30 Days of TV: Day Three

My Favourite New Show of the 2011 Season

Downton Abbey

Seven episodes of goodness make up my favourite new tv show of the season this year. I've always been interested (read: obsessed) with period dramas, in particular those that revolve around the English aristocracy. I guess re-reading Pride and Prejudice and re-watching the BBC miniseries every single year without fail since I was 15 might possibly have a little something to do with it. 

But what you'll find in most novels about the English aristocracy is that it will solely focus on the social dynamics within that particular class. You'll be introduced to accomplished aristocratic ladies whose lives centre around parties, gossip and finding a gentlemen worth 10, 000 pounds and a large country estate to settle down with. And a title, if possible!

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30 Days of TV: Day Two

A Show That You Wish More People Were Watching

It'd be a cop out if I said American Soap Operas once again...so I'm going to go with...

Parenthood

This warm little nugget of television goodness is shockingly underrated and mostly ignored by mainstream viewers. I'm not entirely sure why Parenthood hasn't reached the popularity levels that family-centric shows like Brothers and Sisters and Modern Family have, but I suppose it comes down to a few factors.

• Going up against uber popular crime and legal shows on other networks
• Lack of star power
• Lack of storyline sensationalism

To put it bluntly, Parenthood just isn't sexy. It's dysfunctional (without being pretentious) and, while it has some recognisable tv stars, they're mostly faces you might remember from a show way back when, but you can't quite make out their name. Are Peter Krause, Monica Potter and Craig T. Nelson household names? No. Not even close.

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30 Days of TV: Day One

A Show That Should Never Have Been Cancelled 

American Soap Operas

It's hard to say what show I'd like networks to desperately bring back. As an avid soap opera watcher, I'd like to reserve the right to group all cancelled soap opera shows together as my "Show That Should Never Have Been Cancelled". 

There's something about sitting down with the women in your family and watching your stories. It's something that was passed down from my grandmother to my mother, and hopefully, if the survivors stick around, to my daughters. Soap Operas are about family, love and life in its essence and it's about setting aside the dreary doldrums of life for an hour or two to watch the characters on your favourite show. It's about following along with the show's decades old family circles as they got married, broke up, had children and we all watched those children grow up within the show's context. I grew as they grew.

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The Woman in a Chair

Yes, I know...a chair theme. That was the unexpected theme of my day.

About an hour ago I was watching Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts in Notting Hill on cable. While I love this movie dearly and always get those tingly, fuzzy feelings in my tummy when I watch it, a new kind of feeling took over me this time around. I hadn't seen this movie for a few years and so when I watched it tonight, I couldn't help but tear up towards the end of the film. See that usually happens when Roberts starts her "I'm just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her" speech to Grant, but, oddly enough, I found myself greatly touched by another couple in the movie- Max and Bella.

Grant's character William's best friend is Max, who has a paraplegic wife named Bella. It isn't the fact that she is paraplegic that moved me, it was the love these two characters shared. After William has turned down Roberts' Anna, even after her romantic overture, his friends make him realise he has made a terrible mistake and rally to go in search of Anna on her last day in London. Max brings his car around and the whole gang squashes inside to go along for the adventure- except for Bella.

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The Man on the Bench

As I was walking to the mechanic's today to pick up my car I saw this elderly man sitting on a park bench by the road. He was an unassuming man, dressed in grey trousers, a white shirt, a beige cardigan and was topped with a tweed flat cap. This elderly man was sitting on this bench by the side of a boring road near my house. All that was in this man's line of vision was a petrol station and a mechanic's shop. But there he was in the middle of the afternoon on this park bench, one arm across his torso supporting the other that was supporting his chin.

I stared at this gentleman for quite some time. I'm pretty sure he knew I was there, but that didn't deter him. In the time I spent looking at him, I couldn't stop thinking about how content and focused he looked. There he was on this park bench, on a road whose most exciting activity consists of people pumping petrol into their cars. Yet, he seemed to derive pleasure from watching these cars pull in, get their fill of petrol and drive off to an unknown destination. The intensity in his expression was so powerful that I couldn't get his image out of my mind all day.

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The Suds Bucket

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We are mere days away from the end of Guiding Light, the longest running soap opera in history. Seventy-two years of soap legacy will be laid to rest this Friday and, for the first time, I am not looking forward to the weekend, knowing that come Monday morning at 10am ET, there will be a game show in the place of my beloved sudser.  How odd will it be to watch the Light dim and know that it will never be turned on again? I will never see Emma Spencer Spaulding grow into the heroine that she is destined to be or what will become of Dinah Marler in old age, or even what a supercouple Bill Lewis and Lizzie Spaulding could have been in soap history.

All that remains is this feeling of loss, as if the stories are incomplete. The cancellation in April stunted the storyline potentials for the show, such as the romance of Olivia Spencer and Natalia Rivera and an epic reunion fitting of supercouple Josh Lewis and Reva Shayne. What remained was the hurried knotting of loose ends and character exits that left me feeling a little flat, rather than moved.

I have read many articles stating that the death knell for the show was the now infamous change in their production model, which focused on outdoor shooting, scaled down sets and handheld cameras. I tend to disagree. Instead of looking at the rich filmmaking that the soap produced this year, many tend to fall back on weak excuses for the show’s demise that may have been correct had the show been cancelled last year. However, 2009 brought with it a greater understanding by the cast and crew of the potential the new production model could have. Let me remind you of the expert filmmaking during the week of April 13, 2009.

The graveyard confession by Olivia to Natalia, the framing of the anguish experienced by the two women during Natalia’s wedding vows to Frank Cooper and the exquisite gazebo love confession by Natalia under a blanket of snow perfectly showcased the upswing for this production model. You cannot discount how intimate and powerful these scenes were, mainly due to the camera work and location shooting that complimented and accentuated the powerhouse performances put in by Crystal Chappell and Jessica Leccia.

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