brioux.tv: the podcast

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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 tele...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail  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 &quot...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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 tu...

Send us Fan Mail 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 Kinmou...

Send us Fan Mail 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 ex...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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 Sep...

Send us Fan Mail 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, ho...

Send us Fan Mail 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 say...

Send us Fan Mail 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 th...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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, fir...

Send us Fan Mail 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 wi...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail 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 abili...

Send us Fan Mail 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 wh...

Send us Fan Mail  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...

Send us Fan Mail 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...