canadians have learned to trust themselves when it comes to Music. Bands like The Hip and Blue Rodeo dont have to be U.S. successes to be beloved here. But sadly, when it comes to TV, the public, those who make it, and most of the people writing about it too need that outside attention before they'll get on board.
And that needs to change.
yep...
Good explanation. And without using the word "smug."
Just to be a contrarian here -- if I was as good at writing mainstream drama as haggis is i'd be down there in a heartbeat making my millions. the people, government or broadcasters here are not stopping me from doing that.
why I like working in Canada is purely out of self interest, I can put things into mainstream scripts here that would never pass in mainstream US TV.
i also don't think haggis or shore got kicked out of Canada, they wanted to play on the big pond and make the big bucks. Good for them.
As for people getting excited when the bigger market notices one of our own, I think that is only natural, no matter what field one is working in.
why I like working in Canada is purely out of self interest, I can put things into mainstream scripts here that would never pass in mainstream US TV.
Fer instance?
In response to dmc "Canadians have learned to trust themselves when it comes to The Hip and Blue Rodeo..."
I take your point but you know what? Canadians learned to trust Canadian musicians because a few decades ago, the CRTC ruled that radio broadcasters HAD to play Canadian performers.
The short term result was that AM radio played Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald" so many times it can induce psychosis in anyone between 40 and 50.
But the long term effect was that the regulations created a market which created and industry that nutured talent which now RULES THE WORLD.
As for tv? Well, we all know how that story turned out...
Which also brings me to my second point: if Sundance is purchasing 50% Canadian content when they buy, does that mean they actually broadcast more Canadian shows that Canadian broadcasters?
Oh, and since I'm already ranting, dmc, although I agree with about a million things you write and I think you are awewsome for creating this blog -- it hasn't been my experience that Canadian shows don't necessarily take the risk of "breaking" new talent.
I've worked on a number of different series and I can probably count a dozen really Canadian actors who got cast as unknowns in Canada, long before anyone in the U.S. picked them up.
There are lazy casting directors who don't look any further than their noses, and there are lazy or inexperienced producers who just don't have the chops to find talent or push the casting directors... but I really think we all have to stop these broad generalizations about what "Canadian" shows are like. Because for every generalization I've read on this blog, I can almost always think of exceptions on the spot.
or maybe I'm just another contrarian, like blueglow...
The 50% floor comment was a joke. Obviously not a funny one ...
Synge, The point you've made about Cancon in music is precisely the point that I've made several times before on this blog.
As for the generalizations on this blog, they are indeed that. And like all generalizations, one can come up with exceptions if one thinks about it. I can do the same thing. That's generally what "the exception that proves the rule" means.
Yet it's hard to deny that every fall, the Canadian papers run wire service stories about new faces to watch on shows premiering on US tv. They run those articles, and they focus on the Canadians in the group because there's always two or three. And that's more than they do to promote Canadian talent the rest of the year.
You want to apologize for lazy casting directors, fine. But I"m not going to stop the broad generalizaitons because any broad generalizations I make here are a pittance compared to the mountain of bullshit, the veritable fount -- the geyser of mediocrity and self-delusion that has been practiced by the gatekeepers of this business for the last twenty years or more.
If you want to defend the mediocracy, then go ahead. I can't do it anymore. The bile's got caught in my throat one too many times.
Diane, the 50% floor joke may have been funny, but I usually can't detect sarcasm in text.
Plus, how many hours of programming would this be referring to? How much does Sundance show? 50% of 2 hours wouldn't necessarily be a joke.
Hi Bill:
It's kind of a tough question to answer and maybe it all boils down to perception but I feel that in Canada I've been able to "get away with things" on mainstream TV that would be non-starters on American network fare (not so much now as the success of american cable shows like sopranos, the shield, et al have loosened some of the rules on network TV).
Of course US TV has more than its fair share of deviance (in fact the graphicness of crime, murder and evil on US TV outstrips what we show) but its presentation is usually for titilation. Bad things on US TV are largely done by bad people -- not by the heros of the show -- unless they are combatting some real bad dudes (usually Arabs) and then the gloves are off becuase they are defending a "way of life" not simply breaking laws (which is actually the foundation of a way of life, but that's a discussion for another day).
In a way I find the morality of American TV like those old movies of the forties and fifties (reefer madness etc) where all manner of behaviour outside the norm could be shown (heck even celebrated ala the death/corpse porn of CSI) as long as a cop or psychiatrist was tagged onto the end of the movie explaining that what we saw was evil and should not be practiced by right thinking people and if fact, those who practiced these wrongs things would be punished by disease, madness or incarceration.
Most NA TV does not challenge the idea that the worship of God and Family is the best way to live ones life.
While this is largely true in Canada as well as the US, I find that there have been plenty of opportunites where I have been able to bend the rules and have a little fun.
A lot of these things are minor but they matter to me. The depiction of teenagers smoking pot as a normal part of their lives and being able to engage in this activity without falling into a pit of moral depravity. The depiction of teenagers having sex without immediately falling prey to disease and pregnancy.
While these things may not be big deals they did preclude a show I was working on from ever selling into the US (that and the "gentle" insistence that our female characters may need some artificial enhancements) and the simple depiction of a mixed race couple censured those episodes from being shown in Australia. Another show I worked on with similar themes did sell into the US but all episodes with masturbation, menstration (sp) were excised.
somewhat more recently I was able to do shows where one of our heros whored himself to make a deal (literally he allowed another guy to fuck him) so that he could keep his job. He was a title card lead character.
and many of my lead characters have committed acts of adultry without ever admitting it to their spouses or being caught out -- it has been a secret between them and the audience which I think is a honest depiction of real live rarely shown on TV.
One of the things that I think may differ still -- if you're willing to go there -- is that I can write about characters who do "bad" things without consequence and still be characters you like and respect on some level.
I think that is still rare on US TV.
A very very long time ago I was working with a European woman on a TV show. We were watching the first George Bush do some kind of press conference where a Secret Service agent had bought crack just outside the white house and how it was his intention to rid the nation of this scourge either through education or incarceration.
She started to laugh. I asked her why --
"you Americans, you just don't understand, people know this is bad, they don't have to be told -- but sometimes people just want to be bad"
I think that is a part of our character that is rarely shown on network TV -- our desire to do the wrong thing.
sometimes up here I get to explore that. maybe now in the US I could but it sure wouldn't be on "Medium"
(plus we get to swear a lot more. and take the lord's name in vain)
Goddamit
Blueglow -
I don't diagree with much of what you're saying here except for the "consequences" part. Everything has consequences, and showing people dealing with the consequences of their actions is one of the inherent aspects of good drama. It doesn't have to be wrapped up in a nice moral bow.
And I don't think you've watched that many episodes of NYPD:BLUE have you?
;)
Watched it. Loved it. Even after Jimmy Smits turned into Christ and Denis Franz became Job. That said I was talking about my reasons for working here. I am under no illusions that I could move to the States and run a ground breaking rule breaking show like NYPD Blue -- my skill level would get me at best, a staff job on something like Medium where the kinds of things I like to sniff around rarely see the air.
Bill, I think maybe you might be missing the point. Blueglow's not talking about not showing consequences -- he's talking about not skewing the deck to show consequences out of proportion to reality so as to teach the 'correct' moral lesson.
Everyday, teenagers smoke pot and don't immediately go straight to heroin and die.
Everyday, teenagers in love, (and some that don't) have sex and enjoy it and don't get pregnant or AIDS or the clap.
Guys drink beer at a party on the weekend and don't become alcoholics.
Yet on TV, if a teenage girl has sex, she will get pregnant. If the world was as fertile as girls on tv, we'd really be fucked population wise. Having promoted that falsehood, TV then reinforces another because no teenage girl is ever allowed to have an abortion. She can think about it, she just can't do it.
This skewing of "consequences" is as false, and probably a lot more pernicious, than not showing consequences every time.
Now there is a line, of course. I don't really have any ambition to show a scene where someone drives home drunk and nothing happens to them. I'm comfortable over-skewing that consequence to make sure the message gets through.
But where that line gets drawn in Canada is very different than where it gets drawn in the USA.
That's his point.
I seem to be missing them all today...
more coffee, please.
DMC -- defend mediocrity? Sorry if I gave you that impression because it's the last thing I was trying to do.
The habit of local journalists who write inches of column gushing whenever a Canadian happens to get cast as a secondary character in a U.S. pilot versus spending time writing about shows produced here has rankled me for a long time, too. Bless John Doyle's pointy little Irish head for breaking out of that tradition.
But in terms of making generalizations about casting here, well, I was just thinking about some of these Canadian actors who got hired here long before anybody in the U.S. ever heard of them.
These names popped into my head: Kristin Kreuk, Barry Pepper, Sarah Chalk, Sandra Oh, Jonathan Scarf, Chris Martin, Grace Park, Michael J. Fox, David Cubitt...
We can argue whether or not that list proves an exception or a rule, but I don't think it's fair to assume I'm "defending mediocrity"
by acknowledging when people do things right.
Post a Comment