ABC’s ‘Pushing Daisies’ - a kind of contemporary fairy tale about a meek, mild-mannered baker (Lee Pace) who can bring back the dead … for 60 seconds.
Monday
Last season, Mondays were a nightmare for me — but in a good way. Prison Break, 24, Heroes, Doctor Who … and, for a while there, The Class, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and Smith. So much to watch, so little time. Only by time-shifting to the occasional West Coast feeds was I able to cram in an hour or so to eat, take a bathroom break and reacquaint with the spouse and the cats.
This year, at least initially, should be a simpler matter. Heroes will remain the tentpole of my evening — that disappointing first-season finale notwithstanding. The show’s sophomore season promises to take us around the world (including Canada), introducing a new villain that will make Sylar (Zachary Quinto) look like Pee-Wee Herman. Then next spring, there’s the six-part spinoff series, Heroes: Origins, to look forward to.
Heroes now anchors a potentially formidable genre block on NBC, bookended by two new hours designed to appeal to both ends of a wide demographic. At 8, it’s Chuck, the adventures of a slacker computer geek (Zachary Levi) who accidentally gets uploaded with every government secret on the planet. Which makes him a valuable intelligence asset to the likes of genre hero Adam Baldwin.
The post-Heroes slot is a tad more problematic: The phenomenal In Journeyman, Scottish actor Kevin McKidd, a.k.a. Lucius Vorenus of Rome, anchors and elevates what might otherwise be considered a slightly more serious spin on Quantum Leap, playing an American journalist who suddenly finds himself jumping back into the past to prevent tragedies and catastrophes.
It’s a great show, too, but its dark and dense mythology — there’s a time-travelling dead wife, among other complications — might scare off an understandably gun-shy audience. Still, it couldn’t be in better company.
I’ve always been grateful to Prison Break for getting itself out of the way early in the evening, and judging by the two-episode season premiere starting tonight I’ve seen, the returning Fox series has succeeded where no one (no critics, anyway) ever thought it could. Going into its third season, it is as fresh and as fun and as thrilling (and the title as appropriate as ever).
I wish the same could be said of 24, which will return in early 2008. But we all know what a disaster last season was, and the Fox series is going to have to work to earn back our trust in its seventh season. Casting Colm Feore as the husband to the new female president is a step in the right direction.
But I figure I’m still going to stick with Heroes at 9. Which will mean missing out on another really good new Monday-night hour from Fox, K-Ville, starring Anthony Anderson as a cop in post-Katrina New Orleans.
There are two new Monday-night sitcoms I’d also like to champion: CBS has very neatly tucked a good one in between returning hits How I Met Your Mother and Two and a Half Men, the unfortunately-titled The Big Bang Theory, with Roseanne’s Johnny Galecki and hilariously gawky new find Jim Parsons as socially inept young geniuses.
ABC is holding off until mid-October to unveil its new Christina Applegate vehicle, Samantha Who?, a show I was prepared to hate, but fell in love with instead, with Applegate as an amnesiac party princess trying to remake herself, and the fabulous Jean Smart as her booze-confused mom.
Canadian content
CBC launches its new season Oct. 1 with the second season of Dragon’s Den at 8, followed by the second season of Intelligence at 9, which has moved out of the way of House to be put in direct competition with Heroes. On Sept. 24, CTV’s vastly popular Corner Gas returns for a fifth season: But note the time change. It will air at 9:30 following Dancing With the Stars. Citytv has three full hours of scripted Canadian drama starting at 8 with vampire saga Blood Ties. TVO offers the live news show Agenda With Steve Paikin weeknights at 8. A-Channel has new episodes of Monk starting Sept. 24.
Tuesday
Let’s start this night with a warning of what not to watch: Avoid at all costs ABC’s back-to-back sitcoms, Caveman and Carpoolers.
Caveman, about three cavemen living in San Diego, is not quite as bad as you would expect it to be — which still leaves a lot of room for awful. And although it’s still being tweaked the showmakers are still tweaking it a bit, how good can a contemporary caveman comedy based on a series of insurance commercials ever really get?
The less said about Carpoolers, the better, particularly since its producer/creator is former Kid in the Hall Bruce McCulloch, who really should know better.
Fortunately, CTV’s alternate schedule at 8 p.m. allows us to watch ABC’s best new show of the season, Pushing Daisies, one night early at 8. in this exact same 8 o’clock slot. I don’t think it’ll last long, so catch it while you can.
CTV is also giving you an early shot at Gossip Girl, an even more upscale O.C. for the blog-and-texting generation, running it at 7, one night and one hour earlier than its originating network, The CW.
In terms of new stuff, the family fight over the remote will likely occur at 9 with the choice between The CW’s Buffy-esque monster comedy Reaper (also on Citytv), and the CBC’s sexed-up Henry VIII, as personified by ex-Elvis John Rhys Meyers in The Tudors.
That is, unless there’s a House fan in the house.
That leaves CBS’s Cane (also on Global), a compelling, Cuban-accented Dynasty/Dallas drama about generational rifts in the sugar cane/rum trade, starring Jimmy Smits, Hector Elizondo and, oddly enough, Polly Walker from Rome. With only Boston Legal and Law & Order: SVU to compete with at 10, it’s a particularly welcome breath of fresh air.
Canadian content
Weeknights at 7 p.m. on the Discovery Channel, Daily Planet provides some quality Canadian fare. Made in Toronto, ReGenesis offers top-flight sci-fi thrillers at 7. At 7:30, CBC starts off with a three pack of comedy — Just For Laughs, Rick Mercer Report and This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Then at 9 it’s time for must-see TV, the lavish BBC-CBC co-production The Tudors with Jonathan Rhys Meyers as a sexy Henry VIII. Citytv’s Stargate Atlantis at 10 is Vancouver-made.
Wednesday
We’ve talked about the ABC comic fantasy, Pushing Daisies, but it merits mentioning again here in its originating U.S. time slot. It really is a terrific show – a kind of contemporary fairy tale about a meek, mild-mannered baker (Lee Pace) who can bring back the dead … for 60 seconds.
The premise gets a little convoluted after that, but suffice it to say that an excellent cast (including Chi McBride and Broadway stage veterans Swoosie Kurtz, Ellen Greene and Kristin Chenoweth), an over-saturated colour palate and Jim Dale’s soothing voice-over narration help sell it. For how long though is a very valid question.
If you do choose to watch Daisies on Wednesday, that will mean missing my favourite new comedy of the season, and indeed the best new traditional, studio-shot, four-camera sitcom in almost a decade … not surprisingly, combining the best elements of several of those that preceded it.
Fox’s Back to You (also on Global) airs Frasier’s Kelsey Grammer and Everybody Loves Raymond’s Patricia Heaton as uniquely conflicted Pittsburgh news co-anchors, throws in Fred Willard as a comic foil, and places them all in the expert hands of master sitcom director/producer James Burrows. You would literally have to blow up the studio – with all of them inside it – to screw up this one.
This will also mean missing the first half of Kid Nation, the controversial new CBS reality show (also airing on E!) about the creation of a kids-only community, which is either, depending on who’s suing whom, an exploitive, child-endangering sweatshop or the very best summer camp ever.
There are some hard choices to make at 9. Do you check out Joe Mantegna as he takes over the vacated Mandy Patinkin position on CBS’s Criminal Minds? Preface your Thursday-night Grey’s Anatomy fix with a look at its top-loaded spinoff, Private Practice, which in subsequent weeks CTV will air an hour before the U.S. broadcast?
Or do you pass up your second chance of the week to get all giggly over Gossip Girl to kick it with the reinvented Bionic Woman, making her debut on NBC and E! in the form of British actor Michelle Ryan – though frankly, the poor girl is blown off-screen by her evil nemesis, Battlestar Galactica’s Katee Sackhoff.
No matter … as long as you are done and settled in by 10 for my number-one favourite new show of the season, NBC’s Life, in which yet another Brit, Damien Lewis, quite brilliantly portrays an L.A. cop who is jailed for a horrific triple homicide, exonerated and released some 12 years later, at which point he rejoins the force. I know it doesn’t sound like it, but this show is as hysterically funny as it is often harrowingly dramatic.
This will mean missing CSI: New York, and Donald Sutherland, Peter Krause, Jill Clayburgh and Billy Baldwin in the new rich-people scandal soaper, Dirty Sexy Money (which CTV will also air Sundays after Desperate Housewives).
Trust me, it’s worth it. You’ll thank me in the morning.
Canadian content
CBC offers a well-rounded diet of Canadian themes: information (Marketplace at 7:30), comedy (Little Mosque on the Prairie at 8:00) and award winning investigative reporting (the fifth estate at 9). No Opportunity Wasted, inspired by the book by Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan fills the gap at 8:30. TVO’s documentaries on The View From Here at 10 are among TV’s best – premiering Oct. 3 is Girl Inside.
Thursday
No biggie here — basically, just go with what you know.
Those already into NBC’s comedies (Earl, 30 Rock, The Office, Scrubs) aren’t going anywhere else fast, particularly with The Office airing for an hour for four weeks, and Earl for its season premiere.
Those who prefer the more leisurely pace of ABC’s Ugly Betty/Grey’s Anatomy block are naturally going to stay there.
No new shows to cloud the issue ….. okay, one. At 10, on ABC. It’s called Big Shots, and I’m telling you, feel free to miss it. Particularly if you saw the BBC comedy Manchild, which HBO has already tried (and apparently failed) to remake, and which this sad imitation tries to pretend it has never even heard of.
Canadian content
CBC fare includes a new genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are? (7:30 p.m.), The Nature of Things at 8 and the appropriately titled Doc Zone at 9. Showcase counters with Trailer Park Boys and Moose TV and, beginning Oct. 11, the new series Exes and Ohs. CTV has two popular U.S. shows early, ER at 7 and CSI at 8. Citytv has the drama Terminal City at 10.
Fridays
Again, hardly anything new to mess up existing viewing habits — what few new shows there are will only reinforce your current preferences.
Or so Fox would like to believe, still trying to expand its American Idol franchise with the Search for The Next Great American Band at 8, followed by music-biz reality show Nashville (also on Sun TV) at 9.
But you’ll want to skip Nashville anyway, since the 9 o’clock slot is also the new home of last season’s wonderful, if underrated Friday Night Lights on NBC and Global — and now that it actually is on Friday nights, there is no excuse not to watch . . .
Unless you’d prefer Women’s Murder Club on ABC and E!, pretty much the antithesis of Sex and the City, with four gal pal crime professionals — a cop (Angie Harmon) a medical examiner (Paula Newsome), an assistant D.A. (Laura Harris) and a crime reporter (Aubrey Dollar) bonding and banding together in the name of justice.
Me, I’ll be tuned in to Torchwood, the CBC co-produced Doctor Who spinoff about an ambi-sexual alien hunter. This, as opposed to Moonlight, yet another variation on the old vampire cop thing, on at the same time on CBS and CTV.
Canadian content
CBC starts likeably lightly at 7:30 Canadian Antiques Roadshow, Royal Canadian Air Farce. Canadian Geographic seems appropriate for APTN at 8. And TV0 has new episodes of Allan Gregg In Conversation at 10. The new season launches Sept. 28 with an interview with Gore Vidal, followed by Severn Cullis-Suzuki on Oct. 5.
Saturday
Nothing new. Nada. Zippo. Zilch. Same old same old.
Turn off the TV. Go outside. Read a book. Hug your kids.
Canadian content
What else is there but CBC’s venerable Hockey Night In Canada with two games a night. Global has an all-Canadian night of it beginning at 7 with Andromeda, Risk Takers, Painkiller Jane, and Global Currents. CTV has the venerable W-Five at 7 plus, returning on Sept. 29 at 10, the second season of its only scripted Canadian hour drama, Whistler — sort of a Dynasty. And of course, TVOntario’s Saturday Night at the Movies keeps on chugging at 8.
Sunday
Once again, good news, in that nothing here is likely to do much to change the status quo. You like to watch Desperate Housewives and Brothers & Sisters back-to-back? Go ahead. You have my blessing.
Are Medium (NBC midseason), Shark or Law & Order more your cup of tea? Have at it, I say.
Torn between 60 Minutes and Dateline NBC? I’m sorry, I can’t relate. But more power to you.
And just try tearing The Simpsons/Family Guy fans away from the tube during ’toon time on Fox . . . although, if you can, there’s some pretty neat new stuff, like CBC’s Triple Sensation, a new Canadian sort-of Idol show where contestants not only have to sing, but dance and act as well. It’ll air at 8 starting Oct. 7.
Also at 8, the CW has a new family show called Life is Wild, about a New York vet and his blended brood who uproot and move to South Africa.
But don’t under any circumstances tune in to Viva Laughlin on CBS at 8 (or wherever the local E! ends up putting it on its schedule). Even if you loved Blackpool, the British series on which it is ostensibly based. Especially if you loved Blackpool. Or Hugh Jackman. Or if you ever had any feeling at all for Melanie Griffith.
Canadian content
A girl, a horse and lots of turmoil — that’s what you’ll get in the new CBC 7 o’clock family drama Heartland, debuting Oct. 14. Also debuting that same night, Global also has a new series, Da Kink in My Hair, based on trey anthony’s award-winning play. Canadian TV movies and specials like Triple Sensation and The Victor Davis Story fill will two prime CBC hours at 8. You can catch up with all episodes of the Canadian-made Falcon Beach on YTV at 9. CTV has one U.S. series you won’t find on NBC, Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Now on U.S. cable, it returns to CTV Oct. 7 at 7.
Written by Jim Bawden and Rob Salem
