SUNDAY
Carl2
Teletoon, 7 p.m.
It's another month before the kids head back to school and the new TV season begins, and those two events signaling the unofficial start of fall are neatly combined in this sneak peek at an upcoming Canadian-made animated series for tweens. In case you've forgotten your algebra, your first review lesson is Carl2 or Carl squared means Carl times two. Fourteen-year-old Carl thinks he's got it made when he inadvertently ends up with a clone of his teenage slacker self. Yes! A secret double who can do his homework and chores, and deal with the 'rents and his scary punked-out older sister Chloe, while he hangs with his best friend Jamie and spends all night blogging. What could be cooler? Well, thanks to some doggy drool that accidentally gets mixed in with Carl's DNA, doppelganger C2 has a bit of the puppy about him. He's got the sincere, eager, fearless and goofy traits of the family pet to Carl's witty adolescent angst and 'tude, setting up a perpetual comedy of errors. In tonight's preview episode, when C2 gets a job to pay for a birthday gift for Carl's girlfriend Skye, Carl ends up as one overexposed and embarrassed dude. It turns out C2's been working as a nude model at the local art college. But naturally -- this is an all-ages production, after all -- C2 has Carl covered. The sweet and charmingly funny cartoon series makes its official debut on Sept. 3.
MONDAY
Rocked: Sum 41 in Congo
MuchMusic, 9 p.m.
Pop punksters Sum 41 exchange bratty banter as they receive vaccinations before heading to the Democratic Republic of Congo. One of the guys lifts his T-shirt sleeve saying he wants his needle in the butt, the butt of the female nude tattooed on his shoulder, that is. It's one of few lighthearted notes in this doc about the band's visit to the war-ravaged region of Africa in May 2004 that ended in their emergency evacuation. Traveling with War Child Canada, frontman (and Avril Lavigne fiancé) Deryck Whibley and the band get an unsettling firsthand look at the devastating effects of war they had come to film when civil strife breaks out, right outside their hotel. The band's first outing in Congo is, improbably, a trek into the hills searching for gorillas to see how the animals are faring after the turmoil of war. Then they spend several days at schools and orphanages interviewing former boy soldiers, young rape victims and girls abandoned by their families. The children delightedly mug for the cameras and entertain and humble the band members with awesome rhythmic singing and dancing, but these visits reveal the resignation to fate behind the young Congolese's childish exuberance. Bold blocks of text running throughout Rocked deliver grim statistics about what has happened to the Congolese people: 3.5 million killed; 2 million displaced; one in three females raped; tens of thousands of boys recruited as soldiers. In honour of the UN peacekeeper Chuck Pelletier who rescued them after a tension-filled siege,first inside their hotel and then at a UN compound, the grateful band named their most recent CD, Chuck. This doc delivers a strong message about the suffering among the children of Congo that's sure to connect with Sum 41's teen fans. A note to teachers planning to use the film as part of MuchMusic's Cable in Classroom offering: The band members, understandably, resort to some colourful language when threatened by the violence that led to their evacuation.
WEDNESDAY
Human Edge:
Stranger with a Camera
TVO, 10 p.m.
This repeat of a film that first aired two years ago is a compelling meditation on the role of media in society. In telling the story of the 1967 murder of Montreal documentary filmmaker Hugh O'Connor by Kentucky landowner Hobart Ison who was enraged over media portrayals of impoverished Appalachia, Elizabeth Barret explores the event as both an insider -- she grew up jut down the road from the site of the shooting -- and as an objective documentarian. Balancing sensitivity to her community with the need to explore a difficult part of its history, Barret quietly affirms the need to expose social injustice without shaming those portrayed. She concludes her film with these words: "What are the responsibilities of any of us who take the images of other people and put them to our own uses? Hobart Ison was wrong to kill Hugh O'Connor. But saying that is not enough for me. It is the filmmaker's job, my job, to tell fairly what I see -- to be true to the experiences of both Hugh O'Connor and Hobart Ison -- and in the end, to trust that that is enough."