From the Playback Daily article:
Global Television will not renew the homegrown sitcom The Jane Show, which starred Second City alumnus Teresa Pavlinek, for a third season.I have to admit that I drifted away from The Jane Show early for the usual Canadian TV reasons -- pre-emptions, they kept moving it around, wasn't sure when it was on due to lousy promotion, etc...
A spokesman for Global tells Playback Daily that a mid-season replacement for the Shaftesbury Films comedy has not yet been chosen.
The second season of The Jane Show, which featured Pavlinek as Jane Black, a struggling artist-turned-copy editor in an advertising firm, aired on Wednesday nights at 10 p.m. on Global.
Christina Jennings, executive producer at Shaftesbury, expressed disappointment that the comedy was not picked up for a third season for want of sufficient viewership. The second season averaged an overall national audience (2+) of 147,000 -- down 13% from season one, according to Global.
I wrote about it when it first premiered, but only saw about 4 or 5 episodes after that -- and only one from the second season of the show.
But I will say this: I had basically the same conversation with two Canadian TV writers I know, who both work for shows that get watched. And they both related how they tuned in an episode of the Jane Show and found it really funny. So I'll take that and file that away.
The real issue here, of course, is who are the people involved and what are they doing now? In Canada, very often we all start over from square one every time. The writers of the Jane Show now have experience under their belt, or more experience, and whether you think it was the best show in the world or not, those writers, I guarantee you, are better than when they started. In the USA, they'd be free to go to other shows and they'd be seriously being looked at. But in Canada, it's more likely that they'll be left twisting in the wind while more "new writers" are given a chance; so that in two years, those "new writers" who aren't so new can be the ones to twist, lather, rinse, repeat...
Is there a half-hour in development, or getting greenlit somewhere for them to go to? I don't know. But I hope so. I remember hearing from several places that when Traders shut down, the scattering to the winds of everyone who learned on that show set the Canadian TV industry back five years.
We have to stop starting over.
Bye Jane. Probably not enough people watched the show to say convincingly, "you'll be missed," But I sure hope everyone connected with you doesn't end up with a 323 area code...
22 comments:
I think they're all just drinking on college st, so maybe we will be saved from a second wave of cultural retardation
I thought it was a fine show, good characters, good writing, well performed. It was certainly of a higher standard than some stuff that has done better in the ratings.
_Bearing in mind that it was a mid-level only sitcom, I mostly liked The Jane Show after accidently stumbling across it. And I don't slavishly root for everything Cdn either.
_While I agree with the usual reasons you've mentioned, there was one other putoff - that this show pretended too hard to be British, presumably for a more important(?) export market. Kinda like when watching homegrown but US dominated Muchmusic shows. Or other exported local shows known to be re-edited to exclude all mentioning of identity. That attitude simply leaves me feeling disappointed and slighted.
_Conversely though, I don't care for some of the overt flag worshipping Canadianna either.
it seems to be Global's modus operandi to put a Canadian show on then let it twist in the wind by not promoting it and moving it around the schedule. Satisfies the CRTC for the year
I never actually saw The Jane Show but heard it was good.
A couple of chuckles on a holiday Sunday...first, Halfiax, buddy, I think it's tough to sell "Global is bad" in one sentence and then in the next admit that you never watched the show even once. C'mon.
and CQ, thanks for your torturous kind of defn of your dissatisfaction - and I kind of almost agree with you...but this is also why people like me working in the creative side of Canadian film regularly tear our hair out. Because the audience doesn't want it to be too Canadian, you see -- but they also don't want a show to put on airs...
Canadians are perverse.
This may be a little late but I watched a show on Bravo the other night called SIGNIFICANT OTHERS. It was hilarious. I
From what I can see the show is from 2004, so I missed the boat on it.
Hope the writers are writing elsewhere now, because they were good. Some great lines.
Ah well... it's Canada Day so let's go at the topic of Canadian references in scripts in Canadian series for a beat...
1. some Canadians like them, others hate them because it makes them feel like they are watching some kind of inferior product as in -- WTF am I doing watching the Rochester Americans instead of the New York Rangers...
2. but if they find Canadian references in american shows all Canadians get excited in a Sally Fieldish kinda way...
3. "the last person on the board gets to steer the boat". All Canuck shows get the majority of their money from the Canadian public in some way shape or form -- we do this so we can tell "Canadian stories" but almost all Canadian shows require some kind of foreign "top up" so we can afford to put a sofa in the living room set. Once this happens all references to Canada must be excised from the scripts because the distributor or American second window are not prepared to entertain the idea that a character has come from Winnipeg or that, in some parts of the world, lawyers and judges look funny.
That, in a nutshell is the bind. You need the last ten percent of your budget that the foriegn investor provides so that you can make a show that is not laughable to watch but, for that ten percent, you give up the final creative say on where your show is set.
4. There are exceptions to this. Intelligence, Corner Gas etc... but a large number of Canadian shows currently being made are being made so that networks like "the N" can buy shows for a dime on the dollar while the bulk of the cost for making a show like "the best years" (bet they wish they had of rethought that title now) is being footed by the Canadian taxpayer.
5. we are a simple people.
My favourite aspect of this show (which be sorely missed, for I am still in recovery) was its very sublte, slyly intelligent political subversiveness. In Jane's abandonment of her novel writing to the inexorable, inevitable maw of the corporate world, we saw not only the fateful dilemma which confronts every young and struggling artist as they approach the bleak compromises of mid-life (the siren call of property, children and good furniture) but also the ideological emptiness that is our post-modern, post cold war world, where the dream of artisitc utopia and international socialism gives way to the only alternative left: liberal market democracy, as if this is some kind of solution for the world's most poor, (half the planet - less than 2 dollars a day $U.S.) as if this won't ultimately result in ecological suicide, as if this isn't just masquerading nihilism and the death of our collective moral imagination. I think Dennis touched upon this when he alluded to the show's notion of the corporate office 'as salvation'. But I think it is deeper, and more sinister than that. The fact that the corporate job that Jane did ultimately take was selling booze was telling, deeply ironic (in the first episode of Season 1 she even mimicked her new boss Stella by saying that she was going to 'sell hope' - for what else could she say? ) and absolutely hilarious. We could see her struggle with this in say, the conversation that she had with her childhood 'best friend' Susan (and what, incidentally, happened to all her artisitic friends from her artistic life; why this regression into immaturity? Again: political) about having children and settling down, in 'Moving on UP', the first episode of Season 2, where she talks about 'it not being about that Susan, its about making a difference, making your mark upon this world' etc. - proving that her old utopian dreams still haunted her, as they haunt us all, as Susan's condo was haunted by the spirits of the past away insane (though oblvious to the clueless Susan, impeccably played by Patricia Zentilli) and nearly overwhelm poor Jane when she 'house-sits' the place in 'House of Jane' the sixth episode of Season 2. The budding flirtation/romance of Jane and Walton mirrored perfectly our own political moment here in The West. It was Red State/Blue State. Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council. The anxious, timid embrace of Stephen Harper by our own middle classes here in Canada. The fact that the relationship 'was never to be' and was never consumated suggests that perhaps it never SHOULD BE, and that we all, as a society, need to look elsewhere. Walton's born again Christianity always seemed to be paper thin, suggesting that there was always a lot more there, and this is what, amazingly, seemed to attract Jane; not surprising really, given her artistic perception. The creators of this show, daringly (so daringly - for a Canadian sitcom?), took this all the way in Season 2 - literally sending Walton to Iraq. To what? TO SELL BOOZE. IN IRAQ. And in 'Walton Returns', the tenth episode of Season 2, we see the poor Brit return from his Mesopotamian Adventure, again - clueless, in denial none the wiser ('the Bubbles, the bubbles', 'we ain't gonna cut and run'). And thus this is the daft, naiive, incompetent, fatally, grotesquely tragic and doomed vision that was The Project for The New American Century. This wasn't your grandmother's yearning, so obvious, 'hit-you-over-the-head-and-on-the-nose' fuzzy bunny, simplistic 'can't we all just get along' soft liberal metaphorizing of, say, Little Mosque on The Prarie (spare me). In Walton's denial we experienced the hard truth - quick: just what is the answer to the sausage grinder that Iraq has become? Don't know? I don't necessarily know either. Best to drink up and find Jesus. SOON. This was the fateful moment in March 2003 when the elites of the West, collectively closed their eyes, got down on their knees before the grand experiment and temptation of SHOCK AND AWE and just hoped for the best. Whoops! And remember this was a Canadian sitcom, on Global (!?) How did they sneak this in? I don't watch that much television but I have only seen this level of satirizing our time and moment on the sublime HBO series' The Wire, and The Sopranos. Perhaps, maybe here in Canada, on that only truly great CBC show - Intelligence. There is so much here, and this show was so deep, I could just go on and on. What about The Jane Show as metaphysical, paranormal parable? After the death of her Author-Boss in the first episode of Season 1, (i.e. the death of her artistic dream, even The Death of Art, or at least The Death of The Novel) Jane is cast adrift in the land of 'Spirits', searching, ever searching for the right way back to her very soul. Again, SUBTLE, ghost whispering. And then there was the show's Canadiana (who can forget Cary's immortal line in the first season: 'I once did shooters with Mike Reno in Edmonton') or more specifically its HAMILTONIA. From Jane's brilliant Kareoke performance of the classic Canadian rock anthem 'Let's Shake' by that greatest of Hamilton (and Canada's) rock and roll bands - Teenage Head in Season 1's Canadian Screenplay Award Nominated 'All About Steve', through to the final episode 'Who's got Spirit?' (get it?) where Jane finally finds love and, we hope, happiness at a Conference, in - Hamilton. Iconic - the image of Jane and her new beau kissing in front of Dofasco's coke oven flame. How about Hamilton finally getting to play Hamilton? How about turning a system of production tax credits to your artistic advantage? Again, brilliant. The Apocalypse may indeed come, but at least 'We'll always have Hamilton'. Indeed. Requiem for a Jane. Indeed. And what about Pavlinek herself? Gorgeous. Those stunning blue eyes like an enchanted ocean just inviting you to get lost week, after heavenly week. And just so talented. Why is she not our female Brent Butt? Because, as others have already indicated, the network that this show was on is run by a bunch of morons. How many times have I sat on the subway staring at a three panel ad for Falcon Beach. But anything for The Jane Show? Nope. When was it on? Who knows. And with all the wit and great one liners of The Jane Show - how about one of those commericals centred around 'lines from the show' like Global did for everything American on its schedule like 'Whose Smarter than a Fifth Grader?" (Or whatever it was called) Sorry. We're too stupid. Or just too thick. Sorry. We just don't care. Sorry. We're just doing the bare minimum to satisfy our CanCon requirements while we engage in the really important work of, say, selling out two and half billion dollars of Canadian film and television heritage to a prominent New York investment bank. As I said, I could go on and on. What about the actors on this show? Kate Trotter? Nigel Shawn Williams? The absolutely transcendant Hardee T. Linem? I don't know about the rest of the country (forgive me Canada, and your delicate sensibilities) but here in southern Ontario we understand that this one of the finest collections of some of our best acting talent. So yes, I agree with Dennis, these people, THESE CREATORS, deserve more work. Please! Ideally, on another network. One that actually has something going on. So, so long Jane. And thanks for the memories. May we one day, hopefully, so hopefully, have the pleasure of seeing your like again.
I could never find the show. Wednesday at 10:00? I checked a few times and it didn't seem to be on. Your blog said it was pre-empted, moved around etc. so I guess that's why
Global is a business and to them it doesn't matter if a domestic show is good or not or does well in the ratings. It was an obligation, they did it and now they're moving on.
Well, Blueglow, you kinda have your facts all wrong...
Degrassi, probably the biggest TV export from Canada, is clearly set in Toronto and never avoids Toronto cultural and physical references. And not one of that show's foreign investors ever asked to make it 'neutral' or set in the US...
I don't regret naming my series The Best Years, and neither do Entertainment Weekly, the Hollywood Reporter, or the New York Times (feel free to google the reviews)...
And aside from tax credits, which almost all productions shooting in Canada access, The Best Years did not get "public money" the way Telefilm-funded shows such as Intelligence or The Jane Show do (or, alas, did). The show's always been set in Boston, since the first day The N commissioned me to create it, and therefore doesn't qualify for Telefilm financing, and nor should it...
As for The N getting my series on a dime? Tell them that when you ask them (ie. do your research and find out) how much of a license fee they provide - which, believe me, is far more than a dime...
Blueglow sounds like one of the self-hating Canadians who doom series such as The Jane Show to an early grave - first in line to bash it, last in line to watch it. Imagine if they actually tried doing it...
Well, first off, I'll apologize for dissing the name "the best years" it was a low blow...
but. come on now, now matter how you want to spin it most of the money for Canadian shows come out of the pockets of Canadians whether thru tax credits, Telefilm, Provincial incentives or from "broadcaster envelopes" that comes directly from an indirect tax collected by cable broadcasters.
now I don't have direct access to the financing model for "the best years" but lets say the show cost 1 mill an ep (give or take a couple hundred grand either way) I would be very pleased in the N was footing the majority of that bill.
If the N is putting half a mill per ep Canadian into your budget I would dance in the streets (not a pretty sight) I would guess (without doing my research that the high end of their investment might be 200 G per ep which would still only represent twenty percent of your budget...
Most of the shows (I think it's seven or eight so far) I have worked on with a secondary "foriegn" broadcaster (imagine that, I have done this before) bring a lot less money to the table than the parent Canadian broadcaster and certainly a lot less than the accumlated funds a "broadcast letter' from a Canadian network can generate.
In all of those cases they have had an inordinate amount of influence (content, cultural references, standards and practices) for the actual dollars they have spent. This influence may show itself starkly -- episodes of the show that air only in Canada and not the US (on one show I was involved in that number was something like 7 on a series of 26) which has direct financial repercussions on the production company -- ie the foriegn broadcaster won't pay for them.
These influences may also be more subtle -- choice of language, choice of spelling on signage, colour of currency -- and more insidious (certain subjects are avoided because if the show won't air in the states the production company is not going to take the financial hit so you eventually stop "going there" in the germination stages of the series).
Perhaps Degrassi and Best Years are exceptions to this rule, if so great -- you won -- but I might also suggest that it was simply a prudent move to set the show in the States kneecap the problem before it started.
Even if that was not the reason (perhaps you discovered a cache of Canadian actors who have mastered the Boston accent) setting the show in the US does support my arguement that Canadians would rather watch shows that don't feature overtly Canadian references so that they don't feel like they are watching Triple AAA instead of Major League.
Oh, and by the way, being aware of the problem doesn't make one part of it.
Blueglow -
Thanks for your very well-thought-out response, and I'll start with an apology for my own low blow and take it back.
I understand your frustration, given your own experiences - but I haven't shared them on either Degrassi or The Best Years. Degrassi, as stated earlier, never once hid its Canadian-ness, and Canadians watch(ed) it. The Best Years started far differently, commissioned originally by The N (a US network), and that's why the show is set in Boston. Even then, aside from a few establishers and a reference or two, we're not overtly "Boston"; we're more Charles University.
As for kneecapping...? You're putting way too much stock in this whole "Canadians don't wanna watch Canadian TV" as a problem, especially for me, 'cause I'd never had that problem with the stuff I had written before developing The Best Years. So I didn't go into it with that in mind at all.
At the end of the day, Canadians - and people - only want to watch what's good. Corner Gas is as Canadian as it gets, and yet it strikes the hearts of well over a million Canadians every time it airs. They got it right. And remember, the vast VAST majority of US shows don't make it to a full first season - and they've got the added benefit of huge budgets and huge promotion. And, according to your theory, they're clearly American. But none of that saved Stuido 60, which also had great critical love.
okay, I'm rambling... hope you get my point...
Who cares about your stupid careers? We need to get back to decoding and deconstructing the implicit politics of The Jane Show before its too late!
Blaine,
You need to step back and take a breath.
Meanwhile, I'm all teary eyed. I water the garden, till the soil and look what takes root right here on this little patch of blog!
Great back and forth, gentlemen.
My experience with this news is a little more personal.
I had my first ever entry-level writing department interview for The Jane Show back in the fall. My samples went over well, but the position ended up going to someone a little less “entry level”. It seems there’s little work for people with more credits let alone people still trying to get their first post grad writing gig two years after graduation. Teresa and Ralph were awesome and despite not getting the job I ended up with a mentor- we baby writers need mentors. We also need jobs.
This news makes me sad. I'd prefer to stay in Canada but I’m seriously contemplating moving to the States. Two years of temping has been slightly unsatisfying;)
Aaron...The Jane Show didn't receive ANY Telefilm funding...Global paid for the show (with the usual tax credits in place) leaving the show with a ridiculously low budget which the network then cut in the second season. To their credit, they did spent about sixty bucks on promotion for the two seasons combined, and gave the show (in season two) the much coveted Wednesday night, 10 p.m.. timeslot. Perfect for a half hour comedy!
I'm sorry I called their careers stupid. They're no more stupid than my own. But bluglow started it iwith his insulting original post. I just think was a very important show that we should talk about more. Thanks for the perspective Denis, with one n.
hey blaine:
i took blueglow's original comment about drinking at college st. as a reference to the trader's crew. it seemed funny to me. It seemed self-depercating not insulting.
just my take
mark
Actually I was merely reassuring our esteemed host that he need not fear a second Canadian cultural diaspora as I have in recent times hoisted more than my share of cold ones with the writing team for the "Jane Show". As far as I can tell they remain both sly and subversive while parsing freely from "the fall and rise of reginald perrin".
cheers. I take it back. And I have no idea who reginald perrin is.
simply the finest show ever made about the inanity of capitalism.
blueglow:
my mistake.
mark
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