brioux.tv: the podcast

Send us Fan Mail 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...

Send us Fan Mail Have you seen The Great Canadian Pottery Throw Down ? The series is produced out of Grenville Island in Vancouver and among the executive producers is Seth Rogen. He is known more for pot than pottery but watch him get his hands dirty a few times on camera, making, of course, ash trays from behind a pottery wheel. Now, there is a lot to pottery. You’ve got to fire up your creation...

Send us Fan Mail The folks at AppleTV+ asked if I’d like a one-on-one with Eugene Levy. Before you could say Schitt’s Creek, I said yes! Levy – beloved in Canada for decades as part of the legendary SCTV cast – had just been inducted into the Canadian Comedy Hall of Fame. The interview took place in February in Pasadena, CA. I also took part in a press conference with Levy a day earlier while atte...

Send us Fan Mail TV shows don't just write and produce themselves. That takes showrunners! Two of the best in Canada have been Mark Ellis and Stephanie Morgenstern, the husband and wife team behind such hits as Flashpoint, X Company and Transplant . Their latest is the new Wednesday night CBC police drama Allegiance . The series stars Supinder Wraich as promising rookie cop Sabrina Sohal. She...

Send us Fan Mail I had so much fun zooming with Karen Robinson, who lays down the law on the new Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent . "Toronto is its own character in the show,” says Robinson, who loves that the city is representing itself for a change instead of somewhere else. “This is about us.” Robinson plays Inspector Vivienne Holness on this latest extension of the L&O franchi...

Send us Fan Mail One of Red Green's favourite sayings is, "If the ladies don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy." Steve Smith may be the handiest fella ever in the history of Canadian television. Inspired by that ol' TV fishin' pal Red Fisher, Smith crafted Red Green out of duct tape and suspenders. The Red Green Show had humble beginnings out of...

Send us Fan Mail For years, actor/comedian Tim Progosh has wondered: with all the great comedians Canada has produced over the years, why is there no Canadian Comedy Hall of Fame? Progosh has done more than wonder. He's made it happen. For more than 20 years, his efforts have been stymied by celebrations cut short by the 9/11 attacks, by deals falling through during a recession, by COVID and...

Send us Fan Mail I’m old enough to remember seeing The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show . That "really big shew" happened on February 9, 1964 – 60 years ago. I remember my dad going on about their long hair and those so-called Beatle wigs. I could not, however, take my eyes off them, and neither could a then-record 73 million other people who watched that night on television. That summer...

Send us Fan Mail Of the 137 podcast episodes I've done here over the past four-plus years, the most amazing conversation might be the second one we recorded. That was with one of my favourite actors, Enrico Colantoni. The man has done very well since he left Etobicoke for the Big Apple as a student at the American Academy of the Dramatic Arts. Distinguishing himself there led to memorable rol...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode: two CBC Tuesday night comedies for the price of one. First up is Andrew Pfung and company from Run The Burbs (Tues. on CBC). The sitcom returns for a third season with Rakhee Morzaria, who plays Camille, joining Phung on this round-table chat, along with  showrunners Jennica Harper and Nelu Handa. We start off talking yard sales, the focus of the season three prem...

Send us Fan Mail Two actors known exclusively for their work in the horror genre step off script and into their own real-life thriller on their quest to decipher if Canada’s most ghostly places are truly haunted. Yes, Luke Hutchie and Matthew Finlan are the ghostbusters in this "factual" (CBC never uses the "R" word) series. Both have horror genre credits in their IMDb profiles...

Send us Fan Mail To see your way clear to a new spin on a cop show is not easy. Sisters Karen Troubetzkoy and Nikolijne Troubetzkoy, series creators who've proven themselves on hits such as Orphan Black and Transplant , looked within themselves for inspiration. Karen, or Kat, has struggled with vision loss requiring multiple surgeries since her twenties. Her story led Kat and Niko to come up...

Send us Fan Mail Series creator and star Mark Critch needed to replicate the bridge of the original Star Trek Enterprise for a fantasy sequence on his St. John's-based sitcom Son of a Critch . The episode airs this Tuesday, January 16 on CBC. Who did Critch beam aboard to do the job? None other that my guest this week on brioux.tv: the podcast, Mark Steel. True, that name sounds more like a M...

Send us Fan Mail When you are casting a he/she series, chemistry is everything. The producers behind the new Vancouver-based cop/caper hour Wild Cards struck gold with their leads: Vanessa Morgan ( Riverdale ) and Giacomo Gianniotti ( Grey's Anatomy ). He plays a by-the-books, wrongfully accused cop trying to clear his name after being demoted to harbour duty. She plays a daring schemer who c...

Send us Fan Mail Two thousand and twenty-three was a challenging year in the TV business. Inflation and higher interest rates had consumers thinking twice about streaming subscriptions. The writers and actors strikes put a cork in the content pipeline. Peak TV seemed to slip back from the summit. The big success story in Canada, however, was the rapid growth of Pluto TV. In one year, the Free Ad-s...

Send us Fan Mail Giddyap, pardner. This week's episode of brioux.tv: the podcast takes a deep dive into everything you need to know about collecting your favourite TV shows on DVD. My guest is archivist, curator and classic TV expert Andrew J. Klyde, executive producer of Bonanza: The Official Complete Series . For many boomers, Sunday nights were spent with your family crowded around the one...

Send us Fan Mail At brioux.tv, most podcasts deal with the people who make television memories. What about, however, people who collect TV memorabilia? We’re talking toys and games, trading cards, comic books, autographs and puzzles? Meet Canada keeper of every boomer’s childhood memories: Bruce Button. For close to 50 years, Button has been buying, selling and curating TV merch, specialising in p...

Send us Fan Mail When he was asked to be president of the Toronto Film School a few years ago, Andrew Barnsley wasn't sure if he could take the job. After all, he was the executive producer of three network sitcoms at the time: Schitt's Creek, JANN and Son of a Critch . (A fourth, the reboot of Kids in the Hall on Prime Video, came later.) The Emmy and Golden Globe award winner eventuall...

Send us Fan Mail The strikes are over. How will this affect the future of television? Who better to ask than Mister John Doyle? The retired and distinguished Globe and Mail TV columnist returns to brioux.tv: the podcast to share his savvy and unfiltered take on the crazy business of television.  On this episode we tackle the following topics: The impact of the writers and actors strikes on the Can...

Send us Fan Mail It has been a whirlwind couple of weeks for Canada's first lady of entertainment news, Cheryl Hickey. The big hit was learning that the series she has hosted for 18 seasons, ET Canada , was being shut down by Corus Entertainment. Hickey admits the move, which took effect Oct. 6, caught her as much by surprise as it did others in the industry. The native of Shallow Lake, Ont....

Send us Fan Mail He's directed Drake, Rihanna, Kanye West, Justin Bieber and Jay Z. Now, Julien Christian Lutz, a.k.a. Director X, puts a Hip Hop spin on a legendary folk hero with  Robyn Hood . The Young Adult drama airs Friday nights on Global and can also be streamed on Stack TV. This episode, we hear from two of the key players on the new series: Jessye Romeo, a young, British actress who...

Send us Fan Mail Fire up the Tiki torches and pass the Doritos. With Survivor 45 upon us, who better to deliver the scoop than Murtz Jaffer. Murtz's day job is as Associate Producer of Global's The Morning Show . He's also well known as the world's foremost expert on reality TV, traveling to countless final episode tapings of many reality shows and attending and hosting multipl...

Send us Fan Mail Marie Clements grabs your attention with the opening scenes of her new series version of Bones of Crows (premiering September 20 on CBC, CBC Gem and APTN). A pyramid of caribou skulls are stacked high as crows circle overhead. It is a not so subtle symbol of the decades of horror, abuse and genocide that took place in Canada in the wake of the residential school system. Clements h...

Send us Fan Mail "Still Laughing" is the title of George Schlatter's new book and if you read it, you'll be laughing, too. There are first-hand, hilarious stories on every page and he shares many of them on this podcast episode. Schlatter went from being a Las Vegas bouncer (although he prefers the title, "executive in charge of emergency departures") to being a talen...

Send us Fan Mail As Kevin McGarry says on this episode, the odds seemed stacked against When Calls the Heart lasting into a 10th season. Yet last it has, with the 10th season now streaming on both Super Channel and Hallmark, and an 11th season already in production on the elaborate town set erected on farmland near Langley, B.C. The series has weathered the loss of one of its main leads. Aussie ac...