The musical Grease cast a pall over my undergraduate years.
It was 1978. The movie version came out and the hits from the soundtrack were all over the charts, and on the radio constantly.
This, remember (doesn't matter if you don't), was a time of radical change in the pop music racket. A fella like me spent time listening to the Stranglers, Elvis Costello, the Buzzcocks – 1978 was the year of the immortal Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've) – and in Dublin, the Boomtown Rats were hometown hero-rebels.
But Grease was the big thing. Upstairs at the back of the bus, gangs of schoolgirls would burst into song. "I got chills, they're multiplying/And I'm losing control/'Cos the power, you're supplying/It's electrifying!" This was in the middle of the day. At night, the same performance might be preceded by, "Tell me about it stud …" It was mortifying, not electrifying.
This is a long-winded way of telling you that Grease: Live (Sunday, Fox, CTV, 7 p.m. ET) is the big deal this weekend. It's a combo of the original stage musical and the 1978 film, apparently, with Julianne Hough as Sandy, Aaron Tveit as Danny, Vanessa Hudgens as Betty Rizzo and our own Carly Rae Jepsen as Frenchy, that timeless icon of things pink.
Live broadcasts of musicals are a thing now. They can generate huge viewing numbers and intense social-media interaction. Also, because it happens only once, viewers see the ads, which sell at a premium price. I could tell you the plot, but I don't want to be reminded. Enjoy it. I will. Things change; the magic of live performance doesn't. You want to sing along? Go for it.
W5 (Saturday, CTV, 7 p.m.) has a remarkable and lengthy report by Victor Malarek about a Canadian medical mission in Eastern Ukraine to treat wounded soldiers and victims of the ongoing conflict there. To date, some 8,000 combatants on both sides have been killed and 17,000 people wounded.
At the Ukraine Military Hospital, Toronto surgeon Dr. Oleh Antonyshyn, a Canadian of Ukrainian background, leads a group of 22 colleagues – surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses and one occupational therapist – who treat soldiers and others. This is not a gory report on the severely injured in a military conflict. It's about what drives the Canadian team to do this work.
As one anesthesiologist says of the people he is treating, "These are not Navy Seals. You see these kids, they are not even trained professional soldiers. They get thrown up to the front line and half their face is blown off. I'm blessed that I had parents who moved from here to Canada. Otherwise I'd be here fighting in a war."
One such young man is 24-year-old Rodeon Tristan. He was shot in the head by a sniper in June, 2015, and kept alive by medics at the scene, but his right eye and much of the right side of his face were damaged. He's an articulate, resilient young man who ponders the prospect of having his face reconstructed. He says he just wants to look more normal because people scream when they see his face. And then there is an 11-year-old boy who found a grenade that exploded, killing his younger brother and leaving him a triple amputee.
Lucha Underground (Sunday, TLN, 10 p.m.) arrives in Canada. It is an utterly demented Mexican wrestling show/drama series that originates with the El Rey Network in the United States. It celebrates the lucha libre style of wrestling popular in Mexico.
Each episode contains multiple acrobatic fights featuring "luchadores," but that's not all – the alleged mythic beginnings of the fighting style are featured, too. There are bizarre scenes from Aztec mythology that are supposed to explain everything – heroic stories of men and women learning to be tough and protect their family honour. Unbelievable stuff.