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If only The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was still around to help us through another turbulent US Presidential election. Pat Paulsen -- where are you when we need you?
A key writer/producer back on that 1967-69 comedy variety show was a Canadian -- Allan Byle. Before the Smothers, he worked for Fred Rogers as well as CBC songbird Juliette.
Tommy Smothers, who has a knack for spotting talent, insisted that Blye, then in his twenties, be part of the Comedy Hour writing staff.
The series became a mid-season, Sunday night hit. While tame by today's standards, controversial jokes, edgy guest stars and political pressure led to CBS firing the Smothers early in 1969.
Blye carried on as a writer/producer. He went on to bring out the best in David Steinberg, Sonny & Cher, Dick Van Dyke, John Byner and Super Dave himself, Bob Einstein.
The Winnipeg-born Emmy winner passed away in October at 87. On this episode of brioux.tv: the podcast, I welcome his younger brother Garry who also worked on many of those landmark shows.
Garry's showbusiness credits are worthy of their own salute. He started as a talent agent, representing a couple of pretty good clients -- Elvis Presley and Col. Tom Parker. Garry's stories range from that 1968 Elvis Comeback Special to later on working with the likes of Redd Foxx, Cher, John Candy and more.
Join us for an hour-plus of amazing showbiz memories that will fly Blye. -
In Part 2 of my conversation with Ken Levine, more evidence that the Emmy-winner is one of TV's top storytellers.
One of my favourite episodes from his excellent podcast, Hollywood & Levine, is the one where he told listeners exactly what he thought of the recent reboot of Frasier. Some might see this as sour grapes from one of the authors of the original series, but I for one was keenly interested in Levine's unvarnished take. He didn't hold back, and repeats what Fresh Hell he sees in the Paramount+ series.
He also talks about a sitcom he co-created over 30 years ago with writing partner David Issacs: Big Wave Dave's. The cast was outstanding, but the network ditched it after six episodes. Hear why, and also which episode from that series Levine feels is the funniest thing he and his partner ever wrote.
Also in Pt. 2: hear which episode from a classic TV sitcom from the '50s made Levine laugh the most as a youngster -- and also inspired an episode with a similar one-big-joke premise 30 years later on Cheers. -
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What hasn't Ken Levine done? He's an Emmy-winning screenwriter who has -- with writing partner David Issacs -- written for some of television's best comedies. You may have heard of M*A*S*H, Cheers and Frasier.
In his spare time (!) he has also been a disc jockey, a major league baseball play-by-play announcer, a cartoonist, a playwright, a director, a travel writer, an executive producer, a blogger and a podcaster.
His weekly podcast, Hollywood & Levine, helped make trips to the cottage fly by for me these past eight years. Recently, however, Levine stepped away from the mic. So I emailed him and asked: would he guest on my podcast?
Here is the answer. a very entertaining two-parter, with great stories about all of these amazing things he's done. Part One starts with his start in the baseball broadcast booth, calling his very first big league game at Exhibition Stadium, the not so fondly remembered early home of the Toronto Blue Jays. From there Ken
chronicles his path to success in the big leagues of writing for network sitcoms. If you love television you'll want to listen. If you want to write for television, you have to listen. -
This past spring, the CBS action-drama Tracker became an instant hit, emerging as the No. 1 US network series of the season. On this episode, I speak with the tracker himself, Justin Hartley, who was in Toronto last June promoting the series at the CTV upfront.
After a career in soaps (Passions; The Young and the Restless) as well as in primetime (Smallville; Emily Owens, MD), Hartley hit the TV jackpot as Kevin Pearson in This Is Us (2016-22). That led to the 47-year-old actor landing the lead as skilled survivalist Colter Shaw who helps others for money in Tracker.
In this shorter-than-usual episode, the Illinois native talks about his love of baseball (he enjoyed a Blue Jays game while in Toronto), finding success later in life, and about what to expect in Season Two. The Vancouver based series is back now on Sunday nights on CBS and CTV. -
When you’ve been busy creating, writing and starring in TV shows and films for a couple of decades, who has time for a hobby?
That’s been the case for Mark McKinney. This son of a diplomat moved around a lot as a lad and says comedy has always been his hobby. Together with Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald, Bruce McCullough and Scott Thompson, he’s been performing on stage, film and television as one of the Kids in the Hall since the late 1980s. McKinney also spent a couple of seasons as a writer-performer on Saturday Night Live, helped create, write and act in Slings & Arrows, and appeared in shows such as Man Seeking Woman and Son of a Critch. He also was the showrunner on Less Than Kind and for six seasons co-starred as manager Glen Sturgis on the NBC sitcom Superstore.That didn’t leave much room for stamp collecting or skeet shooting. On Mark McKinney Needs a Hobby (Wednesdays on CTV and streaming on Crave), McKinney tries birding, fly fishing, puppetry and even tackled hockey playing robots. He’s joined by guests such as comedians Margaret Cho and Deb DiGiovanni, singer Billy Newton-Davis, Superstore co-star Ben Feldman, food critic James Chatto and Muppet puppeteer Trish Leeper.
As you’ll see in episode one, however, he drew the line when it came to tattooing. Hear all about McKinney’s hobby search adventures on this week’s episode of brioux.tv the podcast.
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The first scene of the new Fox and Global series Murder in a Small Town is set at that most sacred of Canadian television landmarks: the diner from The Beachcombers, Mollys Reach.
Seated inside, shooting a first date scene, are two actors representing several generations of Canadian acting royalty: Kristin Kreuk, the Vancouver lass who went from Edgemont to Smallville to Beauty and the Beast to Burden of Truth to starring in this fifth network series, Opposite her is Rossif Sutherland. The late, great Donald was his dad; Kiefer his half brother. No pressure.
Series creator and writer Ian Weir (also Canadian) screwed up and made Rossif a Chief of Police, not a Mountie. Kristin plays a librarian/muse, not Anne of Green Gables. Otherwise, almost everything else about this series is so Canadian it apologises. Sorry.
Even one of our greatest homegrown actors, R.H. Thomson, plays a dead body in the pilot. That is so Canadian.
Kreuk, one of the most popular guests ever at brioux.tv: the podcast, talks about all of this and more. Get comfy on a chesterfield, open a bag of ketchup chips, and join us.
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Ever wonder what it was like to be in Studio 8H opening night in 1975 on Saturday Night Live?
Director Jason Reitman wondered and his new movie, "Saturday Night," is a recreation of the hours leading up to airtime on that historic night. Somebody who was there, however, is my guest this week on brioux.tv the podcast: Lorraine Santoli.
No, she was never one of the "Not Ready from Prime Time Players." Lorraine, who worked at NBC, was on the floor, pulling cables for the camera operators during the broadcast. Lorraine went on to a spectacular career in entertainment. When we met 40 years ago in California, she was the main Disneyland publicist. Thanks to Lorraine, I had a backstage pass to a time when it was still possible to interview Roy Disney, animators Ward Kimball, Ken Anderson and Bill Justice and voice artists such as Jimmy Macdonald.
Meanwhile, Lorraine became close friends with original Mouseketeers Annette Funicello and Bobby Burgess, among others. She later climbed the corporate ladder and became Head of Corporate Synergy at Disney, managing up to 60 companies during the Michael Eisney era.
And wait till you hear her story about Pam Grier! Spend an hour with my friend Lorraine Santoli, this week at brioux.tv: the podcast. -
TV schedules and programs are like the places where we live. Sometimes they need somebody to come in a do a thorough de-cluttering.
As CBC's Dragon's Den heads into a 19th season, who better to join the series as the latest investing entrepreneur than Brian Scudamore? He's the founder and CEO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK. You know their slogan: "We make junk disapear. All you have to do is point!"
As a pack rat who moved in the past year I know all about clinging to too much stuff. Scudamore tells me on this podcast episode how he came up with the idea of decluttering for others when, as a student, he was stuck in a fast food drive-through lineup. Since 1998, the business has spread to three countries and over 250 franchises. Now this author and podcaster is tackling all the other jobs we don't want to do with Shack Shine, WOW 1 Day Painting and You Move Me.
Look for Scudamore to point and make other people's business dreams happen this season on Dragon's Den. The series returns Thursday, Sept. 26 on CBC and CBC Gem. -
After a two year wait, our long national farmhouse facelift crisis is over! Designer/contractor siblings Carolyn Wilbrink and Billy Pearson are back with a new, third season of HGTV's Farmhouse Facelift.
The stylin' siblings--featured twice before on brioux.tv: the podcast--once again barnstorm through Southern Ontario, taking grim-looking concrete block bunkers and turning them, in Episode One for example, into custom country cottages. The eight new episodes also include a makeover of a cordwood farmhouse and a converted, one-roon school house. Plus hear what else Carolyn and Billy got up to during the two years between TV seasons.
The new episodes are premiering weekly now on HGTV Canada and will also be streaming on Stack TV. -
About two hours northeast of Toronto stands The Highlands Cinemas, a hand made movie palace carved out of cedars and mosquitoes. Every summer for 40 years, families from neighbouring towns and villages in Ontario’s cottage country have braved bear cubs in the parking lot to see everything from “Barbie” to the latest “Despicable Me” flick.
It is entirely the vision of one of Kinmount, Ont.’s native sons, Keith Stata. “The Movie Man,” a documentary about this remarkable entrepreneur’s Don Quixote-like obsession with showing movies the way God intended — with an audience — is streaming now exclusively at Hollywood Suite.
On this shorter-than-usual summer episode, we hear from Stata as well as director and photographer Matt Finlin, plus one of the executive producers of the documentary, Barenaked Ladies' frontman Ed Robertson.
Finlin, Robertson and others came for the movies but kept cominng back for the incredible museum of movie projectors, film stills, drive-in speakers and other artifacts Stata has collected and displays in hallways that snake around the cinemas. This episode best enjoyed with popcorn. -
Hugh Wilson talked his way into a job at MTM Enterprises at just the right time. When he arrived in the early '70s, they were busy making sitcom history with The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Bob Newhart Show. Wilson, who had no prior TV experience, could often be found up in the rafters, taking a crash course in Funny 101.
The result was his first series as a creator and executive producer, WKRP in Cincinnati (1978-82).
In this "From the Vault" conversation from 2014, Wilson -- who passed away in 2018 at 74 -- talks about what it was like to strike gold with just the right cast at just the right time -- even if his rock 'n' roll radio station sitcom was never a big hit in the States.
Among the surprising things he reveals:
"When the show first went on, it was struggling in the ratings in the U.S. But the ratings in Canada were great right from the beginning," says Wilson, who used the Canadian response to successfully argue that the series needed time to find its audience. "I've never understood that but I've always been super grateful for it." -
The death of comedy legend Bob Newhart July 18 had me scrambling for this "From the Vault" conversation with Bill Daily.
Daily was one of Newhart's oldest friends from their Chicago days in the late '50s when Daily was directing and performing in television and Newhart was exploding onto the scene with, at the time, the biggest-selling comedy LP ever, "The Button-down Mind of Bob Newhart."
The two reunited on The Bob Newhart Show (1972-78), a perfectly cast, well-written gem from the glory days of the MTM Studios. Daily praises, among other writers, Glen and Les Charles who went on to create Taxi and Cheers. He also talks about how they all adored Suzanne Pleschette, as well as the incredible cast of zanies who stole scenes as Dr. Bob Hartley's group therapy patients. Then there's the story about how Newhart had to fire his best friend for getting the studio audience too heated in the warm-up -- Don Rickles.
"I was so grateful to have that show," says Daily, previously best known for I Dream of Jeannie. In this conversation from 2014 -- four years before he died at 91 -- Daily saves his most heartfelt praise for Newhart.
"He was the nicest man I've ever met."
He also tells three of the funniest jokes I've ever heard. -
Welcome to a faster, higher, stronger podcast episode This week’s guest, Scott Russell, has medalled for years in Olympic Games coverage. He’s off to France for the Olympic Games Paris 2024, which runs July 26 through August 11. Russell will host the afternoon show, Bell Paris Prime, and he will remain host for CBC’s coverage of the Paralympic Games, which follows August 28 to September 8.
And then he will leave the podium. The Canadian Screen Award and Gemini Award-winning broadcaster has already announced that this will be his last Games as CBC’s host.
Russell has covered 16 Olympics for CBC, including six as host. He has also led the network’s coverage of the Pan Am Games, six Commonwealth Games, two FIFA World Cups and two FIFA Women's World Cups. He’s also been a host and rinkside reporter for 14 years on Hockey Night in Canada.
After the games, he leaves to become the fifth chancellor of Nipissing University in North Bay, Ontario, where he holds an honorary doctorate.
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In a spectacular career that's gone everywhere from The Streets of San Francisco to "Wall Street" and beyond, two-time Oscar winner Michael Douglas currently stars in the epic, eight-part limited series "Franklin," now streaming on AppleTV+.
If you don't think Douglas looks like Benjamn Franklin, neither did the actor. He does an extraordinary job, however, disappearing under the skin of America's favourite founding father at his diplomatic best. These were the years where Franklin was tasked with trying to persuade the French to back the States in the War of Independence.
Does it help to be famous to play someone famous? Douglas acknowledges that he could tap into some of the built-in, "rock star"-like advantages Franklin enjoyed. That "Franklin" is also about a struggle for democracy, as well as a tale of truth, lies and the power of the press, well, how bloody timely is that.
Douglas also talks about one of my favourite series, The Kominsky Method, his farm in Quebec, the Canadian doctor who saved his life and, as he approaches his 80th birthday in September, gratitude. I'm just grateful for this candid, reflective conversation which is a Canadian podcast exclusive. -
Man it was fun heading down to Niagara last October and catching up with Ron James. He was shooting season two of his comedy series 1 Man's Treasure, which is up now and streaming on Bell Fibe.
If this episode sounds different it is because it was shot outside in a park, and simply recorded on a Pixel phone. There is some reflection here about getting older, or, as James says, being in the "third quarter in the game and you're still trying to find the purpose in life."
Ron needn't look any further; his is to make others laugh. We were joined by actor-comedian-philosopher Pat McKenna, another Second City survivor who co-stars on the series. Guests this season include Jayne Eastwood, Paul Sun Hyung Lee, Tony Nappo and others. A dilly of a conversation. Pull up a lawn chair and listen in. -
The licensing of American specialty brands in Canada went all WWE in June as Rogers swooped in and wrestled away rights to The Food Network and HGTV brands, among others, from Corus. The new deals with Warners Bros. Discovery takes effect in January. There are indications Bell Media can't count on re-upping some of their Discovery brand imports either.
What has sparked all the brand swapping? What are the ramifications for Corus and others? Daniel Eves, who for years was at the table negotiating licensing deals with American Studios while SVP at Corus, says the potential for all these specialty swaps has been there for several years. He explains it all as this week's timely guest at brioux.tv: the podcast. -
As "Toad" in "American Graffiti," Charles Martin Smith took playing the school nerd to new heights. Over 50 years later, the California-born actor-director co-stars opposite Toronto actress Anwen O'Driscoll in "This Time," director Robert Vaughn's very modern road picture now streaming on Super Channel.
In between, Smith has acted with a Who's Who of Hollywood, including Burt Reynold ("Fuzz"), David Niven and Don Knotts (Disney's "No Deposit, No Return"), Sean Connery and Kevin Costner ("The Untouchables"), Jeff Bridges ("Starman") and Michael Keaton and Geena Davis ("Speechless").
His TV credits range from episodes of The Brady Bunch, Room 222 and The Streets of San Francisco to LA Law, Northern Exposure and The X-Files. He's worked on more Canadian shows and movies than most Canadians, including "Never Cry Wolf" and Da Vinci's Inquest. His directing credits include "Air Bud" and "The Snow Walker."
And then there are the roles that got away, including one he auditioned for -- Luke Skywalker in "Star Wars."
Then there are his dad and uncles -- "Golden Age" animation directors for Walter Lantz, Disney and UPA. Smith is a great story teller and man does he share some doozies here. -
Hugh Dillon is a man of many talents, including acting, writing and rocking -- the latter done with his band, Headstones.
The acting writing and producing skills were put to the test this third season on the Paramount+ drama Mayor of Kingstown. Dillon and his series co-creator Taylor Sheridan (Yellowstone; Tulsa King) made it their mission to put their lead, Jeremy Renner, firmly back on his feet again after the actor suffered a horrible accident in January of 2023.
Renner's Mayor "Mike" McLusky spends most episodes racing from crisis to crisis as he tries to settle gang wars that are constantly errupting in his prison town. Viewers will see McLusky pick up right where he left off at the end of Season 2, with Renner showing no signs of the damage he suffered as a result of being crushed under a seven ton snow plow.
On this episode, Dillon also references his former series, Flashpoint, his years growing up in his own prison town, Kingston, Ont., and his new album with the Headstones. -
Here is another conversation I had in May at the CBC Media Upfront on Toronto. Allan Hawco and Josephine Jobert -- stars of the upcoming CBC series Saint-Pierre -- talk about shooting the series, which will premiere in 2025.
Currently in production on the islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, the police procedural finds an out of favour St. John's detective (Hawco) teamed with a seasoned investigator from France. Can opposites arrest?
Hawco, who co-created the series, says don't expect another Republic of Doyle-style retro cop show. Look instead for something a little darker, more of a modern British approach to detective drama. French actress Jobert has also played a cop before, and is best known for the BBC/WNET drama Death in Paradise.
I've been to these small islands off the coast of Newfoundland which remain a territory of France. They are better known for tourism than terrorism, but the leads insist they are an intriquing setting for criminal behaviour. -
One of the new shows on CBC's 2024-25 schedule is called Small Achievable Goals. It is a scripted comedy about female podcasters going through menopause. Those three words, however, coulld also describe, in a fiercely competitive and crowded media landscape, the only way forward for CBC.
On this episode of brioux.tv: the podcast, I speak with Executive Vice President Barbara Williams and General Manager Entertainment, Factual & Sports Sally Catto. We talk about new shows hitting the schedule, including series returns for Allan Hawco, Jennifer Whelan and Meredith MacNeill; shows that missed the cut, including Run the Burbs and One More Time, the upcoming Paris Summer Olympic Games and the uncomfortable fact that the leader of the opposition -- who has a wide lead in the polls -- has vowed to defund the CBC. - Mehr anzeigen
