Extraordinary Canadians

Sunday, 8:30 p.m., CITY-TV

This series, one of those all-too-rare explorations of Canadian history and culture on TV these days, has prominent Canadian figures dwelling for 30 minutes on the life and achievements of important figures from our past. On this one, Adrienne Clarkson looks at Norman Bethune, a figure who might well be considered a lightning rod in a culture-war perspective on Canadian history. He was, after all, devoted to socialized medicine and saved lives during revolutions in Spain and China. Later programs in the series (which is allied with a series of Penguin books going by the same title; the series also airs on Biography Channel Saturdays at 7:30 p.m.) feature Margaret MacMillan on Stephen Leacock and David Adams Richards on Lord Beaverbrook. Next spring, in another of those all-too-rare moves, the series will air in multiple languages – Mandarin, Italian, and Hindi – on OMNI Television.

Montreal director Karen Cho brings three extraordinary Canadians into your home this fall. Citytv, OMNI Television and The Biography Channel are airing a 12 week series, Extraordinary Canadians, featuring some of the country’s most influential people.

Cho, who directs three of the 12 segments (which profile Norman Bethune, Nellie McClung and Lester B. Pearson) spoke with us recently to talk about Canadian women in the arts, and what it was like collaborating with the likes of Adrienne Clarkson and Andrew Cohen.

iVillage: How did you get involved in the Extraordinary Canadians series?
Karen Cho: It was producer Kenneth Hirsch of PMA Productions who approached me about the series. When he explained the concept of the show, right away I was interested. I was really excited to be a part of a series that took a contemporary look at those who have shaped our country and identity.

I loved how Extraordinary Canadians situated Canadian figures within a global context. Be it the suffragette movement, the Suez crisis, or the communist revolution in China, discovering how Canadians joined, influenced, or participated in these world historical events really opened my eyes to our place in history.

iV: As a Canadian woman, how important to you is it to features others like yourself?
KC: History is often the recounted by the “victors” or by those who hold the positions of power and privileged within a society, and I think it is important to constantly challenge this. It is the voices and histories of those we rarely hear from that I’m interested in exploring.

It was certainly refreshing to see women like Nellie McClung, Emily Carr and Lucy Maud Montgomery included in the Extraordinary Canadians series. I was inspired to learn about what these women achieved despite the obstacles they faced.
It was also an honour for me to work with Charlotte Gray and Adrienne Clarkson on the episodes. They offered fresh perspectives and female insight that really deepened our understanding of both Nellie McClung and Norman Bethune’s lives.

Read more here.

Canadians tend to shy away from superlatives, particularly when describing ourselves. We’re generally a bashful people and leave the bravado and bragging to our neighbours to the south.

So we know something special beckons when a couple of homegrown TV execs outdo themselves in calling their new series not Good, not Nice, not Sweet, not Deep, but go whole hog in naming it Extraordinary Canadians. Better still, TV viewers will be delighted to learn that the 12-part series lives up to its title, both in terms of its subjects and their stories.

The series — which debuted Sunday at 8:30 p.m. on Citytv and repeats Oct. 29 at 7:30 p.m. on the Biography Channel — is not to be confused with the CBC-TV endeavour on The Greatest Canadian. The latter series worked from a list of 10 finalists (voted on by Canadians), including the rather bizarre inclusion of Don Cherry, before it was whittled down and Tommy Douglas emerged as Numero Uno.

Fret not about catching fashion casualty Cherry’s mug or Neanderthal views on Extraordinary Canadians. Although there are a couple of people — Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau — who show up on both lists, Extraordinary Canadians is limited to the deceased. (Fossils, in the case of Cherry, don’t count.) Apart from Pearson and Trudeau, the series focuses on such compelling subjects as Glenn Gould, Emily Carr and Norman Bethune. Furthermore, the subjects are seen through the eyes and minds of such contemporary Canadian writers as Mark Kingwell, M.G. Vassanji and Margaret MacMillan. Each episode presents a rather unique connection between the writer and the subject.

The TV series has been adapted from the ambitious and bestselling Penguin Canada book series, edited by John Ralston Saul and involving the same pairings of writers and subjects. Penguin, in conjunction with the debut of the TV show, is now releasing the first six books of the series in paperback.

Eccentric genius, recluse, hypochondriac. Canadians may think they know who classical music legend Glenn Gould is. Mark Kingwell begs to differ.

Kingwell, an author and associate chair of philosophy at the University of Toronto, will offer a more textured view of Gould as the series Extraordinary Canadians debuts on Citytv at 8:30 p.m. on Sunday. (The series will also air on The Biography Channel beginning Oct. 29.)

The show, co-produced by Rogers Media Television, is based on a series of 18 books written by notable Canadians, including futurist writer Douglas Coupland, who profiles futurist thinker Marshall McLuhan, and former governor general Adrienne Clarkson, who profiles Dr. Norman Bethune, a hero of the Chinese Communist revolution. Twelve of the books have already been filmed, with the remaining six set to go into production next year.

“It’s a somewhat unusual pairing because I’m not a musician or an expert on classical music. Then I started thinking that writing about Gould as a thinker and an intellectual and approaching him that way had not really been done before,” Kingwell said.

Read more here.

Friday, October 21, 2011
Cassandra Szlarski for The Canadian Press

TORONTO From the very beginning, TV producer Kenneth Hirsch knew it would take extraordinary measures to adequately profile the lives of 18 extraordinary Canadians.

His plans would not be limited to a TV broadcast — it would involve books, tours, DVDs and an immersive online game for students.

Hirsch’s ambitious collection of biographies, Extraordinary Canadians, begins airing on Citytv this Sunday, five years after he began imagining the multiplatform venture.

“I think it’s probably the most exhaustive biography series done in Canada in 100 years and it took some time, but I think it’s going to have a tremendous impact,” Hirsch says in a recent interview from Saskatoon, where he cohosted an advance screening of an episode on Plains Cree chief Big Bear.

“I think Canadians will be surprised at how little they knew about these people … how dramatic their stories are and the massive contribution these extraordinary Canadians made to the world of art and diplomacy and music and medicine and literature.”

Each half-hour episode of Extraordinary Canadians is adapted from the Penguin Group (Canada) book series edited by John Ralston Saul. That literary venture debuted in 2008 with contemporary Canadian writers chronicling the lives of historical giants in minibiographies some 200 pages long.

They include M. G. Vassanji on Mordecai Richler, Nino Ricci on Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Jane Urquhart on Lucy Maud Montgomery, Lewis DeSoto on Emily Carr and Charlotte Gray on Nellie McClung.

The books followed the similar Penguin Lives collection in the U.S., which Hirsch says made him think, “Why is there no Canadian series?”

Read full article here. ]]> http://www.pmaproductions.com/2011/10/21/extraordinary-canadians-makes-leap-from-books-to-tv/feed/ 0 http://www.pmaproductions.com/2011/10/19/preview-screening-of-extraordinary-canadians-adrienne-clarkson-on-norman-bethune/ http://www.pmaproductions.com/2011/10/19/preview-screening-of-extraordinary-canadians-adrienne-clarkson-on-norman-bethune/#comments Wed, 19 Oct 2011 20:35:41 +0000 admin http://pmaproductions.com/wp/?p=372