That Shiny New Blog Smell

MMM. NEW SEASON. All those shows smell so shiny right now. They're covered in baby powder and you just want to kiss them and love them.

And in a few weeks, some of them will be colicy and shitting everywhere, and we'll just be wishing we could get some more sleep. But for now, for glorious now, every baby is beautiful and pink and cuddly.

On the blog this week, we're going to try some different things. Later this week, in anticipation of Corner Gas' fifth season premiere Sept 24, I'll have a convo with two of the writer/producers, Mark Farrell and new showrunner Kevin White.

I'm also going to try to give you a taste of something different and more inside. (Without, you know, revealing anything privileged.)

My second episode of The Border, Ep 107, called "Family Values," starts prep today. I've written about prep before. But this time, I'm going to try to give you a blow-by-blow of some of the many, many meetings that you go through when you're prepping a script. It's one thing to be writing along in your garret, quite another to watch a talented group of professionals try to get a show on its feet. So this is gonna be a crafty wonk thing. Hope you all don't mind.

Finally, Jim Bawden in today's Toronto Star has a nice little article about the fall season from the Canadian perspective. The CAB wants you to think that no one in Canada wants to see Canadian shows, because that fits their agenda. It is indeed codswallop, and Bawden calls it as much.

Underfunded and underappreciated, Canadian TV comes tiptoeing back into view after summer's reruns. It's not that Canadians don't like watching themselves on TV. Try saying that to the million-plus fans who eagerly await each new episode of Corner Gas.

Or what about the sudden hit status of last year's Little Mosque on the Prairie, definitely a breakaway success after only seven episodes, big enough for the stars to get interviewed on CNN and written up in The New York Times?

What Canadian TV doesn't have, and never did have, is a plethora of smartly scripted hour-long dramas. This fall, CTV only has one hour of Canadian drama a week in Whistler, which is back for its second season, airing Saturdays at 9. CBC has the second season of the well-made thriller Intelligence (Oct. 1 at 9) and a new family entry, Heartland (debuting Oct. 14 at 7), to entice the Sunday suppertime audience that once doted on Wind At My Back. Citytv is back in the hour-series game with the vampire detective story Blood Ties (in November, there'll be another one titled Across The River to Motor City). Ten years ago there were 11 well-crafted hour Canadian series, but the glory days of Traders, ENG, Street Legal, Wind At My Back, Due South, and The Eleventh Hour are long gone.

It's not that they weren't popular – Global's Traders valiantly found its audience despite being smack dab against red-hot U.S. import ER. Programmers say it was the mounting cost – these days an hour of scripted drama costs at least $1 million in Canada, a top U.S. hit like CSI or Grey's Anatomy hovers at the $4.5 million (U.S.) mark...

More please! That's the reaction of viewers. But Canadian TV production is notoriously short of money.

Now, I've got to go read and give notes a script! I've got that back-to-school feeling! Who's with me!