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Hosted by veteran TV columnist Bill Brioux. Each week, join in on an outspoken conversation with the actors, executives, and insiders that make the television industry pop. In each edition, Bill invites his guests to talk business, give up some great stories, and make it personal. Plus laughs.
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These days it is not unusual for fans to wait over a year for a second season of their favourite series. But five years?? That is the situation for When Hope Calls, the spinoff to the popular period piece drama When Calls the Heart. The shot in Ontario series returns April 6 on Super Channel Heart & Home in Canada and on Great American Family in the United States. A lot has changed in five years including the casting of the two leads. The two Canadians at the heart of the series now are C...
For this episode we go back into the vault for an interview conducted ten years ago with Joe Clokey. He was the son of the man who created and animated Gumby, the most bendable children's TV character ever. Joe grew up in California as "Gumby's little brother," watching his dad and mom stamp out dozens of brightly coloured characters out of plastercine in creating a unique world of stop-animation wonder. TV audiences first saw Gumby on a short film tested during a broadcast of NBC's The...
Ali Weinstein is the writer/producer/director behind "Your Tomorrow," a look at Ontario Place the summer before it was shut down after 52 years. For over five decades a 155-acre Toronto waterfront sanctuary, it is being radically redeveloped. Gone are 850 West Island trees. Instead we get a spa with a killer view of Cinesphere. In a moving, observational documentary,Weinstein captures the place in its final days as a full-on family retreat. Even after falling into disrepair, it was still trea...
Podcasts were invented for guests such as Malcolm McDowell. He is a smart, funny, generous man and as terrific as ever as Pop on CBC's Son of a Critch. This conversation took place last summer in St. John’s, Nfld., in McDowell’s trailer which was parked outside the Bella Vista banquet hall. It had been an exciting 24 hours with the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau -- who was down the street trying in vain to save his job at the annual Regatta -- stopping by to say hello to the c...
Two of the four Baroness Von Sketch Show players, Jennifer Whalen and Meredith MacNeill, are back with a new CBC series -- and it's a period piece! The series is called Small Achievable Goals and it is about two women in midlife encountering all of the joys of menopause. Hot flashes, mood swings, homicidal trendencies and more. Now, you can't swing a tampon in daytime TV without Drew Barrymore or Oprah menopausing for station identification. Even in primetime this has come up before. Re...
Claire Rankin says she's waited "a really long time...to land something like this." The PEI native is talking about her role as Mary on Son of a Critch. How she landed the role -- after one of those remote zoom call auditions -- is just one of the stories she shares on this hour-long podcast. Season Four finds Mary -- and Rankin -- out of the kitchen and in the thick of it. On this Tuesday's episode (CBC, CBCGem), Mary has a mid-life crisis. In a few weeks, she's going back to school. L...
Saturday Night Live is celebrating the big 5-0. Who better to put it in perspective than the Canadian writer who was there at the start. On this special presentation from brioux.tv: the podcast and LateNighter, Rosie Shuster tells how it all began. She was born with a funny bone as the daughter of Frank Shuster (half of the comedy team of Wayne & Shuster). She meets Lorne Michaels at junior high, he falls for Rosie, and Lorne then soaks up every showbiz lesson he can from her dad. ...
OK, Hearties, here he is, Jack Wagner who plays Bill Avery on When Calls the Heart. The former soap star has played the sheriff-turned-judge character for 12 seasons on the Langley, BC-based Hallmark and Super Channel series. As viewers will see on the Saturday, Feb. 8 episode, Avery will be re-introduced to Georgie McGill, played by special guest star Melissa Gilbert whose credits date all the way back to her child star days on Little House on the Prairie. 'Bout time Avery got in on th...
If ever we needed some candid talk from Rick Mercer, we need it now. The CBC Hall of Famer didn't hold back when I spoke with him last summer in St. John's on the set of Son of a Critch. The native son plays Mark Sr.'s new VOCM radio station boss on the CBC sitcom. Catch the episode this Tuesday (also on CBCGem). Mercer was delighted to be back before many familiar faces among the crew. He is, of course, an original alumni of Mark Critch's other series, This Hour Has 22 Minutes. After ...
This episode is the second to feature a cast member from Season 4 of Son of a Critch: none other than the son himself, Benjamin Evan Ainsworth. Ainsworth, of course, plays young Mark Critch, circa 1990, on the CBC sitcom. The episode was recorded last summer on location in St. John's, Nfld. Ainsworth was shooting a scene on a residential street closed off for the production. Also there was Sophia Powers, who plays Mark's girlfriend Fox. The two are trying to navigate high school this season,...
Monday January 20 is inauguration day in the US. So everybody raise your right hand, and for those listening here at home, hang onto those Canadian passports. A dozen years ago The Donald was just another tanned game show host when I interviewed him in his 26th floor office at Trump Tower in New York. Now I've reached into the vault and fired up the time machine to bring you a conversation about TV, the world in general and why he feels both always need a bad guy. The Apprentice host went di...
The second season of the slick crime series Allegiance begins January 15 on CBC and CBC Gem. The shot-in-Surrey, B.C., drama stars Supinder Wraich (Sort Of), Enrico Colantoni and Samer Salem. I spoke with all three in Toronto at the CBC Winter Media Launch in December. Wraich plays Sabrina Sohal, a promising rookie police officer who fights to serve her hometown. Rico is the seasoned cop who mentors her past the hurdles of a flawed justice system. In Season Two, Sohal graduates to...
No man is an island. Allan Hawco's new series, however, is shot and set on an archipelago of eight islands represented by the French government off the coast of Newfoundland. Hawco, who played a detective on Republic of Doyle and was also on Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, plays Donny "Fitz" Fitzpatrick. He's a cop who gets too nosy about police secrets and is therefore banished to Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. There he is paired with local police officer Geneviève "Arch" Archambault (Joséphine J...
This Hour has, well, not just 22 Minutes but a full hour as I catch up with Mark Critch, this week's guest on brioux.tv: the podcast. The conversation was taped last summer in St. John's, Nfld., during production on the fourth season of Son of a Critch (returning Tuesday, Jan. 7 on CBC and CBC Gem). What a trip that was, including a visit from a guy who was once Critch's snowboard instructor -- Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Now both men are going downhill this winter! Speaking of which, we ...
Genevieve Mushaluk, a 33-year-old corporate lawyer from Winnipeg, Manitoba, had her torch snuffed on last week’s two-hour, second-last episode of Survivor. Picked as the final member of the jury, she’ll be in LA watching the finale with the rest of the castaways when the season ends December 18 on CBS and Global. Did she see her elimination coming? Does she have any regrets? Will she ever eat rice again? And what about all those snakes and spiders?? Mushaluk tells all in this shorter than usu...
My guest this week has made over three dozen made for television movies, She also headlined Hallmark’s Aurora Teagarden series. Before that, as a child star, she was part of the long-running TGIF family series, Full House, as well as its streaming sequel, Fuller House. Of course I’m talking about Candace Cameron Bure. In 2022, she broke away from Hallmark and joined the Great American Family network. There she is not just one of its busiest stars, she is also a very hands-on Chief Content Off...
If you work in this industry you know how hard it is to keep ahead in a world that always seems to be pivoting. Streaming, fast channels, multi-platform media brands – who can keep up? Well, one fella is Jamie Schouela, President, Global Channels and Media at Blue Ant Media. I caught up with Jamie a few weeks ago in Toronto when I was asked to moderate a CTAM panel on the future of the industry from a cable perspective. He leads the strategic direction and operations for the company's s...
As we head into another frigid Canadian winter we bring you a podcast about a series that is set and shot in the hottest part of Australia. The series is called Troppo, a term used in north Queensland that means going mad from the heat. Troppo is based on the best selling novel from Candice Fox titled Crimson Lake and it is about a disgraced American ex-cop played by Thomas Jane (HBO's Hung) hired to help an Australian private investigator. They are teamed together on murder...
After 31 years as host of The Fifth Estate, plus another decade winning Emmys for CBS and NBC News, award-winning investigative journalist Bob McKeown is ready to retire. The Ottawa native never shied away from his assignments, especially when it came to reporting on football and head injuries. Back in the '70s, he was a CFL all-star centre for the Ottawa Rough Riders. He is without a doubt the only three-time recipient of the Edward R. Murrow Award to have also won a Grey Cup. On this ...
Tyler and Jordie Schwartz started their business of selling retro toys and gifts in 2007 as the Canadian Leg Lamp Company. The idea came after shooting their fan film “Road Trip for Ralphie,” an homage to the kid from the 1983 classic, “A Christmas Story.” Next they introduced Moose Mugs from “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” (1989). Seventeen years later, they’ve branched out to all kinds of retro goodies, including toys, candy, books, games, ugly sweaters and much more. You’ll find t...
When Jess Salgueiro auditioned in person for the role of Eve on Frasier, she had to do it in front of a pair of sitcom legends: Kelsey Grammer and director Jim Burrows. Pressure? Yes and no says the actress, who was born in Winnipeg, Man. She figured there must be hundreds of others lining up to try and win a role on this reboot of a TV classic. With nothing to lose by trying, she told herself, just have fun and see if you can make them laugh. She did, and got the part. Now after two se...
Stop me if you've seen this kind of Hallmark series before: an enterprising and attractive single woman (Sarah Drew from Grey's Anatomy) owns a Christmas store on the main street of a picturesque small town. She crosses paths with a handsome, newly single-police officer (Peter Mooney from Burden of Truth). Before you can say, "witness tampering," holiday sparks ensue. Mistletoe Murders, already launched in the US on Hallmark Channel and premiering Nov. 18 om W Network and STACKTV, does ...
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. ...
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 see...
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 ...
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 l...
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-p...
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. ...
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 d...
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...
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 ...
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 Quixo...
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 aw...
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 d...
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 al...
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 taske...
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 fu...
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 ne...
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 ...
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 Mayo...
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 ...
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 th...
Attention Hearties! And especially Hickies! Yes, this week's episode of brioux.tv: the podcast features Ben Rosenbaum. For over a decade, he's played Mike Hickam on When Calls the Heart, the longest-running series on both Hallmark and Super Channel. With Season 11 winding down, WCTH has already been renewed for a 12th season. Born and raised in the States, Rosenbaum has enjoyed his decade-long run working on the show in British Columbia so much he applied for landed immigrant status. He...
Evanka Osmak helps us keep score most nights along with Ken Reid at the Sportsnet Central desk. She's taking her own shot now in the publishing world with her first novel, a cool book for kids ages 6-11 titled "Ali Hoops." The PlumLeaf Press release is all about a young girl named Ali who loves shooting hoops with her schoolmate Leila. Can they both make the school basketball team? What if one of them does and the other does not? Born in New Jersey and raised in Oakville, Ont., Osmak has an i...
As briouxtv listeners know, executive producer Mitch Azaria loves to go Tripping. These past five years, he has taken us by mahogany lake boat up the Rideau Canal, sailing along the tip of The Bruce Peninsula, on a bird's eye view over the Niagara region and aboard a Budd train northwest of Superior to White River. This April, his latest immersive documentary is Tripping the French River. The mode of travel this time is aboard a cedar strip canoe as we travel from Lake Nipissing on a three-ho...
Stop doing whatever you are doing right now and listen to this podcast episode with Dave Thomas. The SCTV writer-producer-player looks back on his years working with the late, great, Joe Flaherty, who passed away April 1st at 82. Thomas and Flaherty produced the series in its second season, taking their cue from Harold Ramis and putting more of a spotlight on the cast's ability to morph into famous celebrities. They also had an uncanny way of mashing together good and bad films with, well, Fa...
Terry Fox dipped his toe into the Atlantic off the coast of St. John's, Newfoundland, on April 12, 1980. And so began his historic crusade against cancer, the Marathon of Hope. Forty-four years later, nearly a billion dollars has been raised to help people with cancer around the world in Terry's name. On this podcast, the man who ran with him halfway across Canada and who helped organize Fox's fundraiser, Bill Vigars, shares many first hand stories about this great Canadian hero. You'll find ...
Gotta sing! Gotta dance! Gotta watch the cast of Murdoch Mysteries do what no other scripted, dramatic Canadian TV series has done before -- present a full-blown musical episode. It happens Monday, March 25 on CBC (see it after the 25th on CBCGem) and April 6 on Ovation in the US. "Why is Everybody Singing?" finds our hero, Det. William Murdoch (Yannick Bisson), shot in the head while investigating a crime. In a coma, he watches, helplessly, while the rest of the cast go into their song...
Trish Stratus is a WWE Hall of Famer, eight-time WWE Champion, and was recently named WWE's Greatest Female Superstar. Now she's heading into her third season as a judge on Canada's Got Talent, which has just been supersized with a million dollar payday thanks to Rogers. So if head judge Howie Mandel gets out of control this season on CGT, remember, he's just a body slam away from total annihilation! The Toronto native has parlayed her success and passion into the Stratusphere. Through...
Back in 1974, fifty years ago, there was no streaming, no cable, no news or sports networks. What there finally was, however, was a third national Canadian broadcast network. On this episode of brioux.tv: the podcast, Corus Entertainment EVP Troy Reeb looks back at a time when Canada went Global. Once known as "The Love Boat network," it is the longtime Canadian home of some of TV’s most enduring hits, including the Young and the Restless and Saturday Night Live. Over the years, it was ...
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