TORONTO – Canadian TV is hitting full bloom this summer.
With most U.S. programming having retreated into reruns, Canuck stars hope the reduced competition will allow their shows to flourish.
“You go on in the fall when all the big U.S. shows come and you get buried behind their promotional machine,” says comic Brent Butt, whose Vancouver-set sitcom “Hiccups” returned with new episodes at the end of May.
“Maybe in the summer you get a chance to pop out a little more.”
The belief that most people cool down their viewing habits when the weather turns hot is not true, says Butt, convinced that a sizable number of couch-potatoes exist year-round.
“I know that I watch TV in the summer, I think most people watch TV. People take TV’s with them in their campers, so TV is pretty important to people. They’ll find a place to watch it,” he says.
The fresh crop includes a new season of CTV’s “Flashpoint,” premiering on Friday, with Cle Bennett joining the cast as a “diamond-in-the-rough recruit.”
Film and TV star Paul Gross executive produces HBO Canada’s edgy satire “The Yard,” also debuting Friday, about the day-to-day struggle for supremacy between two schoolyard gangs.
On Global, the song-and-dance competition “Canada Sings” debuts Aug. 10, pitting workplace glee clubs against each other in front of judges Vanilla Ice, Jann Arden, and Simple Plan rocker Pierre Bouvier.
Those are all on top of last month’s return of Citytv’s “Murdoch Mysteries,” Global’s cop series “Rookie Blue,” CTV’s “Dan for Mayor” and the debut of Global’s “Combat Hospital.”
Get breaking National news
The influx of new summer episodes comes before the lucrative fall TV season, when the private broadcasters typically stack their schedules with big-budget, star-driven U.S. simulcasts.
Stand-up comic turned actor Ryan Belleville says it was likely a good thing that his burgeoning Showcase series, “Almost Heroes,” debuted last month.
“In some ways you want to be in the prime viewing season,” Belleville allows.
“Then the (other) side is you have less competition (in the summer) and maybe there’s a little bit less pressure, that they’ll give you a bit more leeway. I mean, if you have a prime spot and you’re in November, say, right when all the other shows are hitting, there’s probably a little bit more pressure to succeed and knock it out of the park with numbers right away…. We’re the kind of show that needs a little time to find our audience.”
Other shows hoping to woo viewers this summer include Showcase’s supernatural series “Haven.” A new season debuts July 18 with former “90210” star Jason Priestley popping up in a four-episode story arc.
The long-awaited “Trailer Park Boys” followup hits the air July 22 on Action, with Mike Smith, Robb Wells and JP Tremblay playing very loose versions of themselves. “The Drunk And On Drugs Happy Funtime Hour” centres on a fictional sketch-variety TV show that runs off the rails when the cast mistakenly ingests a powerful hallucinogen.
Also on July 22, “Kenny Vs. Spenny” star Kenny Hotz brings his pseudo-reality series “Triumph of the Will” to Action. He tackles off-the-wall missions like finding love for his widowed mother and proving that pigs are too smart to be eaten.
Broadcasting a raft of homegrown fare in the summer could actually go a long way towards highlighting Canadian TV in general, suggests Belleville.
“A lot of people have talked about the ‘ghettoizing’ of Canadian TV,” Belleville says of the summer programming tactic.
“It is a shame we don’t have more Canadian TV during the fall but I’m just happy that they’re making Canadian TV right now…. If summer became a time when people can tune in and they know there’s lots of Canadian TV on, then that’s great. Anything that kind of brings more attention to Canadian TV, whether it’s lumping it all together, is a good thing.”
“Single White Spenny” star Deb McGrath, whose Showcase series with Spencer Rice debuted last month, questioned whether timing a season’s launch even matters these days.
“I think it used to when I was growing up and the TV Guide came out with the fall launch,” says McGrath, whose other Canadian show, CBC’s “Little Mosque on the Prairie,” returns with a final season in the winter.
“A lot of successful shows have debuted in the summer and gone on (to) success.”
The very notion of a TV schedule seems to have evaporated in recent years, complicating matters even further, says Butt.
A proliferation of online streaming, time-shifting, PVRs, on-demand services and DVD viewing means TV fans can catch most of their favourites regardless of what the networks have programmed.
“The way people digest television is so different from how it was three or four years ago. People are really doing stuff on their own time,” Butt says.
“There’s never that perfect window where you go, ‘OK, we’re up against nothing and we have a fantastic lead-in.’ That’s the mystical perfect storm that just isn’t going to happen.”
Comments
Want to discuss? Please read our Commenting Policy first.