After eight seasons, 73 episodes, 47 primetime Emmy awards, and a massive audience that guarantees it a place in pop culture history, Game of Thronesended last month with a half dozen episodes that left fans distraught, angry, or both. Before the final episode aired, an online petition from fans demanding that the eighth and last season be rebooted and rewritten gained a [...]
Tanick Bisson (center) stars in the CBC's Murdoch Mysteries, including their Christmas specials. Ah, Christmas! That wonderful time of year when we trim trees, put up wreaths and lights, sing carols, and eat plenty of delicious turkey, ham, stuffing and plum pudding. My wife, son, and I might even get a gift or two or (ahem) three from Santa Claus. [...]
There’s a scene at the beginning of the season finale of The Young Pope that sums up this controversial HBO series as much as any of a dozen or so startling scenes in the previous nine hours. The titular pontiff, played by Jude Law, has just been told by his director of publicity that he is scheduled to lead a group of [...]
How Duck Dynasty became a television and cultural sensation After years of celebrating little-watched cable television shows like The Sopranos (about the mafia and laced with profanity) and Breaking Bad (about a drug dealer and laced with profanity), the North American entertainment media took notice of the ratings success of Duck Dynasty, which attracts millions more viewers. In the February 2013 season [...]
I didn’t watch television for nearly 20 years, roughly from when Knight Rider hit the air to when the first season of The Sopranos debuted. Only a few years after that I found myself – quite against my will – writing a daily TV column for a national newspaper, but as the one-time child who grew up with That Girl and Petticoat [...]
Lena Duham It’s a truism that every generation believes that the ones immediately following it will preside over the dismantling of every social, cultural and economic virtue that they took for granted, a rite of passage for senior generations that begins roughly when they realize that they’ve slipped out of the green vale of youth. There’s no objective way of [...]
Mark Burnett is one of the biggest names in television, creating and producing such reality television hits as Survivor, Celebrity Apprentice, Shark Tank, and The Voice. His next project, which begins airing on the History Channel on March 3, is The Bible Series, a ten-part, five-week presentation of the Bible from Genesis to Revelations. Burnett and wife Roma Downey, who is also [...]
The Greatest Adventure: Stories from the Bible, TV Series: 13 Episodes, 1985-1993. Produced by Hanna-Barbera, distributed by Warner Bros (VHS and DVD, $18.70 each for select DVDs). Many animation companies have produced movies, TV specials and direct-to-video releases of Bible stories for children. Some well-known series include Superbook, Veggie Tales, and Animated Stories from the Bible. There have also been one-shot specials [...]
Among most men of my acquaintance – and this probably says more about my friends than anything else – the most eagerly anticipated TV series this year is HBO’s The Pacific, which will started airing last month (after this column was submitted). It’s a companion piece to the critically-lauded Band of Brothers, the 2001 miniseries that followed a group of paratroopers from [...]
There are two rituals at the onset of every fall television season; in the first, someone looks over the crop of failed shows from the last season and announces some venerable genre – the three-camera sitcom, the police procedural – as being creatively dead, followed by the unexpected success of a show that singlehandedly revives it. The cycle’s tedious regularity is just [...]
An international television personality brought an inspiring message of hope to the Canadian pro-life movement when he made an appearance in Brampton, Ont. Oct. 17. Raymond Arroyo is an award-winning journalist seen in more than 100 million homes weekly around the globe as host and creator of the Eternal Word Television Network’s The World Over Liveprogram. He frequently analyzes life issues, has [...]
The Truth Is Out There: Christian Faith and the Classics of TV Science Fiction by Thomas Bertonneau and Kim Paffenroth (Brazos Press, $23.99 pb, 272 pages) Thomas Bertonneau and Kim Paffenroth are both well-respected American academics and committed Christians. Readers should not be put off by the 50s “flying saucer” image on the cover. This very erudite book looks at the possible [...]
Canada Justice Minister Irwin Cotler introduces Bill C-38, the government’s legislation to redefine marriage to include homosexual couples. International Trade Minister Jim Peterson co-sponsors the bill ... Conservative leader Stephen Harper puts forth a motion to amend C-38 to maintain the legal definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others, with the [...]
Tony Gosgnach The Interim The Bell Globemedia conglomerate took another kick at pro-life, pro-family Canadians recently with the airing of a made-for-TV movie lionizing Canada's most notorious abortionist, Henry Morgentaler. Broadcast by its CTV television component on Jan. 5, Choice purported to recount the "tumultuous life story" of Morgentaler, who was credited with leading the "movement that ultimately changed abortion laws in [...]
Controversy surrounded a decision by Viacom-owned cable channel N when it refused to air two episodes of Degrassi: The Next Generation because of its plot about teen preganancy and abortion. The two-part show entitled Accidents Will Happen, revolved around Manny, a 14-year-old character played by Cassie Steele, as she finds out that she is preganant and is faced with the options of [...]