After three months and dozens of articles theorizing how the U.S. networks would start importing Canadian programming to make up for the writers strike, the first case of that actually happening has finally showed up.
CBS has agreed to pick up a new CTV series called Flashpoint, about an elite group of supercops who will do all the cool dangerous stuff that regular beer-bellied cops can’t do.
Like Due South, the last Canadian program to be picked up by a U.S. network (also CBS in that case), Flashpoint will actually be a co-production between the two networks, produced and filmed in Canada. This means CBS won’t be paying as much for it, and they’ll have more say in its content. That also means it will have American-style production values, according to Variety.
(I’ve never considered Canadian production values particularly deficient. Lighting and sound is usually good enough for my tastes. The problem is that Canadian actors overact and Canadian writers think in clichés.)
UPDATE (Jan. 31): The Writers’ Guild of Canada has to justify the deal and defend itself from charges of being scabs.
UPDATE (Feb. 2): And just like that, CTV sells a second series to NBC.
You’re right about Canadian TV: too much is clichéd, hackneyed and poorly acted. That said, Canadian television can be just as sharply-written and well-acted as the best American series; think of Da Vinci’s Inquest, which has a cult following in the US and can hold its own against any TV show from any country.
oh my goodness. Canadian actors overact. Canadian writers think in clichés. Darn good thing that US television or British (or Australian, or German, or…….) television doesn’t ever suffer from clichés. Or poor acting.
What a surprise to hear Canadians bitching about Canadian TV. We should all just watch endless re-runs of Everybody Loves Raymond and Full House and Desperate Housewives, hmmmm?