Does Mary Darling Owe You an Apology?

Mary Darling is the Executive Producer of Little Mosque on the Prairie. She has a specific talent for saying really unfortunate things in print.

But we'll get to that.

When last we left the Bill C-10 story, the industry was caught flat-footed by a sneaky Tory plan to open up a Canadian front in the U.S.-style culture wars through an amendment to the Income Tax Act. This amendment, now in a bill at 3rd reading in the Senate, (ie: it's almost law) would allow them to retroactively deny funding to films and television shows the Heritage Ministry deemed "offensive." Have the words "Heritage Ministry" ever sounded so ominous?

Last night, I was at an industry grad for outgoing writers for the Canadian Film Centre. Of course, everyone was talking about this latest travesty, and the conservative war on culture in general. Notably, several Producers I talked to related nervous conversations they'd had yesterday with American producers, asking if this "crazy new rule change"was going to apply to them. The short answer, as I wrote yesterday, is that it might, which is bad. And it might not, which is worse - at least for us. Make no mistake, though. Yesterday Hollywood definitely took notice.

Also, last night, The Canadian Press moved an article where Tory spinners at the Heritage Department tried to suggest that this this was really no big deal:

"The amendment replaces a similar provision that was in the income tax regulations between 1996 and 2005. Therefore it is not a new concept," Heritage spokeswoman Annette Gibbons said Thursday.

"Cultural funding program criteria have always included certain kinds of material such as hate propaganda, excessively violent material or pornography."

However, the department has occasionally received material that raised questions and it decided to update the criteria.

The added criteria will include child pornography, gratuitous violence and the denigration of an identifiable group.

This is a fairly transparent dodge. First, if pornography already isn't eligible for tax credits (and it's not) then surely child pornography isn't, either. Anyone with any experience with the culture wars will tell you that it's the "gratuitous" in violence that gives you the fun fights. It sounds like something nobody could object to, right?

Unfortuntely, that gentle little spin couldn't even hold up for one night. So we come today, and this story:

Evangelist takes credit for film crackdown

Christian crusader says he pressured cabinet ministers and PMO officials to deny tax credits to productions deemed too offensive

BILL CURRY AND GAYLE MACDONALD

From Friday's Globe and Mail

February 29, 2008 at 4:00 AM EST

OTTAWA, TORONTO — A well-known evangelical crusader is claiming credit for the federal government's move to deny tax credits to TV and film productions that contain graphic sex and violence or other offensive content.

Charles McVety, president of the Canada Family Action Coalition, said his lobbying efforts included discussions with Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day and Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, and "numerous" meetings with officials in the Prime Minister's Office.

"We're thankful that someone's finally listening," he said yesterday. "It's fitting with conservative values, and I think that's why Canadians voted for a Conservative government."

Aha!

So, why do I think Mary Darling might owe you an apology?

Well, in that same CP article where the Tories tried to put out the innocuous spin, Darling, beneficiary of your tax dollars and a half hour a week on the public broadcaster, had this to say:

"There are a lot of things on TV today that, I think, have gone too far," said Mary Darling, executive producer of "Little Mosque on the Prairie," which airs in over 80 markets globally, including French-speaking Africa, the Middle East and several European countries.

"If something comes along that helps us to at least discern what is acceptable . . . then I think, as a producer, I'd be willing to look at that and explore it."

Now, I would love to think that maybe Darling was misquoted here. And I'll be more than happy to correct myself if that turns out to be the case. But she does have a history of this kind of thing.

It was Darling who, in the first days of the WGA strike, led the charge of giving interviews saying how great the strike was going to be for Canadian producers. One of the most egregious to the Canadian creative community was this one, which a lot of creatives refer to as "the sparkle dust incident," where she managed to, in one fell swoop, insult the talent that she works with every day, and suggest that it would be great if Canadian born WGA writers, you know, broke their own strike rules and came home to work.

Mary Darling, head of Westwind Pictures, the production company behind the CBC hit "Little Mosque on the Prairie," says such a reverse brain drain to the north can only be good for the Canadian industry.

"We've heard some whispers from some talent down in Los Angeles, people trying to cover their butts who shall remain nameless," she said.

"This strike could end up spilling a little bit of sparkle dust on the Canadian community. There's so much Canadian talent down there ... there may be some really interesting, wonderful opportunities for Canadian producers as they draw on the experiences of people who have done volumes and volumes and volumes of writing in L.A. who are coming back home and want to stay home."

Translation: Oooh, we get to work with American writers?

Now, of course, that didn't happen. There was no mass exodus up north.

Darling was also quoted in just about every article about how many Canadian shows were going to be sold to the USA. In the end, three sold. (and I'll admit, I got quoted in some articles too, saying I didn't think any would sell. I was wrong, too.) But, of the three shows that sold, only one had been made already: Sophie -- and that show sold to a cable channel, not an over the air network. The other two shows were in an early stage of production, and therefore more attractive (since the U.S. nets will actually be able to help shape the content.)

Little Mosque, Darling's show, did not sell to the U.S.A. It still hasn't.

Okay, so she managed to piss off Canadian talent and give a bunch of hyperbolic interviews. She wouldn't be the first person to do that. But this latest quote is chilling, because if you go back to this morning's coverage, here's the kind of "limits" that people are talking about:

Mr. McVety said films promoting homosexuality, graphic sex or violence should not receive tax dollars, and backbench Conservative MPs and cabinet ministers support his campaign.

"There are a number of Conservative backbench members that do a lot of this work behind the scenes," he said.

Conservative MP Dave Batters recently urged the new president of Telefilm Canada, Michel Roy, to block federal funding for objectionable films, listing Young People Fucking as a recent example.

"In my mind, sir, and in the minds of many of my colleagues and many, many Canadians," said Mr. Batters during a Jan. 31 meeting of the Canadian Heritage committee, "the purpose of Telefilm is to help facilitate the making of films for mainstream Canadian society - films that Canadians can sit down and watch with their families in living rooms across this great country."

Ahh, so there we go. And there it is.

The most shocking thing about Young People Fucking, of course, is the title. The movie is actually quite sweet, and winds up coming down firmly on the side of monogamy, and the need for people to form lasting relationships. But in order to come to that conclusion, you have to watch it. And absorb it. If you get bent out of shape by words, and titles, and the surface of things -- you never get that far.

The people want to set the limits which Darling feels she could consider are the people who never get that far.

Question: how long before those backbenchers start asking why we're spending tax credits to "make fun of Christians" and "promote Muslim propaganda?" Don't tell me it can't happen and that those people aren't out there. Not when I have to turn on comments moderation every damn time I write about Little Mosque. Darling should have known better. She should have known where this kind of thing leads.

It's not like there aren't producers who don't understand the implications. Marvin Kaye is a young writer-producer, and a guy I play Poker with. His half hour comedy, Less Than Kind, starring Maury Chaykin, with Mark McKinney writing and showrunning behind the scenes, just finished shooting in Winnipeg. It will air on Citytv stations later this year. The show is a family comedy, based on his experiences growing up in Winnipeg. But when I say "family comedy" I don't mean the kind of "family comedy" Conservative back benchers mean. I mean the kind of raucous, brutally funny, and occasionally uncomfortable experience a lot of us had when we were growing up.

The show's shot. It's in the can. And to get it made, Kaye watched as the production company squeezed every dollar till it screamed -- including the tax credits. So how does he feel about the possibility that those credits could be retroactively pulled?

"Terrified."

And what about Mary Darling's idea that she's willing to "look at" their ideas of "what's acceptable?"

"It's frightening to me that she would say that," says Kaye. "This should strike fear into the hearts of anybody who wants to create quality tv. If she's happy to be put in a box that's great for her, I don't want to work within a box that's defined by a bureaucratic committee. Judge the quality of the work. Not the content."

In an email exchange with one of my Showrunners on The Border, the ever patient David Barlow, he pointed out that tax credits are an extremely poor way to try and influence content. There are plenty of other mechanisms, from Telefilm to the CTF, to try and have an impact on the content of shows.

Tax credits are intended as an industrial subsidy for an industry that employs hundreds, thousands of people. And it's not really a subsidy, it's more of a stimulus - the governments get back far more tax dollars because of these credits than they give up.

So get this -- this even goes against what should be stated Conservative principles -- to stimulate the economy. Politicizing them in this way is not just destabilizing to an industry that can ill afford it...it's bad policy.

I sometimes give Producers a hard time on this blog. (A couple even kidded me about it last night.) But I respect and admire what they do, and that's the truth. Because I couldn't do what they do. And I wouldn't want to. That's not where my talents lie.

Lord, putting together a show in Canada is not an easy proposition. Finding that last bit of money can be torturous. Everything's wait and wait and then hurry up and get it done. You have to jump through hoops and regs that are ever-changing. You wind up deferring your fees half the time to get the thing made. And if you go over -- you pay for it. It's nervewracking. It's heartbreaking, difficult, sometimes tedious work, and the tenacity and good humour I've seen from some of the people who manage to keep doing it year after year, is truly incredible.

If I was Sandra Cunningham, the head of the CFTPA, I would be placing a call to Mary Darling today to ask her, "why would you go on record and say what you said?" If I was another Canadian producer who meticulously structured my cobbled together budget like jenga sticks, I'd want to know if she knew the implications of what she was saying. And If I was an Executive at the CBC, who just received a vote of confidence from Parliament where, predictably, the Conservatives dissented, I would be calling the Executive Producer of my highest rated comedy, to ask her how she thought she was helping.

And if I were you, I'd write Mary Darling at Westwind Pictures and I'd ask her the same thing.

marydarling@westwindpictures.com

Please write your MP, and tell them that tax credits are no way to influence the culture. That's the important issue here.

Checking in with the Mosque at Christmas

IF YOU WERE one of the two million who initially checked out Little Mosque on the Prairie for the curiosity factor, and one of the million two or three who've drifted away since, this week is a good time to check back.

Wednesday night at 8pm on CBC, two back-to-back special episodes offer strong evidence how Mosque has found its feet this season. There's sweet family stuff, for sure, but also some solid comedy storytelling -- and a confidence of presentation that was often missing from the first season's eps.

In the first season of Mosque, they'd occasionally offer up Muslim-centric situations that could be funny - like a debate about whether to have a barrier in the mosque or a search for Muslim swimming gear - but weren't. It's almost like gold stars were due just for putting it on screen, and there wasn't a lot of room left for funny.

The subtle but important evolution of the show is put to good use in the two special episodes, Eids a Wonderful Life, and 5 Year Plan.

In the current iteration of Mosque, the main characters are good natured, well meaning townspeople who face the problems we all face -- and who just happen to be Muslims.

Believe it or not, that's a very important difference. It winds up making the show more inclusive, and welcoming all at once.

In the first episode, Eids A Wonderful Life, Sarah (Sheila McCarthy) is missing a few of the trappings of Christmas that she's been without since she married Yasir and converted to Islam. Simultaneously, we learn that this year, the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha falls close to Christmas. The mosque plans its annual Eid dinner the same night as Rev. Magee's Christmas Carolly Ring Ding Sing a Long.

There's a fight over parking. And Rayann and Sarah get a little carried away with trying to spruce up the Eid dinner with some Christmas decorative touches.

In the other plot, Layla and Babur quarrel when Layla is asked to read from A Christmas Carol at her school holiday concert. Babur suggests they inject a story of Eid, and the eager-to-be-inclusive Principal (Patrick McKenna, in a funny turn) jumps at the idea.

Even the character of Fatima -- who I was lukewarm on back in January, does nice work with a special little co-star.

What's nice about the episode is the way it deals with some pretty universal themes -- the way that non-Christians sometimes feel looking at all the pomp and accoutrements of the Christmas celebration, and how little quarrels become big ones. And it's not like there are Muslim jokes missing. Amar gets a joke off about who would have thought that Christians and Muslims couldn't live side by side in peace. (He's talking about Parking,) and in the Babur and Layla subplot, they have a lot of fun (but respectful fun) about the difficulties of dramatizing a Muslim story when you can't depict the prophet on stage. (It's funnier than it sounds.)

Sure, there are a couple of sweaty jokes -- like the machinations needed to get Babur into an outfit where he looks like Santa (entirely by accident,) but on the whole, it's a feel good half hour that will make you laugh a little and smile a lot.

As I said on Q last week, one of the things I love most about Canada is that we're so inclusive, we'll do a Christmas special for people who don't celebrate Christmas. And that's true, far as it goes. The better Christmas treat is that what started out as a show about how Muslims were different and viewed differently, has become a show about a community -- where the people at the centre of that community are utterly recognizable, though they have slightly different beliefs.

In the end, everything comes together and there's even a touch that seems cheesy, but so isn't. Go on. I dare you not to feel warm when you hear "Peace Train." Let that bounce around on several levels.

The second show, 5 Year Plan, involves everyone's reminiscences of what they were doing five years ago. We get to see Amar as a lawyer in Toronto, living with his overbearing parents (and we get a taste of a great Bollywood style dance number that I wasn't going to mention, except it's in the commercials.) We see Babur newly arrived in Mercy, and a visit from his estranged wife that will determine whether his daughter gets to live with him. Like the first episode, it's warm and surprisingly touching. You could watch this show with your kids. I would watch it with my kids. Of course, that would mean having to go out and get some kids, and that's probably a little too ambitious just for an hour of television.

Check in with Little Mosque. The characters have settled in, there's a confidence in the storytelling, and the show really has come a long way. I rate it a bit of a Holiday treat.

Although I could have used more of the Elf with the eyepatch.

Sorry, Haters!

ONE MORE PIECE of weekend gossip. Apparently the ratings for Wednesday's Little Mosque on the Prairie were up -- considerably.

The first two episodes drew around 775 000 viewers. Wednesday's ep drew close to a million.

People are finding the show. They're hearing that it's back, and it's funnier.

The word is getting out.

Put that in your Canadian TV pipe and smoke it.

Little Mosque: A View From The Room, Part Two

FOR PART one of this interview, click here.

For the second part of my interview with Paul Mather, Showrunner, and Rob Sheridan, Executive Story Editor and Paul's right hand for Little Mosque on the Prairie, Season Two, we got away a little from the basics of character and conception, and spoke a little more about philosophy. In a country that sometimes sacrifices entertainment value for "good for you"-ism, how does the mission of Mosque -- such as it is, fit in?



DEAD THINGS ON STICKS: A lot of the focus in the first season was on how different it was. Do you think it's more important that this show strike a blow for portraying Muslims in a positive light etc., or is it more important to be just funny?


PAUL MATHER: I don't think people watch TV because they want their attitudes adjusted. I think it's just got to be funny, charming, and a good story. You want your characters to be likable because they're on your show and you want people to like it. So I guess you're humanizing Muslims by doing that. Rob has a good story about watching some 9/11 show and a Muslim guy is praying and Rob realized whenever he's seen this in the past it's proceeded to the Muslim guy blowing something up. And now he's seen a Muslim guy pray and then that guy goes and loses his shoes or run over his daughter's bike in the driveway or whatever, and on some level just doing that changes the way you look at people. So the important thing is this show has made Rob less of a racist. And that alone has made society better. I heard a guy on CBC radio talking about how he sees women walking around in burqas. And a burqa's a full-body covering like you see in Afghanistan -- there's just a little screen that you look through. There aren't a lot of women walking around like that in Canada. He probably meant face veils (niqab) or headscarves (hijab). So that's a pretty big mistake. And it occurred to me that if this show goes on for a few years, and he was doing that same piece again, he wouldn't make the same mistake -- people might learn stuff. That's not the point, but it is a pretty cool side effect.


ROB SHERIDAN: Great. Now people can Google “Rob Sheridan” and “racist” and get a hit. I just finished David Mamet’s new book “Bambi Vs. Godzilla” (which I really only bring up as a way of saying “Look at me, I read!”). At one point Mamet says, “Movies possess unlimited power to entertain. They have, however, no power whatever to teach.” His point being, ‘tell your story, don’t lecture.’ I think he may be overstating the case slightly, in that movies and TV are certainly capable of reinforcing negative stereotypes, and can similarly advocate for something more positive. But I know what he’s saying. Ultimately we gotta tell good stories and funny jokes and the positive stuff can be a great corollary of that but not necessarily the focus.


[Denis here. Rob has basically shamed me into admitting I've been meaning to do a review of this book for about four months. I guess I was busy trying to defuse all the damage Rob's done as a racist.]

Moving on...

DTOS: Do you feel like the fictional town of Mercy is coming into its own more as a character this year?

P.M. I guess. There aren't that many non-Muslim main characters -- we're really about the people in the Mosque. So the town's a backdrop. You try to make it a place you would like to live.

R.S. As I hinted at earlier, I think one of things Paul really brings to the show as showrunner, aside from the obvious writing discipline, was to open up the show, get us into the corners of the town a little more, flesh it out. This world just seems bigger to me now. There’s a location in the first episode that really gives us a sense of the broader community surrounding the Muslim characters and it really made me laugh. Also the production team just built the most unbelievably beautiful, detailed swing sets every week that blew me away. It all feels quite real and lived-in.


DTOS: What sort of things do you wanna see explored in Season Two?


P.M. Well, what did we do: mostly just whatever seemed fun and interesting to us. There's some fun father/daughter stuff between Baber and his daughter Layla. Late in the season there's some twists and turns in the relationship between Amaar and Rayyan that are kind of fun. We've got some semi-political stuff: there are episodes about the American no-fly list and about CSIS. [The Canadian Security and Intelligence Service] There's a Bollywood dance number. There's a Christmas episode. There's a flashback episode where we see Amaar as a lawyer before he became an imam. There's a goat and a sheep, but not in the same scene.


R.S. Also there are a couple of really big episodes in the middle of the run that really involve the whole town going just nuts over one thing or another. Fairly ambitious and sprawling. They were a lot of work in the room, but Paul gave everyone a sense that there was nothing we couldn't do. Also we had some good guest stars. Dave Foley, Samantha Bee, Darcy Tucker. I had this really funny idea for a Merv Griffin cameo, but Paul kept saying “next season, next season.” Jerk.


DTOS: Finally, What's the deal with two hit Canadian comedy shows being set in Saskatchewan? You and Gas, mining the same territory. There's gotta be tension. C'mon. Be real. Are you gonna do an East/West Biggie/Tupac thing?


P.M. Theoretically we're not set in Saskatchewan, we're set "on the prairies." We're in Saskatchalbertatoba. But we do shoot in Saskatchewan for a few weeks. The Hotel Sask bar is our turf, O' Hanlon's bar is the Gas guys' turf. That's not out of any dislike: the Hotel Sask bar is just fifty feet closer to our hotel rooms and we're lazy. I went over to O'Hanlons once and met Kevin [White] and Andrew [Carr] and Norm [Hiscock] (from Gas). They'd just put out their last Production White so they were having a few drinks. I think I might have left without paying for my drinks. So ha ha! Fuck you Gas guys! You got Mathered!


R.S. I have a feeling we're all going to run into each other at the Canadian Comedy Awards. So, yeah, I expect gunplay.


Corner Gas airs Monday at 9:30 p.m. on CTV, and on the WGN Superstation in the USA.

oh..uh...

Little Mosque was just sold to Israel, Gaza & The West Bank.

(Seriously, how weird is that?)

It also airs on CBC Wednesdays at 8:00 p.m. (Premieres tonight!)

Little Mosque Returns: A View from "The Room."

LITTLE MOSQUE ON THE PRAIRIE was definitely one of the CBC's brightest spots last season. It enjoyed a phenomenal leadup campaign, including exposure on CNN and in The New York Times, for what seemed to be (sadly) a revolutionary premise: let's make the main characters Muslims, and make them the heroes.

Set in the fictional Canadian prairie town of Mercy, Mosque was criticized in some quarters for being wobbly in the funny department, but praised for its sweetness. After a huge initial tune in of over two million viewers, the ratings stabilized around the million mark -- still better than any of CBC's other scripted shows. The curiosity factor got them press initially, but a million Canadians obviously came back because they liked what they saw.

The series was a rare case of the CBC moving fast to try and strike while the iron is hot, so that first season only comprised eight episodes.

CBC gave the show a vote of confidence (and thanks, I guess) by coming back with an ambitious 20 episode order -- a number almost unheard of in this country.

But there was also evident acknowledgment that changes that needed to be made to take the show past its initial success to the next level of quality.

So in April the show made waves again -- of the behind-the-scenes variety.

They hired away two writers from Corner Gas. A talent raid? How un-Canadian! I think I summed up the news pretty well here.

Paul Mather had been the showrunner on Corner Gas for a few years, as well as being one of the comedic forces behind The Rick Mercer Report. Story Editor Rob Sheridan had just completed his first year on Corner Gas. But he'd also had several seasons of cult favorite The Red Green Show under his belt, and had scored a Canadian Screenwriting Award nomination for the well-regarded Showcase comedy Naked Josh, on which he wrote for two full seasons.

By moving on, Mather and Sheridan opened up opportunities for more writers on Corner Gas, whose staff had been relatively static for a few years. One of the signs of an industry with something healthy going on is that there's somewhere for talented people to go; to keep moving up and take on new challenges.

Sheridan and Mather convened with the other members of the Mosque writing staff early this spring. Returning were show creator Zarqa Naraz, Al Rae (who's been nominated for a Gemini Award for one of his 1st season eps) and Rebecca Schechter. Mather also brought another writer with him from The Rick Mercer Report, Greg Eckler, and rounding out the staff: new writer Miles Smith.

I caught up with Paul Mather and Rob Sheridan via email to talk about Season Two of Mosque, which premieres Wed. October 3rd at the family friendly hour of 8:00 p.m.

DEAD THINGS ON STICKS: So obviously this series got huge ratings out of the gate in the first season. What did you guys see as your job coming into the show?

PAUL MATHER: The first season had so much heat out of the gate based on the premise. I knew we wouldn't have that same kind of media interest in the second season and that the series would have to rise and fall on its merits as entertainment. So it was a question of building on the work done in the first season: trying to get to know the characters a bit better; figuring out who pairs well with whom. What's the character balance in a twenty minute show with nine characters in the opening credits? How much Islamic stuff do you put in each episode -- is every plot about Muslim stuff? Can you do an entire show that has nothing to do with Islam? We had to figure that out. We ended up deciding that every show should have one Islamic hook -- ideally, there will be at least one thing on one plot you couldn't do on a sitcom that didn't have Muslim characters. Ideally every episode the non-Muslim audience walks away with one little factoid about the religion. We also had to work on the language of the show. Corner Gas has all these swish to's and imaginary scenes; it can break the fourth wall; telegraph stories. So there's all these devices that you have at your disposal. Mosque is more straight ahead: we stayed away from flashbacks and imaginary stuff. But on the other hand Mosque has a couple -- Amaar and Rayyan [played, respectively, by Zaib Shaikh and Sitara Hewitt]– who have a will they or won't they thing going on. Which is hardly a new development, but it's the first Muslim will-they-or-won't they thing on TV, so that's kind of fun. And we have a four-episode arc at the end of the season, whereas Gas is strictly episodic. Mosque also has a father-daughter relationship, Baber and Layla, [Manoj Sood and Aliza Vellani] which was fun to write. On a more practical level I had to put together a writing room, hire directors, get to know the production staff -- 20 episodes is a huge order so it takes a lot of work just to get that train moving.

ROB SHERIDAN: It became obvious to me early on that Paul basically brought me over to be his own personal punching bag. So that was a disappointment. But other than that I’m proud of what we all accomplished. We were able to build on the strengths that were there and open the show up a bit. Twenty episodes is a big jump up from eight, obviously. The universe feels a little bigger. The characters came into sharper focus. And we still got to tell our little jokes.

DTOS: Who's your favourite character to write for? Who do you really like writing on the show?

P.M. Lacey. Oh no wait I'm not on that show anymore. I enjoyed writing for all of them. Baber is a funny cranky guy. Amaar is fun because he's a Charlie Browncan't-get-ahead guy. Rayyan is fun because she's a smart woman who does stupid things. Yasir [Carlo Rota] and Sarah [Sheila McCarthy] are fun because it's fun to write couples. The Mayor [Debra McGrath (no relation)] is fun to write before because we made her more of a crazy narcissist this year. I liked writing Magee [Derek McGrath (also, strangely, no relation -- to me or each other)] because he's quirky without being goofy.

R.S. It’s a great cast, yeah. Fred Tupper [Neil Crone] the conservative radio host, comes into his own a bit more this season, too. He’s interacting a little more with the characters, out of the radio station more often, and that’s fun. Personally I always like writing the slightly larger-than-life character you can take to Mars every now and again. Your Fonzies and your Kramers and your Ted Baxters. On Corner Gas it was probably Hank. Surprisingly I think we were able to give some of that to Baber. Manoj seemed to really have fun with the slightly crazier stuff. At the same time we gave him some very sweet storylines with his daughter and that kept him grounded.

DTOS: Obviously you're aware of CW's Aliens in America...

P.M. The who in the what now?

DTOS: It's interesting that on that show, the Muslim is the outside character, whereas here, they're the main characters. Do you think that's important?

P.M. I haven't seen the show, so I don't know, but it sounds like a fish out of water thing and ours is more about a community within a community. There isn't that much of a fish out of water thing in our show -- it's more about Muslims bumping up against each other and sometimes bumping up against the community at large.

R.S. After that show was announced at the May upfronts we watched a couple of clips in the writers’ room. Not so much to size up the competition as to try and steal ideas. Nothing really came of that, though. I think there was a sense from some critics that maybe that show was going to be sort of xenophobic and mean-spirited, but it doesn’t sound like that’s the case, so if it’s a good show I hope it does well. As Paul points out it’s really a fish-out-of-water story whereas Little Mosque is more like a school of fish on their own coral reef with scuba divers and plankton and… but perhaps I’m stretching the metaphor.

Part Two of my interview with Paul and Rob tomorrow.

Ahem. You Heard It Here First.

The Globe & Mail has an article, with quotes from Paul Mather, about the Corner Gas - Mosque writer harvest we talked about here yesterday.

The 37-year-old Mr. Mather is an especially bright star in network TV today – he is also the head writer of CBC's Rick Mercer Report, and, along with Corner Gas co-creators Brent Butt, Mark Farrell, David Story and Virginia Thompson, has won a pair of best-comedy Geminis for his work on Corner Gas. But he seems unrepentant about his decision to move to the competition. “Sure the two shows are rivals,” says Mr. Mather. “We both want our shows to be the best. And I'm going to give them a run for their money. When people tune in to Mosque this fall, I think they're really going to dig it. I'm going to bust my hump to earn the right to be slightly patronizing to my friends at Gas,” jokes Mr. Mather, who has worked on Corner Gas the past four seasons (the show's season finale is March 12).

Mr. Sheridan, whose other credits include The Red Green Show, was a story editor on Gas during its fourth season. Both reported for Mosque duty officially last week.

At CTV, Kevin White, whose earlier credits have included CBC's This Hour Has 22 Minutes, will replace Mr. Mather as Gas's show runner. “We're quite good friends,” says Mr. Mather of Mr. White, adding that, over the past few weeks, the two have been “fighting over writers by day and then going for drinks at night.”

CBC has recently confirmed it is going to order a second season of Little Mosque, but has yet to announce the number of episodes. “We expect to hear from the CBC in mid-March,” says Darling, whose company has offices in Toronto and Regina.

“The first season obviously struck a chord with people,” notes Mr. Mather. “It got great numbers that are sustainable. I have huge respect for the show, and in particular its first-season writers, such as Al Rae, Rebecca Schechter and Nawaz.”

At the same time, the series-jumper added: “ Corner Gas is great. And it's been a great thing for me. But it's moving into its fifth season – and it's nice, sometimes, to do something with a different set of challenges, different characters and different stories.”

When Writers Move Up

Generally when journalists source something (back in the days when they'd do this) they don't go with something until they have it from two or three sources.

Here in the Blood Ties office out in B.C. there's been enough people getting emails from other sources to convince me that this little piece of info is now an open secret in Canada's screenwriting community.

Little Mosque on the Prairie has hired away two writers from Corner Gas for next season.

Paul Mather (The Rick Mercer Report) is taking the showrunning reins and Robert Sheridan (Naked Josh) has also signed on. This is in addition to at least two of the writers from last season who will be continuing with the show.

This is great news -- not just for Little Mosque. Mosque (which we must remind people, was rushed to air - originally it wasn't supposed to debut til Summer '07) will get the advantage of two people who've worked in the most professional and successful writing room in Canada.

But it'll be good for Corner Gas too. The show is now a mature hit, and new blood and a new spin will be good. Plus people who've been there for a while can now move up. (Because there was nowhere else to go in Canada, that roster has been pretty static for the last few years.)

And it's that last bit that's best for the industry as a whole. Imagine! Competition for Canadian writers.

It almost makes me misty. If I had tears left to cry for Canadian TV, I mean.

Congrats to the staff of both shows -- Corner Gas is a class act, and Mosque now gets to sincerely try in good faith to live up to its hype.

Wheeeeeeeee!

And as Playback Screenwriting Star of Tomorrow Dennis Heaton just said to me, and I quote:

"I think anything that creates the mentality that writers are desirable, is good."

Added Heaton:

"You bastard! Are you quoting me again?"

Who Hates the Show More?

Which flavor of Muslim-on-Muslim criticism of Little Mosque on The Prairie would you like?

The liberal kind? Or the conservative kind?

The liberals say some pretty interesting things:

To begin with, a completely false picture of the Muslim community has been forced into the homes of non-Muslim Canadians. CBC has validated the image painted by Islamist groups that Muslim lives revolve around mosques -- nothing else. We don't play hockey, none of us have 9-to-5 day jobs, love affairs, play poker or, dare we say, cheat on our taxes or our spouses.

After watching the fourth episode of Little Mosque, we question the motives of the writer, producers, and directors of the show for focusing singularly on the most conservative segments of the Muslim community. Although the characters are meant to reflect the diversity of Muslim society, a closer examination reveals the show is not about liberal or progressive Muslims competing with conservatives. Rather, the writer has created a false dichotomy of "conservative" Muslims vs. "ultra-conservative" Muslims; the former being disingenuously passed on as feminist and progressive. Muslims who do not pay homage to their Imams; the liberal, secular or progressive segments of the community, are conspicuous by their complete absence from the Little Mosque narrative.

Writer Zarqa Nawaz has played a deft hand in attempting to sanitize what really goes on in the typical Canadian mosque. The hijacking of our religion, Islam, by politicized clerics affiliated with Saudi Arabia or Iran, finds no resonance in the sitcom.

While the conservatives, well...they don't think it's very dandy, either.

i think we need to look at it a bit deeper. why do we assume that we have to have some kind of this representation on tv? i would contend its better to not have this kind of show, despite whatever “benefits” may come of it - and i believe this moreso after seeing episode 2. you would think of everything on tv, a show called “little mosque” would be suitable for family viewing and be free of college sexual humor and people making out in front of their hijab’ed daughter, and unnecessary video of people displaying their sexual frustrations and showing people grabbing each others butts… oh wait… that was all in the wonderful representation of islam on tv

if its going to be done, it should be done right, but the way this show is done, the harms i think outweigh the benefits. its just simply unrealistic, lame, and counterproductive

Um, so nobody's happy?

Normally they say that's how you know it's the right balance. I have to say that for, me, as a non-Muslim who's bothered to read some of the Koran (though not all of it) I find the "liberal" side to be more provocative and resonant. I found the commentary from the conservatives interesting, but once you poke around you see very quickly that a whole lot of those critiques are coming from people in....Saudi Arabia. What does that mean? I have no idea. What does it mean to you?

So I don't know. I don't know. The whole thing gives me a Little Headache on the Prairie.

Little Mosque on the Future

Via Diane's Tv Eh? Site, comes this article by Bill Harris in the Toronto Sun reporting that this week, Little Mosque on the Prairie's numbers stabilized above one million viewers. (In fact, they were actually UP from the previous week.)

That's an important number on two fronts: First, it maintains Little Mosque's streak of attracting a million-plus viewers through four new episodes; and second, it halts the downward trend that had seen the numbers go from 2.1 million for the debut, to 1.2 million, to 1.085 million.

In other words, the audience for Little Mosque has stabilized for the time being.

Little Mosque was going up against the return of Lost on CTV on Wednesday (8 p.m.). Lost pulled in 1.58 million viewers, but that number is deceivingly low, since it was not shown in simulcast with a U.S. network (Canadians had the option of watching Lost at 10 p.m., too, on ABC).

I'm also starting to hear the rumor from a number of different sources (both within CBC and without) that CBC is poised to come back with a big order for more Mosque: As in, more than 13 eps. Probably 22.


Remember that CBC took a big gamble moving this show up in production, like they did. The elements may have been a little undercooked. But now that that gamble has paid off, and they have a sustainable audience, CBC has a tremendous opportunity.


A twenty-two episode order would allow for a lot of things that could wind up helping both Mosque, and the industry as a whole, provided they do the following:

1. Hire enough writers. A 22 episode order means you can actually build a large (for a Canadian show) staff. You could easily employ 2 mid level writers, a couple of juniors who are there to be trained, and a couple of senior writers. There are enough scripts to go around. You can take advantage of the room and make sure the material is fully cooked and actually funny on more than one level, all without losing what the people who like the show like about it.
   
   
2. Hire an experienced showrunner, and give them the authority and leeway to train the staff. This show has profile now, and what CBC should do is hire a really top, writer-showrunner who can guide the creative. They should also have a couple of people just below that showrunner and make it explicitly part of their hiring that they be trained in other aspects of the show world: editing, casting, post, etc. (Creator Zarqa Nawaz should definitely be one of those people. She's earned it.) If CBC is smart, they could come out of this next season with two more people who down the road may be able to run shows themselves. In any case, a showrunner with experience and context (and not just a CBC 'friend' type) is essential because the largest task they have before them is to...
   
   
3. Broaden the world. A 22 episode order almost demands that you expand the frame of the storytelling. Trying to come up with 22 more stories about how Muslims are different from other Canadians will be excrutiating. But if they imbue the town with its own quirkiness, and good natured humor, and get away from the simplistic, white people dumb cant they've taken so far, the town and the creative could really come alive and start to sing.

There is definitely something in this show that Canadians are responding to.

CBC should be congratulated for that.

This could be the first block in rebuilding CBC as a Television brand that Canadians are proud of -- I just hope they choose the right people, and build the show up, and not try to rest on their laurels and think they've created something perfect.

Take the time now they couldn't take before -- and let this show be the start of something -- not simply the show that got all that press, and all those eyeballs, cause of the hook.

I Hate The Line

There's a Toronto-based comic named Sabrina Jalees. She's all of 21 or 22, and is probably best-known nationally for appearing on a Muchmusic TV show where she makes fun of Videos. (Yup, the kind of thing Beavis and Butthead were doing almost fifteen years ago.) But she's also been a professional comic since she was 16, has played Just For Laughs and scored roles in several movies. She now writes bits for CBC Radio and the Toronto Star.

Sabrina is, I believe, of Pakistani descent. Or she's mixed-race, anyway, a real Canadian story. She also went on tour on the Allah Made Me Funny comedy tour across Canada last year -- which featured Muslim comedians, and played to mixed audiences.

I observed to a few people I knew awhile back that Sabrina is exactly the kind of person they should be considering for a junior writer on a show like Little Mosque on The Prairie. I still think that. I also think she's kind of winning, though she could use better material occasionally. But hey, she's out there doing it. And that's great.

But the latest thing she wrote in her column in the Toronto Star just made me a little sad.

Titled, "How Comedy Struggles With Being Race-Y," Jalees quotes heavily from comic Kenny Robinson, who runs a "Nubian Comedy Night" in Toronto, and Al Rae, who's one of the writers on Mosque.

Robinson says:

"Nubian night was born around the time of the L.A. riots, and the O.J. Simpson trial. It was a point where racial eyebrows were being raised in society ... we turned away 200 people our first show. We had no idea it was going to be such a huge success. It just goes to show, what's going on in the world will always affect what's going in comedy."

The question of how to approach race in comedy is a good one, and has never been more trenchant. The article goes on to recount one of the now semi-famous reasons Dave Chappelle gave for walking off his show -- about doing a sketch in blackface and getting the "wrong kind of laugh" from a white crew member.

Jalees gives Rae the last word:

"One of the biggest challenges of writing comedy where race is a component is to make sure you never get to that line," Rae says in response to the Chappelle incident.

"It's the reason that I'm reluctant to take my 14-year-old daughter to see Borat. I think he (Sasha Cohen) is clearly sophisticated enough to create one of the funniest motion pictures I've seen in years, which, on the surface, appears to be monstrously racist and inappropriate.

"The question is, when my daughter goes to see the film is she sophisticated enough as a viewer to understand? Not everyone will necessarily understand that he's satirizing anti-Semitism and not promoting it. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what the creator thinks.

"Do the vast majority of your audience understand what your intentions are?"

For the security of Al Rae's job, the future of Canadian television and the possibility of my guest-starring role on Little Mosque on the Prairie, I'm hoping the vast majority of its viewers do indeed.

Okay, now here's why the article makes me sad. These are all good, thorny questions. But younger comics like Jalees have grown up in the era of full-blown political correctness. So it's no wonder that we're talking about "gentle" comedies about race...and Lord knows, we all have to be careful about where "the line" is.

The problem is, "the line" isn't a line anymore. Most of the times it's been moved so far back that it's a meaningless, toothless distinction. And the line is different places for different people.

What was the whole thing about "reclaiming" words about? Wasn't the whole point of Gays calling each other Queer, and f*g and d*ke and all the other stuff about denying the power of those words to hurt? Wasn't the hip-hop embrace of "My Niggas" supposed to defuse the bomb that has always been that awful word, n***er?) Well, whatever it was meant to do or mean, it hasn't worked, obviously. Now we have black comics debating using the N-word over Michael Richards' outburst...and for the last week or so we've had the kabuki spectacle of one millionaire star of a hit TV show who's probably heard one hurtful word thrown at him way too many times, turn around and bust out another word at his millionaire co-star. So we haven't gotten beyond words.

We haven't gotten beyond race, either. Not by a long shot. But like the fiction of reclaiming words, the idea of comedy "celebrating" or reaching out across our differences is a nice idea that's not being practiced. For a lot of the same reasons.

If you go to Sabrina Jalees' website, she's got the tagline, "if you don't find me funny, you're probably a racist." Now, that's funny because she means it ironically. But in a very real sense, it's not funny at all. Cause it's kind of true. Well, not true. But that certainly is a prevailing attitude out there. That's a thing that holds us back. That accusation can get hurled and grind everything to a halt today. Why? Because to challenge the assertion would be to have an honest conversation about race. And that is something that we've simply forgotten how to do.

The fact is that we have gone far, far, far backwards in our conversation about race, in all art, but specially in Television. They're dated in many ways, but if you look at old episodes of All in the Family, or Good Times, or even The Jeffersons, you will see a far funnier, and more honest expression of our cultural differences than you ever see on TV today. Those 70's comedies were being more honest about race than any of the dramas of the time. When Mike Evans, who played Lionel on Family and later, The Jeffersons, died recently, I had the chance to back and watch some of his exchanges with Archie about race. They were sublime. Funny. True. Talk about promoting understanding. They were sophisticated in a way that you could not even have the barest hope of trying today.

Because today, the truth of race is that we don't talk to each other about it. Not really. The marketing machine has found a way to hive us off from each other. And we're all tacitly embracing this. There are movies now that black audiences go see and white ones don't. There are separate TV shows. Separate pundits. Separate magazines, radio, and media of all types. There is no conversation about race anymore, certainly nothing as honest as those exchanges between Lionel and Archie Bunker. In a very real sense, we've given up trying to understand each other -- except for the occasional, non-threatening comic who tries to work the other side of the fence. Ho hum.

I don't know how many white people saw Tyler Perry's Madea movie. I rented it because I saw him on Tavis Smiley and thought he was one of the most interesting guys I'd ever seen. I admire what he's trying to do in his community. But see...that's the point...that he's focused plainly on speaking to his own community. Time was, Perry would be the kind of guy making provocative comedy that reached across those lines.

Which brings me to Chappelle. Chappelle was wonderful and exciting because he was the first guy in a generation to really stick it. To throw down the truncheon and speak to EVERYONE's cultural biases. The fact that he eventually felt he couldn't go on maybe says something about who we are today. Maybe it just says something about him. But while he was saying it, Chappelle was the man precisely because he blew away all the carefulness, all the calcium that had crept between "the understanding between the races" through the years.

He. Moved. The Line.

Borat, too, is an interesting case. I felt uncomfortable with the movie because of the personal stuff, not because of the racial stuff. I respect and understand Rae's point - but this, too, is nothing new. One of the old criticisms of Archie Bunker back in the day was, "What if people don't get the joke?" And you know what? There were people who didn't get the joke--who thought the point of All in the Family was that no one saw Archie's common sense. But I'm betting there were far more people out there who, like me, learned a lot of lessons about race by seeing the face of a genial, ignorant racist on TV, and knowing the things he said and thought were unacceptable.

Things like All in the Family, and comics like Richard Pryor, hell, they were scary. And they shook things up. And sometimes, you weren't sure if you should be laughing, and that made you think, too.

In contrast, I have no problem watching the hicks on Little Mosque be completely boorish and awful to the Muslim characters, because that doesn't threaten me at all. I'm evolved. I don't think that way. I can feel nice and superior. Of course, it's not funny. And because there's not an ounce of subtlety to it, it doesn't run the risk of actually tripping me up on my lingering mixed feelings, which are probably in there waiting to be exposed by a surprising joke that makes me go, "oh, wait, why did I laugh there? Is that me?"

In comedy, if your object is never to cross the line, then you never learn where the line is, and that always, always, always means that the line gets moved steadily back.

It's a shame that Sabrina Jalees works in a world where the line is where it is, wherever it is, today. Because race is screwed up in this country (Canada.) It's even more screwed up in the USA, and it's no prize through Europe these days, either. There's nothing gentle about racism, and there's nothing gentle about gentle comedy that tries to defuse racism, either. It's not gentle. It's toothless. And if you're really going to take on something as deep as our ingrained attitudes about each other, you need those teeth, my friends.

Where's Archie Bunker when you need him?

Little Mosque: My Take

Okay, so I finally got a chance to see the second episode of Little Mosque on the Prairie.

I was really reticent about posting anything negative about the show at all, because I thought that those premiere numbers and the coverage was such a good step in the right direction for CBC that I don't want to rain on the parade. But let's face it, no show is perfect. And if CBC wants a long term hit with the show, there's definitely some things that need a good tweak.

I did not think the Pilot of Mosque was very good television. The most interesting thing about it was the concept. The execution, I thought, was lacking. I thought Episode Two was better, which was a personal relief.

You can argue all you want about the backseat driving discussions -- ie: the howiwouldhavedoneits -- it should have been edgier, etc, etc, but on the merits of the show they say they're going for -- a straight down the middle family, wide appeal comedy, here's what I think's good, and what needs attention in the next batch of eps (assuming, as seems likely, that the show gets a pickup.)

The Good:

• Babur. I think this character is clearly the Hiro of the show. (See what I did there? I made a pun, kind of, on the guy from Heroes. Aren't I just so...oh wait...arrrggh...I just broke my arm patting myself on the back. ow. ow.) Babur is a muslim Archie Bunker. He's intolerant and dogmatic, conservative and doesn't question things. He's rigid and inflexible, but still somehow pretty lovable. The masterstroke: making him a single father of a Canadianized girl. I wish they'd hit a little harder the fact that he didn't push the hijab question because he wants his daughter to fit in, not because he didn't want to talk to her about her period. This plotline has the most juice in the show.
  
• Yasir. He proves it on 24, but CarloRota is clearly a star. He's got presence for miles, a good nature, and you just want to spend time with him.
• Sheila McCarthy. I think her character is odd. It's problematic to use her, as they did in the pilot, to express "outsider" views of Islam (like being more ignorant of how Ramadan starts, or what foods are traditional, etc, when in her backstory she converted long enough ago that she has an adult daughter with Yasir. But in both the pilot and the 2nd episode, she had little comic awkward moments -- with the press in Ep. 1 and the Protesters in Ep.2 where she showed a goofy looseness that was winning.)
• The occasional sharp line. The joke about the pot-smoking guy joining the United Church, the "You dress like a protestant. You mean Prostitute. No I mean protestant." Occasionally, there are lines that land that are good. It would be easier if the premises were inherently more funny, but there you go.
  

The Bad:

• Zaib. He looks good, he could probably be good in his role as the Imam, but he mugs and overacts insanely. The guy needs to be reined in, hard. It's like he believes no one will find it funny unless he actually rolls his eyes. (I'm not dreaming that, am I? He really did roll his eyes?)
• Wake Up, White People! Neil Crone, who plays the right wing radio host, is a great comedian who is absolutely stranded in his role. It's decent, at least, that they managed to spin it in Episode 2 that he was fomenting intra-Muslim conflict as well as conflict with the community...but come on. Compare this character to Maurice Minnifield in Northern Exposure. Where does he go in three eps? What is the slightest bit interesting about him?
• Fatima I hate to say this, but the fact that Sheila McCarthy's character got to use her as a tactic to play on the feminist protestor's political correctness (because she's a person of color, see?) was the best use of this character so far. She plays the same role in the show as Babur. Two characters who play exactly the same role does not work in Comedy. You don't need two Dumb Joeys...you don't need two space cadet Phoebes, and you don't need Fatima and Babur, both. One's gotta show a different side or it's gonna be a bitch trying to service them both. It's not enough that she's a person of color. What makes her distinct and unique? She was useful as a plot point (she's a woman and wants the barrier too!) but useful as a plot point does not a good character make.
  
• The Imam vs. Rayann. The standard Romantic, "they hate each other, but they like each other" thing that they're going to play here is a big problem for one big reason: there's nothing keeping them apart. She's a progressive single Muslim, He's a progressive single Muslim. They live in a town where Muslims are a serous minority. They agree on most things theologically. What's keeping them apart? What's the obstacle? Diane was brainy and Sam was dumb and brawny. Then they got together, and once it didn't work, the obstacle was external: Frasier. (Thanks to my friend with the house for this point.) Also, they missed an opportunity by putting the most interesting thing about Rayann: that she discovered her faith as an adult, in the backstory. Why would you not have dramatized this journey in the show? Could have been a brilliant way in. If they're not careful, Rayann could turn into a scold.
  
• The Direction. From scenes that are overacted, to scenes that are staged wrong, the comedy is consistently crushed through bad choices in shooting. You also get the sense that there's A LOT of editing surgery going on to put this together. Two examples that explain all: The Pilot, where the Imam's on the phone and is mistaken for a terrorist. The women in front of him reacts, big, and goes off. If only that was staged as a slow burn with her behind him, it would have actually have been funny. Dont' announce, "ATTENTION AUDIENCE, JOKE AHEAD!" Trust them to find funny things funny. Example two is in Ep 2, the sequence where the women get on the board to prevent the men from putting up the barrier again. This could have been rich. But it was shot indistinctly, there was no build to it, and a potentially funny sequence (Imagine what Niles Crane would have done here, or hell, Lucy) was as flat as the board it was played on.
• The Scheduling. Good God Almighty. The one thing the CBC has going for it is that because it's not a slave to simulcasts, it can put a show on and run it and not move it, so people can get used to when it's on. So they premiere in one slot, move, run a rerun, then get pre-empted. Are they TRYING to shake off 500, 000 viewers, or what.
  

There's also a lot of merit in what Alex said when he wrote about the show:

A really clever look at Canadian society, seen from the point of view of people who are outsiders in some ways and insiders in others. Sometimes it takes a fish out of water to notice how odd terrestrial critters really are. This is where the show really fails for me. I don't feel its white characters are keenly observed at all. They seem to be mostly racist and all stupid. Whereas I bet most white people in the Canadian Prairies are extremely tolerant, and racists are in the minority. Most Canadians bend over backwards to be nice to minorities (except possibly not to the Natives), reserving their passive aggression and venom for empowered white people. Instead of making out every white character to be a buffoon, why not write episodes based on actual observation of white society, from a Muslim's perspective? How white people's kids are defiant to their faces? How white women wear push-up bras and low-cut shirts but get mad when people stare at their breasts? How white people worship an impoverished, anti-intellectual, rabble-rousing mystic carpenter and cherish money, hierarchy and dogma? Etc.

I think the show really does have promise. It's still not my type of humor, but I wish CBC every success with it, and I hope it will lead to lots more "higher concept, boundary breaking" shows on CBC.

And like Matt Watts observed a few days ago, it would be nice, now that they have their feel-good Muslim comedy, if at least one or two of those new boundary breakers was pitched to be edgier and more clever, a la the last time CBC really, really broke through with a critical homegrown hit: those first glorious eps of The Newsroom. (Before Auteur Ken disappeared up his own digestive tract, I mean.)

UPDATE 02/20/2007: I'm closing comments for this post. I'm tired of deleting ignorance. That is all.

Little Mosque: Episode 2

Overnights: 1.2 Million viewers.

That's a little less than a 50% drop, but...

...the initial number was off-the-charts large. Two million two is a ridiculous number for a TV show in Canada. That's CSI, Grey's Anatomy numbers. So the question is, when is a loss of half your audience not a bad thing? There'll be no answer to that question for another week.

...the CBC screwed up by moving the timeslot, and by confusion over the Monday showing being new or a second repeat.

If the dropoff in week three isn't major, even if it retains somewhere around the million mark, this will be a monumental piece of good news for CBC. Even with that hanging over, my guess is we'll hear about a pickup of 13 episodes very soon.

Best part about that is that now I won't feel like I'm piling on when I write about how I think the show could be a lot better. But that's for another day when I have time. For now, I think there's a lot of people at CBC changing their drawers. At least I hope they are.

Thanks to my secret-squirrel spies.

The Numbers are In, and...

...Little Mosque did over 2 million viewers last night.

Now, that is great news for CBC and for Canadian TV generally...

...unless the dropoff next week is horriffic. The numbers will drop. But how much? We'll see.

In any case, I hope everybody basks. The show is not without its problems, but they're fixable. I'm glad they did well.

Little Mosque: A Slam Dunk, Sez Doyle

Well. You don't get reviews much better than this:

Today, we celebrate a triumph. What arrives tonight on CBC is the smartest thing the broadcaster has done in years.

Little Mosque on the Prairie (CBC, 8:30 p.m.) is no masterpiece of comedy or social observation. It's hokey as hell. But it's terrifically good-natured, has a few terrific jokes and its mere existence is a grand-slam assertion that Canadian TV is different and that the best of Canadian TV amounts to a rejection of the hegemony of U.S. network TV.

He goes on:

It's notable that Little Mosque on the Prairie, while it's a sitcom, isn't derived from the U.S., network model. It has a British feel to it. The gentle mocking of a small community and celebration of the eccentrics within it has been a Britcom staple for years -- shows such as Ballykissangel, Hamish Macbeth and Doc Martin have mined the genre with glorious results.

And the important thing is this -- popular, consequential Canadian TV is a vigorous demonstration of our difference from the United States in our attitudes and national character. Trailer Park Boys celebrates lowlifes, dope-smoking and all manner of vulgarity. Da Vinci's Inquest and Intelligence deal with the reality of a dope economy and the thin line between cops and criminals. Corner Gas asserts that there's wonderful entertainment in the most gentle, never-nasty humour.

The topics and the substance of these shows stand as rejections of the U.S. network style and preoccupations. Little Mosque on the Prairie is nobly in that Canadian tradition. The U.S. media can huff and puff in wonder, but this is who we are, and we're fine with it, thanks. And thanks to CBC for doing its job.

So. There it is.

Little Mosque In The Prairie premieres on CBC Tuesday night, and Repeats Wednesday

Party Allah Time!

Which, by the way, is another way better ad line.

Little Mosque on The Prairie is starting to get reviews and not just hype. John Doyle gave it a happy little blurb in next Tuesday's TV picks. (not online) And Toronto's NOW Magazine weighed in with a mostly positive review, for what it's worth.

But more importantly, a friend and fellow soldier in the trenches of the industry ripped me a new one yesterday about this post for Little Mosque. She makes a lot of good points, so I'll reproduce what she wrote below:

I'm just really happy and honestly excited
for the world that every Muslim i'm aware of who's seen the show has really
loved it (including several who work at the post-production place where
they're cutting it; and the 3 intelligent men on the panel on CNN). That's
rather significant. I also feel it's funnier than Corner Gas ,
and more entertaining because it explores new, topically-hot
territory (a tonic to my chronic sitcom fatigue syndrome.)

My friend's in a unique position to judge some of these things since, for a while, she (or is it HE?) was one of them...A network person. Here's what they say about that:

Soon after 9/11 happened, i proclaimed to my colleague at [other Canadian network that is not the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation] we needed a Muslim comedy - we needed
to see Muslims with a sense of humour. i maintain(ed) that this could have
an enormous impact on Muslim/non-Muslim relations. (my colleague basically
dismissed me like i was a joke, myself...) so imagine how heartened I was
last night - just imagine, Denis! me, heartened! - when, after seeing a
series of truly funny clips from the show, the 3 intelligent Muslim men on
CNN said (laughing/smiling) that this kind of show "will have a much greater
positive effect than any think tank or interfaith counsel could ever
have..." - or words to that effect.

i live by the credo that humour can help us overcome almost anything.
so i hope this show succeeds because it would be a kind of victory for Humour.

and yes, let's hope people find it funny. trust me, if Corner Gas is funny,
Little Mosque is funny.

And then s(he) said, "Tell them, Make Jokes, Not War"

Allrighty then. Thanks for sharing.

The only worry I have, of course, is that it's nice that Muslims who see it seem to like it. But for CBC to hit with this show, it can't just appeal to that group. And if they're the only ones watching, it won't exactly strike a blow for understanding, either.

When the reviews roll in, I hope it will be given a fair shot and judged for what it is: this is not supposed to be hip stuff. It's supposed to be family comedy. Or so I gather. The messages get mixed when you mix in words like "edgy" with "family comedy."

I want to say something else here, because sometimes I get worried that I'll write something here that can be co-opted by people whom I have no truck with whatsoever: the CBC bashers. I think CBC, and CBC Management, sometimes don't make the best decisions. I sometimes question their expertise. Lord knows they do give everyone cause to do so.

I don't question, ever, the need for a CBC. Canada, a country that is, and will forever be, dominated culturally by the largest producer of cultural product the world has ever known. The nation has a fragile sense of itself at the best of times. A sparsely populated, huge land like Canada, even in the age of satellite and microwave and download and broadband, needs a strong national broadcaster to knit it together.

And since the private broadcasters in this country don't always stress their hometown bonafides as much as they should, that makes CBC even more important. It should not be a PBS North. It should not be the kind of station that shows only unpopular things that the privates can't make money on. It should be concerned, to some extent, about ratings. And it should try to get them. Just, you know...be smart about it.

I take pride in the fact that every time - how do I say this without attracting the hit aggregators that turn every web discussion that mentions this into a wasteland -- okay, how about this - every time the subject of that one country over there comes up and there's that other people living in the same kind of land that are sort of unhappy with that country and want their own stuff -- you follow my drift here, right? Anyway -- I think it's good that every time CBC News covers that, both sides complain about CBC's biased the other way. I like the fact that when I watch CBC News, it's like watching BBC News, and so much better than CNN News.

And here's my main point: I like the fact that the reason CBC is getting all this pre-press for Mosque in the first place is that it's the only network, certainly in North America, that WOULD have the guts to take a chance on this show.

That's the thing to remember. Whether the execution works, or doesn't. Whether people watch, or don't. I hope it works wonders for CBC. But if it doesn't, I hope they'll get right up on the horse and greenlight another show that's daring. And figure out if they can help execute it better.

Anyway, that's the last thing you'll hear from me about Little Mosque - -unfortunately the timing is really bad for me. I'm going to try to see the show Tuesday when it premieres, but I'm going to be neck deep in work. Please feel free to leave comments and tell me what you thought of it.