It's Valentine's Day, and love is in the air, every sight and every sound, but I wish people would consider a little creativity on the big day.The past fortnight has been a stream of TV commercials on this theme. On our local channels there are spots for life-shortening chocolate and floral arrangements. On the higher-end channels, like CNN and AandE, it's ads for jewellery and BMWs. And it's the same message over and over: Don't forget Valentine's Day, or you'll die old and alone.
Which is fair enough, but for now, why stick to the standard Valentine bestowments? Every year people give each other the same thing -- a card, chocolate, flowers, the Chia Pet someone gave them at Christmas. Not much creativity there.
I'm fully aware Valentine's Day is all a scam co-perpetrated by the greeting-card companies and a secret society of dentists, but there's still no way to avoid it.
Even if you're only pretending to participate, try to be different this year.
Instead of a card, get thee to a newsstand and buy your loved one a fine British newspaper, filled with stories about those lovebirds Charles and Camilla. In place of chocolate, order a pizza for the pair of you.
That way you've made it a shared experience. Flowers? They'll be dead next day. Make it a gift that will keep on giving, like an ant farm or a rock tumbler.
Do try to think outside the guidelines, just leave me out of it. And please be careful. I once gave my sweetheart a very nice miniature cactus with a tiny sombrero on Valentine's Day, which I thought showed imagination. She hurled it at my head.
In fact it's probably safer to take your Valentine where you can find it, which is why I'll just assume my treat this year is the return of The Newsroom (CBC, 8:30 p.m.). It's our funny Valentine.
The Newsroom is TV auteur Ken Finkleman's legacy to Canadian television.
The first version that aired a decade ago was a shock to our quaint little broadcast industry, but only because there had never been a show like it on a Canadian network before.
Here was a workplace sitcom, set in a TV news department, but it sure wasn't The Mary Tyler Moore Show. This was a thinly disguised version of life at the CBC, although nobody ever came out and said it, which meant this was a TV newsroom at a Crown corporation. Everyone working there was either far too smart or wildly underqualified for the job they held. And some were so self-possessed it didn't matter.
Especially George.
George is fictional news director George Findlay, played by Finkleman, a nice Winnipeg boy around whom The Newsroom universe rotates. George was presented to us as quite a guy: a conniving, career-climbing CBC lifer. George was running the newscast but the last thing he cared about was the news. Breaking stories could be streaming in on the wires, but George was more concerned with getting a decent bran muffin.
George was the type of news director whose method of pulling his lead anchor through a personal crisis was to keep feeding him prescription painkillers and antidepressants.
George was the heart of the original Newsroom, and on the subsequent sequel series and TV movie. He's also the central figure of this latest version, where once again George is surrounded by constant crisis but still too wrapped up in himself to notice.
The first show opens with a typical Newsroom moment: George is in his office screening Iraqi-war news footage he taped off of CNN. He freeze-frames the picture to point out a particular clump of shrubbery, and tells a colleague he'd like the same grass in his planters at home. The colleague turns out to be his gardener. George is back.
The writing is as edgy as before, maybe even more so. George is instructed to send dull-witted anchor Jim Walcott (Peter Keleghan) to Afghanistan, in order to keep up with the other networks who have people there. Informed he's flying to Kabul, Jim thinks he's going to the Caribbean.
Once in Kabul, Jim's feel-good report on the beloved pets of a war-torn country is interrupted by an explosion in the near distance. That storyline is neatly paralleled with a developing situation back home: Apparently George is on the shortlist for the Order of Canada. George is giddy about the news, until he's bumped off the list by Jim, who has been kidnapped by terrorists and is being held for ransom.
The terrorists want $2-million -- that's U.S. -- making Jim an instant candidate for martyrdom. George is naturally aghast.
No more details, except to say it's likely the sharpest half-hour I've seen on Canadian TV this year. Of course there's nothing funny about terrorists kidnapping journalists, but The Newsroom manages to deftly wring some humour out of the situation. Most of the supporting characters from previous Newsrooms are gone, save for Keleghan and Karen Hines, back again as a splendidly bitter news producer. She's de-lovely, but still capable of the most melting glare on television.
And George is a classic Canadian figure. It's no small accomplishment to make such a wretched character seem like a real person, but Finkleman has created an original.
Certainly there's no one like George actually working at CBC. Or at least nobody I've ever met.
More directly themed for Valentine's Day is Kinsey on American Experience (PBS, 9 p.m.), a new profile of the groundbreaking sex researcher. Unlike the recent feature film starring Liam Neeson, this account is culled directly from Dr. Alfred Kinsey's original research materials.
Also this evening: The Passionate Eye (CBC, 9 p.m.) airs the new documentary Return to Sender, chronicling the sad case of Alexandra, a Romanian girl adopted years ago by a Canadian couple who then abruptly shipped her back to her homeland.
This well-intended film by Mary Anne Alton picks up the story 13 years later. The girl is now a young woman living in one of Bucharest's most destitute neighbourhoods. Alexandra appears to have no citizenship status with either the Canadian or Romanian governments, which has left her with a bleak future. And she still doesn't understand why she was sent home.
Dates and times may vary across the country. Check listings or visit http://www.globeandmail.com/tv
John Doyle returns on Feb. 21.