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Television

January-February 2022

We need more disability representation in scripted television

It's time for this change to be made

Adam Pottle

In January 2021, I pitched a scripted television series to the CBC. My story focused on several Deaf characters, not only because I myself am Deaf, but because disabled characters seldom form the nucleus of scripted TV shows. Reality TV, however, is a different story. Reality series such as Deaf U, The Undateables, Born This […] More »
September-October 2021

Finding community on screen

Queer television characters have helped me feel part of something bigger

Mira Miller

I was 14 years old when I first kissed a girl—and there were more after that—but it took a global pandemic and months of self-reflection to get to a place where I felt comfortable calling myself bisexual. I’m far from alone. The pandemic presented an opportunity for many closeted queer people to look inwards and […] More »
March-April 2020

Lacking representation

South Asian representation on screen is not as sparse as it once was; but what does representation mean if it isn’t any good?

Rachna Raj Kaur

In North America, many Hollywood stars of Indian descent are household names: Mindy Kaling, Priyanka Chopra, Kumail Nanjiani, Hasan Minhaj, and Scarborough native Lilly Singh. According to YouTubers Colin and Samir, Hollywood has realized that Indians—in North America and India—have the buying power to demand representation on screen. I think we’ve always known this, but […] More »
March-April 2020

Why you hate cops but love Brooklyn Nine-Nine

You have to admit, the show has an unlikely following

Niko Stratis

As a child born in the early 1980s and raised by 1990s media, TV taught me one thing: cops are not to be trusted. While we are sold the idea of a hard-working and noble institution of policing through the lens of NYPD Blue, Cops, or even Homicide: Life on the Street, the news taught […] More »
November-December 2018

I grew up in the age of VCR recordings and pay-per-view. Now, I’m raising my son in the streaming era.

Anne Thériault on what she's learned from Netflix, iPads, and her seven-year-old

Anne Thériault

Now that my son is seven, our weekend mornings have gelled into a proper routine. He wakes up at some ungodly hour—earlier, by the way, than he gets up on weekdays—and plays for a while in his room. When he’s tired of that, he’ll grab a couple of granola bars from the kitchen and then […] More »
November-December 2018

Tout le monde en parle has gripped Quebec viewers for nearly 15 years. Why can’t it reach the rest of Canada?

Sara Black McCulloch unpacks the talk show Franco Quebecers can't stop watching

Sara Black McCulloch

Singer Grimes on Tout le monde en parle in 2015 When Canadian singer Grimes appeared on a segment of Tout le monde en parle in 2015, she was the only guest on the Franco-Canadian talk show answering questions in English. When co-host Dany Turcotte discovered she had lived in Montreal for six years, he asked […] More »
November-December 2018

I gave up television for 35 years. Why I started watching again

Writer Thelma Fayle jumps back into the world of TV and finds value in the medium that she never did before

Thelma Fayle

In the 1980s, Dan Hubbard and Richard Catinus were two brainy young guys trying to sell Apple computers when I was working in a government office that used IBMs. While outlining the advantages of using a Mac for my work, Dan mentioned in passing that, after reading Jerry Mander’s book, Four Arguments for the Elimination […] More »
November-December 2018

Inside the battle for taxpayer-funded multicultural television

The Canadian government wants TV to look as diverse as our country—but producers just want to make a quick buck

Aadil Brar

“Do Canadians really use the word ‘eh?'” “Yes, they do.” Welcome to one of OMNI television network’s flagship shows, Your New Life in Canada. Produced in English, Punjabi, Cantonese, and other languages, it offers a taste of Canadian lifestyle, culture, and language to newcomers to Canada and covers everything from how food differs in Canada […] More »

Where is Canada’s multicultural television space?

Russell Peters's new TV show hits all the wrong notes in a media space desperate for more representation

Aadil Brar

Russell Peters’s much awaited return to television was finally satiated with the CTV show The Indian Detective, which aired last December. The sitcom has been five years in the making, and it’s a first for Peters, a Canadian stand-up comedian who began his career in Toronto. It tells the story of Doug D’Mello (played by […] More »
November-December 2017

Why Canada is doing television revivals the right way

Homemade reboots are finding a way to successfully connect with new generations

Sara Black McCulloch

Theatre air conditioning once beckoned crowds during heat waves, but this year, even that couldn’t lure people to the movies. This summer, the film industry struggled as the North American box office recorded its lowest-grossing summer quarter in 10 years. In all fairness to moviegoers, the summer movie choices were anything but new: mostly remakes, […] More »
November-December 2017

The gadgets we rely on are intrinsically changing us

Technology helps us unconsciously make major life decisions—from the way we live to the way we love

Tyler Hellard@poploser

On February 1, 2003, Space Shuttle Columbia came apart somewhere over Texas, reminding us that putting people into space is hard to do and very, very dangerous. Engineers determined a piece of foam that broke off during launch had damaged the heat shield on one of the wings. NASA knew about it almost immediately and […] More »