Results tagged “television”

To Sydney Newman, television drama was all about appealing to the common man. Described in an obituary as “brash and charmingly outrageous," Newman "shrewdly cast himself as the low-brow who punctures the pretensions of high-minded rivals.” In a film and television career that included major posts in Canada and Great Britain, the Toronto native used his hustling, straight-talking, frank approach to production to bring viewers down-to-earth dramas, time-travelling aliens, morale boosts during wartime, and even a hockey game or two.

The Victorian Era, when the city gained its nickname Toronto the Good, is usually thought of as a time of staid social order upheld by unwritten laws of morality. In the name of propriety, boarding houses had a strict ten o'clock curfew. And keeping up public appearances was paramount. There was, however, another side of the city beneath this prim and proper surface, as journalist C.S. Clark describes in Of Toronto the Good (1898)—which despite its name is actually an excursion into the bars, brothels, and gambling dens to uncover the city's underbelly of vice.

The recently aired docu-drama Death or Canada tells the tragic story of one family fleeing the Great Famine in Ireland by immigrating to Canada in the summer of 1847. En route, John and Mary Willis lost four of their five children to typhus before arriving in Toronto in mid-June. Shortly afterward, as the family moved inland, John and the last son died of the disease, and Mary Willis disappeared from the historical record. They were but one family in a flood of thirty-eight thousand Irish refugees who overwhelmed Toronto, at the time a town of only twenty thousand. But their story puts a human face on a period that, despite having become a common point of identity for Irish-Canadians, is rarely discussed in any detail in Canada or Ireland. And the film, which aired last month to critical acclaim and strong viewership, marks an effective convergence between the thorough research of academic history and the personal narrative details that help make history appealing to a broad public audience.

We got roped into watching Being Erica the way we're assuming most people did: through persistent advertising. Can you blame us? Its star, Erin Karpluk, was everywhere in the build-up to the show’s January 5 premiere; her image was especially prevalent on the concourse level of Union Station, where a series of Karpluks-in-costume greeted holiday pedestrian traffic. After a while, resistance proved futile.

In news that prompted every Toronto-area music journalist we know to pump fists on becoming one or two degrees removed from Stephen Colbert, Globe and Mail music critic and Trampoline Hall co-founder Carl Wilson is scheduled to be a guest on The Colbert Report. Why? Because of James Franco's sweet l'il (read: completely random bananas) red carpet shout out to Wilson's 33⅓ book. Now everybody wants a piece.

The night's journey could begin one of three ways. On this evening, it starts at Yorkdale subway station, where you take in the illuminated beauty of Michael Hayden's Arc en Ciel before boarding a train to head downtown. You stroll along the streets, eventually winding up on Yonge Street. Passing on buying a slice from any of the pizza joints south of Gerrard, you soak up the neon lights of record store giants A&A and Sam the Record Man. Another night, you take a similar journey from the comfort of a car, passing several of the same sights and ponder as you listen to the jazzy background music if you should check out that early Coen Brothers movie playing at the Rio.

Tomorrow, for the first time since March 16, 1996, the Toronto Maple Leafs won’t be playing on a non-holiday, regular season Saturday. They play tonight in Buffalo; they won’t be in action again until next Tuesday.

Left to right: Polkaroo, TVOntario chair Peter O'Brian, TVOntario CEO Lisa de Wilde, honoree William Davis, Premier Dalton McGuinty, Minister of Education Kathleen Wynne, emcee Steve Paikin

Photo by the_anim8r from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

It's election day—do you know which media outlet you'll be glued to tonight to discover the results? Among the options for Golden Horseshoe voters on election night in November 1965 were a national network (CBC) and a local independent (CHCH in Hamilton). Both touted the latest in news-gathering technology, with the inevitable period nod to the magic of IBM technology.

POLITICS: It's Federal Election time! Torontoist will be liveblogging the results this evening, so make sure you've read up on all of our election coverage in advance. Go vote! Seriously! Various locations (find yours here), 9:30 a.m.–9:30 p.m., FREE.

Every Saturday morning, Historicist looks back at the events, places, and characters—good and bad—that have shaped Toronto into the city we know today.

CBC's How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria? concludes tonight at 8 p.m. when either Elicia Mackenzie of Vancouver or Janna Polzin of Woodstock will be chosen by the public—over 650,000 Canadians—to spend October as the star of The Sound of Music, yodelling in the Princess of Wales theatre.

With summer now officially upon us, some of our fair city's citizens face an age-old dilemma: stay in the city for the weekend or flee to the cottage. Families who choose the latter are then faced with the prospect of entertaining themselves in the midst of gridlock and curveballs tossed by the weather deities.

Snappy Answers runs every Saturday afternoon. Send your questions, be they tough or trivial, to snappyanswers@torontoist.com.

A characteristic of spending any good length of time on the internet is desensitization—one's tolerance levels for graphic horror are escalated with repeated exposure to lemon parties, tubgirls, a certain .cx domain, and the indelicate contents of 1 cup.

With Rogers' plan to move Citytv, OMNI Television, and the Fan 590 to the southeast corner of Dundas Square, those familiar with the current streetfront studios on Queen Street have wondered if the former Olympic Spirit building will be opened up in a similar way.

Waves eroding the tip of the Toronto Islands. A project to keep it from eroding will cost around $14 million, thus reminding us all once again that attempting to combat the effects of Mother Nature is a horribly costly experience, as anybody who has ever bought a jar of Oil of Olay knows full well.

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains of 2007––the people, places, and things that we've either fallen head over heels in love with or developed uncontrollable rage towards over the past twelve months. Get your dose, starting Boxing Day and running into the new year, three times a day––sunrise, noon, and sunset.

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains of 2007––the people, places, and things that we've either fallen head over heels in love with or developed uncontrollable rage towards over the past twelve months. Get your dose, starting Boxing Day and running into the new year, three times a day––sunrise, noon, and sunset.

Sarah Polley is having a kickass month as her debut directorial feature, Away From Her, racks up the accolades. On Sunday, the Los Angeles film critics gave Polley a New Generation Award for up-and-coming directors. Then, on Monday, the New York film critics felt Away From Her was 2007's Best First Film. In addition, earlier this month Polley was named one of the "50 Smartest People in Hollywood" by Entertainment Weekly. She's the youngest...

Well, it's about time. Two years after launching downloadable television shows south of the border, Apple has finally flipped the switch here, albeit with a dearth of content. Single television episodes are available via iTunes for $1.99, and full seasons range from about $10–$30. Most of the shows currently available are for domestic productions, like CTV's Degrassi: The Next Generation and the CBC series Little Mosque on the Prairie, but non-Canadian shows, like South...

Are you getting geared up for the season finale of The Hills on Monday? If so, continue reading. If not, we don't need another lecture about how the show is quasi-scripted—tell it to your boring friends. The last few weeks have surprised loyal viewers with some major plot twists: Audrina finally dumped Justin Bobby, Lauren wants to make a boyfriend out of notorious man-whore Brody Jenner, Spencer's sister has turned cat-fighting into the official...

A couple weeks back, Spacing Wire posted this brilliant old TTC ad that made us hungry for more forgotten gems of Toronto advertising. The video in question was uploaded by a user calling themselves WNED 17, and their entire archive is made up of similar videos. In fact, their profile page provides a mission statement: "Youtube user WNED17 is proud to present repeat portions of broadcast captured in the 1980s and early 1990s via...

The good folks at TiVo have decided that now would be the optimum time to unleash their initially-much-talked-about-but-not-so-much-talked-about-anymore product on Canadians, a mere eight years after its release to the U.S. and U.K. markets. (Way to capitalize on a phenomenon, fellas!) TiVo can be credited––at least according to Canada.com––with "making TV watching less of a laborious task," which is a relative understatement considering how exhausting sitting through commercials can be to the average viewer. Don't...

This weekend, resist the urge to do the same old bar hop and try a more sophisticated means of indulging your party ADD: the art show hop. Okay, so we just invented that term, but the city does have three rad art happenings going on almost simultaneously this Friday, November 30. And we say, why choose? To start your adventure, knock back a whiskey for warmth and head down to the Harbourfront, where the...

Photo by Marc Lostracco.

First and foremost, we're going to warn you that the video above may not be safe for work, children, or the faint of heart. It's from the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board of Ontario's latest ad campaign. In the video, a young sweet sous-chef with her whole future ahead of her happens to slip on some grease, spilling a vat of boiling water all over herself and horribly scalding her face. While she's on...