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The Big Picture

In the muddled, eternally-in-crisis world of Canadian TV, things are looking good. Sort of.

For a start, there are shows coming - real shows, with actors, scripts and budgets. Some are good, some might even be enormously entertaining, and others will probably be mediocre or worse. You'll decide which show is a hit.

Most Canadian productions arrive mid-season, after Christmas. Thus, few are available for authentic review at this point. However, there are clear indications that some dramas, TV movies and miniseries are worth your attention.

If there's an overall theme, it's drama and comedy derived from the familiar. It's all about us. Our Canada, our obsessions, our tales - true-crime stories, celebrity biographies and hockey. CBC Television has the series. CTV has the TV movies and miniseries. Global has a little of both, plus documentaries.

Mind you, CBC takes a Soviet-era, Kremlin-like stance on advance notice of its shows. Asked to provide a list of what's coming between now and late January, CBC's outsourced publicity company essentially provided a list of what's airing next week. Later came notice of two other shows, neither of which I'd pick as really notable.

It seems some CBC shows don't exist until some CBC executive says they exist, which happens in November. This is weird. Thousands of people have seen snippets of the hockey drama MVP on YouTube. The show looks sensationally good and there's much buzz, but it doesn't exist until the Kremlin says it exists. Advance buzz isn't a CBC thing. CBC's policy is this: Whatever you say, say nothing.

What I'm saying here is that there is much to anticipate with pleasure.

Drama and comedy series

The Tudors (CBC, starts Oct. 2) oozes sex and sensuality, and it is drop-dead cool. A Canada-Ireland production already seen on Showtime in the United States, it's a briskly paced, sharply written and visually sumptuous retelling of Henry VIII's life and times. His life mainly involved women and sport, it seems, and the times were turbulent. Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays Henry as a rock-star monarch, busily rogering every young woman in the court while his advisers (Sam Neill plays Cardinal Wolsey; Henry Czerny plays the Duke of Norfolk) try to manipulate their headstrong monarch.

Heartland (CBC, starts Oct. 14) is, in contrast, very family-friendly. It's about a family that operates a horse ranch in Alberta and whose special mission is to rescue and nurture abused horses. The acting is wooden, but the horses are the stars anyway.

Da Kink in My Hair (Global, starts Oct. 14) is a sitcom derived from Trey Anthony's award-winning play. Set at Letty's, a hair salon in Toronto's Caribbean community, it's emphatically about strong, witty black women who speak their minds. The first episode (with Ordena Stephens-Thompson, Ngozi Paul and Trey Anthony starring) is trying way too hard to be sharp, and ends up being bluntly laboured and awkward.

Torchwood (CBC, starts Oct. 5) is another CBC/BBC co-production, considerably more British than Canadian. A fun sci-fi drama created by Russell T. Davies, who modernized Dr. Who, it is a sort-of Dr. Who spin-off, starring John Barrowman and Eve Myles. Set at the Cardiff branch of the fictional Torchwood Institute, the heroes deal with ghosties, goblins and a variety of other supernatural eruptions. There's an air of manic irony running through it, which will likely appeal to teenagers.

Across the River to Motor City (CITY-TV, starts Nov. 22) is perhaps the most ambitious of the new Canadian dramas. Set both in Detroit and in Windsor, Ont., and in both the present and the 1960s, it's about private eye Ben Ford (played in youth by Sasha Roiz, and in old age by David Fox), whose girlfriend disappeared on the day of the JFK assassination. Her remains are finally found, and Ben must unravel what happened. Noirish, moody and complex, it's got an awful lot of plot.

The Jon Dore Television Show (Comedy, starts Oct. 17) is a vehicle for the guy familiar from his "reporting" antics on Canadian Idol. According to Comedy, "Dore's flat-out, crazy take on life is told through an array of real-life interviews, off-the-wall tangents and wild antics." Yes, well, Dore's a popular comic famous for his unabashedly adolescent humour.

Coming sooner or later: jPod (CBC) is a series based on Douglas Coupland's bestselling novel. It revolves around Ethan (David Kopp) and five co-workers at a company that designs electronic games. It's called jPod because a bunch of people whose first or last names begin with the letter "J" are obliged to work together. They design the games, josh and send sarcastic e-mails. Ethan's mom (Sherry Miller) has her own grow-op and gets into scrapes with bikers. Ethan's dad (Alan Thicke) has taken up acting and fancies himself a thespian. Actually, he's something of an idiot. From a set visit this summer, I'd guess Thicke is the star, his character being crazy-sleazy, and Thicke relishing the absurdist humour.

The Border (CBC) "confronts Canada's toughest border-security issues" according to the CBC. It's about an outfit called the Immigration and Customs Security (ICS) Squad, and it stars James McGowan, Sofia Milos, Graham Abbey and Catherine Disher. An expensive bet for CBC, the series is big on action and intrigue, in a genre that requires oodles of ingenuity in the writing and directing. The rough pilot episode I've seen is promising but dramatically wobbly.

MVP (CBC) might well be a marvellously attractive, fun Canadian soap. It's hunks, babes, hockey and hot-to-trot puck bunnies. A down-and-dirty look at the lives of professional hockey players and their wives, girlfriends and mistresses, the small amount of rough material I've seen is a whole pile of fun. Like the BBC's Footballers' Wives, it finds more fun in the bedrooms and kitchens of the players and their families than on the ice. The NHL may hate it for the picture it paints of pro hockey's backstabbing, skirt-casing players and ruthless management, but it looks delicious.

Search and Rescue (Global) is about the lives of four members of a Canadian Coast Guard Search and Rescue team serving in the Pacific Northwest. The scenery is also emphasized, apparently, and the story's focus is on "imperfect, offbeat and sometimes difficult heroes."

TV movies and miniseries

To Serve and Protect: Tragedy at Mayerthorpe (CTV) dramatizes the shooting of four RCMP officers in Alberta in 2005. Henry Czerny and Brian Markinson star. Would Be Kings (CTV), a miniseries from the makers of The Eleventh Hour, is about corruption in a police family. The cast includes Stephen McHattie, Ben Bass and Natasha Henstridge.

The Terrorist Next Door (CTV) is about the story of Ahmed Ressam, the so-called Millennium Bomber based in Vancouver who was arrested in 1999 for plotting to blow up the Los Angeles airport. Chenier Hundal, Kathleen Robertson and Michael Ironside star, and the director is Jerry Ciccoritti (Trudeau).

CTV also has called Elijah, about aboriginal MLA Elijah Harper, who stopped the Meech Lake Accord. Billy Merasty plays the lead.

One of CBC's big productions is the miniseries Céline - yes, about the life and times of Celine Dion, with newcomer Christine Ghawi in the lead role.

Reality, variety, docs and miscellaneous

No Opportunity Wasted (CBC, starts Oct. 3) is created by and presented by Phil Keoghan, the host of CBS's The Amazing Race. People are given 72 hours to overcome a personal fear or achieve something they've lacked the courage to attempt. Who Do You Think You Are? (CBC, starts Oct. 11) is a genealogy show for Canadian celebs. Don Cherry, Margaret Trudeau and Sonja Smits, among others, find their roots. Triple Sensation (CBC, starts Oct. 7) comes from Garth Drabinsky, and is a talent search for the best unknowns who can sing, dance and act.

Canadaville (CBC) is about billionaire Frank Stronach's experiment in creating a community called Canadaville for people left destitute in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Polar Bear Fever (CBC) examines the real and the political status of the polar bear, symbol of possible catastrophe from global warming. It promises to "deconstruct" the animal.

Diamond Road (TVOntario, starts Oct. 17) is a three-part examination of the diamond trade. It uses key players - a prospector, an impoverished miner, a child cutter, a celebrity jeweller, and a high-end dealer - to teach us how these "tiny bits of carbon" make multimillionaires of some and near-slaves of others.

Mars Rising (Discovery, starts Oct. 7) is a companion doc to the drama Race to Mars and examines the ins and outs of a possible mission to Mars.

Apart, that is from various attempts to make popular and successful Canadian TV programming.