I don't think that is true. The wikipedia page for Mad Dogs suggest the cost of the first four part series was 4 million Euro. I think you'll find the expensive BBC dramas are up at around the same sort of budget, quality TV is expensive to make (which is why there is so much "reality" TV on most of the time).

I guess you're right, Dr Who (Tennant onwards) is nothing like previous series in terms of effects and sets and the period stuff is similarly well provisioned

Even things like Top Gear are similarly expensive, but at least it makes the BBC (and Clarkson's production company) a pot of money

You mean Eccleston onwards?

I meant programs produced specifically for Canadian television and simulcast or re-aired in the US. The only one I was aware of before was Due South. The first three you name seem to qualify. I didn't realize Rookie Blue was made for Canadian TV. In the US, it's aired as a "summer season" series on ABC, which means it's kind of second tier, but still valid. I'd never heard of Combat Hospital, but, again, it's apparently on ABC. Flashpoint, on the other hand, is on the Ion network, which I didn't realize was still in existence. I have issues with your characterization of it as seen "widely".

As far as The Firm goes, I was going to say that a lot of US TV has been produced in Canada for decades now, but it appears that it was actually made for Sony's non-North America channel AXN, and then picked up by NBC in the US and Global in Canada. Weird. I don't think I've ever heard of that before.

I was under the impression that Flashpoint was on CBS as well at some point.

Of course there's also the old and new Degrassi which I'm pretty sure had at least mild popularity in the US if Kevin Smith was a fan.

How about Trailer Park Boys, Corner Gas and Little Mosque on the Prairie? I just pulled these out kinf of randomly as I don't watch them myself. These shows are very Canadian, as opposed to the first three I mentioned, even though Flashpoint and Rookie Blue both take place in Toronto. Combat Hospital was a summer show this past year and is supposed to be coming back to ABC. It was rather successful and replaced their failed tropical medical show.

Apparently it was:

But that also bolster's Bitt's point: Due South aired in 1994 and only ran for one season. So yeah, not a lot of Canadian series in prime time.


Extremely mild. Kevin Smith's fondness of it doesn't mean it has a big following. I've only ever talked to a single person who even knew about the show(s). They aired on "The N" here, which is the teen version of Nickelodeon. Sorry, it's not a well known show. I tried watching it a few times, but it's just not my kind of thing. I'm not really into soapy kind of shows, especially not teen ones. But I respected the issues they tackled. Sadly it seems the US edited a few episodes to make them less controversial.


I've never heard of the latter two, and the only reason I've heard of the first is because Netflix, in another confirmation that they wasted $1 million on that suggestion contest, keeps trying to show it to me. I watched ten minutes of it and hated it. The characters were just beyond annoying.


Um...I'm not sure how you measure success. From Wikipedia:

Current favorite show: Justified.

Currently still testing/watching but is extremely annoying: The River. The fake documentary camera stuff makes it look/feel like shit. This show is going to be cancelled any minute now.

I keep saying that I'm going to try that show again but I never do. I just wasn't really my thing. ...but I'll give it another try


I'm so very sick of the "found footage" thing. It's the same problem with that movie "Chronicle." They constantly have to justify/acknowledge the cameras, so they have to waste a lot of time with dialog like "hey man, are you really filming this?" throughout the whole thing. It's also hard to believe that they would be filming every moment that you see, though at least the River has a documentary film crew along for the ride to give that explanation.

The River seems like it would be a really interesting show if it didn't have the found footage thing going on. I really wish they would take just a half-step back and shoot some of it normally with some of the found footage mixed in. I think that could work well.

I think my other problem with the found footage idea is that it's just what it says: found. Somebody found this stuff, implying that nobody you're watching got out of this situation. There's only so many times I can watch these things and root for people I know for certain aren't going to make it.

This is all without addressing my biggest issue with Paranormal Activity 3 (which my wife dragged me to) - queasiness! I regularly had to shut my eyes for extended periods because any time someone was hand-carrying a camera I was sick to my stomach. But that's a smaller issue that not everyone will have. I just happen to get motion sickness really easily.

After trying to watch The River last night, I felt more compelled to open my computer and do some reading... So I struggled for 20 minutes with this juggling act and the show still couldn't pull me away. I wasn't reading anything urgent or extremely captivating either.

I removed the favorite and deleted the episodes. Won't be tuning in again. When I told her today, my wife was a little disappointed I'd done that since she said that she'd enjoyed the first two. Oops. But I made the case that there are plenty of other really good shows that I'm watching that she doesn't. She can easily take up one of those. Though I suppose a few are already a season or more in, so she'd have some catching up to do...

LOL! Yeah, my itchy Tivo finger has committed that offense a few times before I'm also trying to not get into the River because we're so damn backlogged on TV right now it's ridiculous.

My wife and I finally, after four seasons, are getting caught up on Breaking Bad. I had watched the first season without her and couldn't watch any more for various reasons. But we finally started last week and now we haven't watched any thing else that's come on. Consequently we have about 20-26 hours of shows saved on our Tivo! And we're only a few episodes into season 3!

The problem I have with Justified is that I can't watch just a single episode. I'm now caught up with the current season (season 3 episode 5). This season has been significantly different from an ensemble cast perspective. It's good, but I'd like to see more focus put back on the main character.

Best bit of TV I've watched for ages:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00mqjhf

Excellent

Fox advertised new episodes of House and Alcatraz for tonight. But they've been showing some NASCAR ON FOX for a couple of hours and it doesn't look to end any time soon.

What's up with that?

Besides me not believing NASCAR has any redeeming qualities whatsoever and being blown away that anyone would ever consider putting it on TV, let alone on primetime network...

Why run promos for something you're not going to have on? Fox seems to do this a lot. I can't believe that the decision to air NASCAR was made last night.

From what I'm able to tell after a couple minutes on Google, it appears that the race was supposed to be yesterday but got rained out. That explains why my Tivo mistakenly recorded it, but not why they were running promos for the shows that were replaced.

What's annoying is that we don't have much of a way to tell what they plan to do with the preempted episode. Will they just extend the season a week? Will they air it out of the time slot?

Anyway, I agree with your sentiments about NASCAR. It does not appeal to me. At MOST, I'd like to see about five minutes of a race, but only in person to experience what it's like being around the cars. When it's on TV, for some reason car racing looks at most 50% as fast as I know it really is. Cars going 190mph look like they're going around 80. It's the same when I've seen Indy car.

You're right Matt. I discovered this by accident later yesterday night. I guess the Daytona 500 was supposed to be on Sunday afternoon and was pushed to last night. I guess I'm not used to hearing about sporting events being pushed out a day so I didn't expect yesterday wasn't already pre-scheduled.

When I tuned in at sometime after 9pm I heard the "race" (I think of it more as a parade) was only just half over with another 50 or so laps to go. Fun times. My 2.5 year old daughter also likes spinning herself in circles sometimes. Maybe she'll grow up to race NASCAR.

For anyone in the know, how many of those cars actually finish a race? I suspect only the ones who's cruise control doesn't burn out.

Yeah, I can't understand the huge viewing figures for F1

At least in F1 there's a purpose to having a steering wheel. And a throttle and brake for that matter.

The only motorsport I still enjoy watching briefly is the Isle of Man TT, proper scary stuff.

I use to enjoy Rally Sport and F1, but lost interest in both over the years. Now I couldn't even tell you who the dominant manufacturers in each are (wouldn't surprise me in F1 if it was Ferrari still, even though I always liked McLaren better).

I've finally gotten around to the second half of The Walking Dead season 2, and I have to say, I'm just loving this show, I'm still behind one episode, but it's really pulling me in.

And I STILL don't like horror as a genre.

Neither do I. I consider "Zombies" a genre of their own however and I try to watch most decent looking/sounding zombie (or zombie-like) movies. 28 Days Later, etc..

I guess they're a sub-genre, but still horror. The Walking Dead is as much horror as basic cable will allow, though AMC certainly has been generous in the amount of gore they're letting through S&P.

FYI, the House episode gets rescheduled to 3/19. The Alcatraz episode looks like it's going to 3/12, which puts it out of order (I've not seen the show so I don't know if continuity is important there).

http://www.myfoxhouston.com/dpp/entertai...-house-alcatraz

Dirk Gently's on the telly tonight didn't think much of the radio version with Harry Enfield a few years ago. Hope this is better

Did you not see the pilot a little while ago? I thought it was OK -- plot full of holes that weren't in the book, but genuinely funny, with bits of visual humour that I thought were decidedly in the spirit of Adams's often-unfilmable verbal humour (much more so than the Hitch-Hiker film). Stephen Mangan is very good (as he was in Green Wing).

Peter

Didn't see the pilot. Didn't watch the hitch hiker film either, too worried it'd be crap, I think the DG radio thing was around the same time and I already felt down by that. I'm not precious like that normally, but anything to do with John Peel, David Attenborough, Douglas Adams or Humphrey Lyttleton can really wind me up. Only just started listening to ISIHAC again last year, Jack Dee's a lot better than Stephen Fry but there'll never be another Humph.

I wish the Beeb would re-screen "Last chance to see"

Well.. it's out on BluRay disc if you want a really high quality copy of it.

Really? Only snag is I don't buy physical media anymore, too much plastic in the world already, plus then I'd need to store it. I'm hoping that one day I'll have good enough broadband to use something like Netflix which will let me view anything I like, rather than the limited amount of crap available over the 100s of channels on my Sky box.