CHERRY NIGHT IN CANADA

For years, Tim Cherry says he begged his famous father, Don, to agree to allow his story to be told. Finally, Cherry Sr. said yes, and the result is “Keep Your Head Up Kid: The Don Cherry Story,” airing Sunday and Monday, March 28 and 29, on CBUT.
“I kept saying, ‘Dad, this would make such a good movie.’ And he didn’t feel it was the time; that was his answer to me. Then, one day, he said, ‘Maybe it is time.’ ”
The two-parter tells the story of Don Cherry before the loud suits and public persona, through the years he played and coached hockey, struggled through unemployment, cared for his family, and was deeply in love with a woman named Rose.
Written by Tim, a TV sports producer, the movie stars Jared Keeso as the elder Cherry and Sarah Manninen as his wife, Rose. Keeso has done a long series of guest spots on such series as “Smallville,” “The Guard” and “Caprica,” but this is his first starring role. And he not only plays the character off ice, but he’s Cherry in the hockey scenes as well. “He was the first guy we wanted,” Tim Cherry says. “He was the No. 1 guy, and when we found that he had played junior hockey …
. And he just had that little bit of fire in his eye and that little bit of swagger in the auditions that we liked.”
“Keep Your Head Up Kid” follows Don Cherry from his childhood in Kingston, Ont., through his years as a promising minor-league player, when he was crisscrossing the continent with a young family in tow. It also tells the story of a guy who might have had an NHL career, if he hadn’t been so pigheaded. And it follows him through years when his fortunes led him from painting houses to coaching the Boston Bruins.
Keeso says he grew up watching “Coach’s Corner,” and meeting Don Cherry was a highlight of his career. “I got to hang around with him and — it was a dream come true — talk hockey with him,” Keeso says.
The Don Cherry he found in the script wasn’t the abrasive TV personality Canadians love or love to hate. “I was surprised to see that it calls for him to be pretty dialed back through his younger years. “From speaking with Tim and his sister Cindy, I learned that you could almost call him shy.”
To a large extent, “Keep Your Head Up Kid” is a love story, and the hero of the piece is Rose Cherry, who died in 1997. She married Don in the early 1950s and stuck with him through 53 moves, countless small cities and a couple of bouts of unemployment before he landed the head coach job with the Bruins in the 1970s.
“In many respects, it’s a love story between Mom and Dad,” Tim Cherry says. “And in a weird sort of way, it’s also about Dad’s love of the game. One of the lines we use, Dad says when they married, ‘Rose didn’t realize that, when she married me, she was also marrying hockey.’ ”
Manninen’s resemblance to Rose was so strong that Don Cherry found it painful to be around her.
“He just couldn’t get over how much she looked like Rose and how much she talked like Rose and carried herself like her,” Keeso says.
“He was brought to tears a number of times while we were shooting, just talking to Sarah. He was really, really blown away by her. Sarah would go over, and they would talk for a little while, and then Don would politely say, ‘I’ve got to go over here, because I’m starting to get a little worked up.’
“He couldn’t carry on a conversation for more than a few minutes when she was in the hair, makeup and wardrobe.”
Tim Cherry says his father insisted that the film not hold back on the truth, and as a result, Don Cherry often comes across as selfish.
“I’ve had a lot of people read the script and say, ‘Your father doesn’t come across in a very good light here.’ And I say, ‘That’s what he wanted.’ He wanted the truth. He was selfish at first, in that he did some things without thinking of the consequences for my mom and my sister.”
Tim Cherry describes his mother as “the power behind the throne” and says if she hadn’t wanted to go along with her husband, there would be quite a different story to tell. “It wasn’t like he was dragging my mom across North America,” he says. “I’ve talked to my mom, and she had a good time.”
If he hadn’t had a kidney transplant as a child — an episode dramatized in night two of the miniseries — Tim Cherry night have followed in his dad’s footsteps as a hockey player. Instead, he ended up being the family storyteller. “Looking back, it was an amazing childhood. I would go down to the practice with Dad. And I would skate with Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito, Brad Park and Gerry Cheevers.”

THE BEAUTIFUL GAME, LOTS OF IT!

CBC, home of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South AfricaT, kicks off an action-packed soccer season when Major League Soccer on CBC raises the curtain on its fourth season.  Toronto FC takes the newly refurbished all-grass pitch at BMO Field against Seattle on Sun, April 25 at 11pm on CBC, CBC Bold and CBCSports.ca.  Lead by captain Jim Brennan, Toronto FC look to become playoff contenders for the first time in team history.  This kicks off an exciting 13-game Toronto FC broadcast package for MLS on CBC which includes matches versus the 2009 MLS Playoff finalists, Columbus Crew on Saturday, Oct. 16 at 3:30 p.m. ET; a May 8 matchup against Eastern Conference powerhouse Chicago Fire and Popsicle Soccer Day in Canada on July 10, which will feature a game against Colorado in addition to comprehensive 2010 FIFA World Cup South AfricaT coverage.  CBC will continue to feature the stars of MLS to fans throughout the season, along with special features on the Vancouver Whitecaps, currently of the North American Soccer League who will join MLS next year. Canada’s second franchise will play out of a refurbished BC Place, bringing even more Canadian stories to North America’s  p-flight league.
Gemini Award-winner Scott Russell returns this season as host of MLS on CBC. Nigel Reed, former host and producer for BBC’s English Premier League coverage, takes his familiar place in the broadcast booth to call play-by-play, alongside analyst and former Canadian national team captain, Jason De Vos. CBC Sports veteran Brenda Irving will report from the sidelines. Toronto FC heads into a highly anticipated season highlighted by the hiring of Preki Radosavljevic, the club’s fourth coach in four seasons. Famous for his no-nonsense approach, Radosavljevic boasts a successful MLS resume. He has hoisted an MLS Cup, won two MVP awards as a player and was coach of the year in 2007 with Chivas USA.  On the field, Scarborough native Dwayne De Rosario returns to the club at the midfield position accompanied by fellow Canadian International Julian De Guzman.
CBCSports.ca will provide live and on-demand coverage of all MLS on CBC broadcasts, in addition to Toronto FC and MLS highlights.  For information on how to order Bold, viewers can call their local television service provider or visit Boldtv.ca. Viewers can log on to CBCSports.ca 24 hours a day, seven days a week for comprehensive news, results and blogs throughout the entire MLS season. CBC is the home of the world’s game, with comprehensive Major League Soccer on CBC coverage and from June 11 – July 11, the much-anticipated 2010 FIFA World Cup South AfricaT.  CBC’s 2010 FIFA World Cup South AfricaT broadcast schedule will be available in the weeks to come.

BITCHIN KITCHEN: OOZING CHEESE!

BITCHIN KITCHEN: HUMOR OOZING CHEESE…
There’s something new and saucy on the late-night menu at Food Network. “Bitchin’ Kitchen,” premiering Thursday, April 1, is a little bit rock ’n’ roll and a little bit “badaboom bada-bing.” Fronted by “funny bad girl” Nadia G, “Kitchen” is stuffed full of cheeky humor and marinated in ethnic stereotypes.  If Leather Tuscadero had a cooking show, it’d sound a little like this. “Bitchin’ Kitchen” started as a “mobile series” in 2007, then moved to YouTube, where it became the most popular comedy cooking show online, according to the show’s publicity.
Now Nadia moves to a postprime-time slot on TV with the help of three entertaining gentlemen: Panos da Fish ’n’ Meat Guy, The Spice Agent and Hans the Scantily Clad Food Correspondent. Yep.  Scantily.
But don’t let the “too cool for school” ’tude fool you. Nadia et al are not above detailing the pros of omega-3 fatty acids or demonstrating how to cook a perfect crepe. It’s definitely a fresh take on the staid old cooking series of yore.
However, it may not be everyone’s demitasse of espresso. Take heed, especially, if you are not fond of greasy-Italian cliches or if you are prone to seizures; the jokes are cheesy – like “quattro fromaggi” cheesy – and the editing is at times nauseating. But the food looks great! Which is the point … isn’t it? See, that kind of gets lost in all of the over-the-top zaniness. Online, the show is served up in small five-minute bites. On TV, it’s a half-hour with commercials, which raises the question: Should a Web series be expected to translate on TV?

DIVE DETECTIVES

The exciting new Yap Films television series, “Dive Detectives”, launches on History TV Wed., March 31 at 6pm (repeats at 11pm).  Father-and-son professional divers and explorers Mike and Warren Fletcher are on a quest to unravel mysteries that lie beneath the waves, from missing ships to missing treasure. In the series, shot in stunning HD, the Fletchers scour the world’s oceans and seas. They investigate the iconic sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior (immortalized in song by Gordon Lightfoot); hunt for missing American submarines lost near the Philippines; and search the deadly Mekong River in Laos for looted royal treasure.  They seek the identity of a mysterious modern “Ghost Ship” in a part of the Caribbean famous for smuggling; dive the South Pacific for discarded WWII atom bombs; and join a major expedition to get inside two of the best preserved wooden ship wrecks in the world for the first time since they sank two hundred years ago.
Mike and Warren Fletcher have located previously undiscovered shipwrecks around the world. Their travels have taken them to more than 30 different countries and many remote locations. Diving as deep as 330 feet, they have worked closely with the Canadian, U.S. and Chilean navies and have collaborated with marine archaeologists in Canada, the U.S., Germany, Estonia, Poland, Bermuda, Finland and Japan. They have performed many of their dives on highly sensitive and archeologically significant wreck sites. “Dive Detectives” made headlines when the Fletchers found the wreck of the USS Flier, a World War II sub that went down in a minefield off the Philippines. The Fletchers were recruited by the son of the last Flier survivor, who died in 2008. This is the third sub he has found, Fletcher says — and the first that wasn’t in a “dark, cold dirty place.” “If you think of these wrecks as graveyards, the Flier was and is a beautiful graveyard. “That sounds weird, but the water is extremely warm. There’s light at that depth.  The wreck is sitting on a soft, white, sandy bottom. It was an unusually beautiful, peaceful place.”
As much as the area looked like a tropical paradise, he adds, it was another of the most dangerous places he and Warren have ever dived. They had to hire off-duty Filipino cops with machine guns and hand grenades to stand guard duty on deck 24 hours a day. “The area is full of pirates,” Fletcher says. “We had to have a vessel that became a fortress, because we were many miles from help.”

CANDY CROWLEY: NEW CNN HOST

“It’s fun, but also a little frightening.” So admits Candy Crowley of the latest turn in her 23-year career with CNN. After John King left his Sunday morning shift to take on a weeknight program, it became “State of the Union With Candy Crowley.” The award-winning, Washington, D.C. based veteran of political reporting is marking her two-month anniversary in her newest role … and, she allows, is still adjusting to it.
Q: You’ve said you were surprised to get the call to take over “State of the Union.” Once you got it, were you comfortable with it?
A: One of the things CNN president Jon Klein said to me when he offered me the job was, “I don’t want Candy Crowley to do John King’s show. I want Candy Crowley to do Candy Crowley’s show.” And that sounded right. It had to be something that sets the tone that fits me.”
Q: Your first guest, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, took a moment to congratulate you before starting to answer your questions. How did that feel?
A: It was a little weird! You expect your mother to call you and say, “Hey, good going,” but you don’t expect it out of the blue from people who have grown-up jobs.
Q: As host, do you try to establish a comfortable atmosphere for the power brokers who are your guests, though the questions may be pointed?
A: I hope so. Probably one of my biggest problems is that I get so involved in the conversation.  I’ll have maybe 10 questions, and they aren’t even really questions; they’re things like “Iraq” or “budget.”
I don’t tend to write questions out, because I think you can get too glued to them. It becomes less of a conversation.
I like being at a smaller table, because I like the intimacy of it.
It’s very hard to not be reasonable in that small a space. I believe in the tough question, but I don’t believe it has to come with a tonal bite to it. I think people are quite happy to make news or, in some cases, to make themselves look bad without my help.
Q: What do you think about now being in that rarefied circle of television hosts who are guaranteed interviews with newsmakers every Sunday morning?
A: Well, first of all, you should try to book these things. Holy cow!
You’re not always sure you’ll get a newsmaker — when you’re sitting there on Thursday night, thinking, “Uh-oh, it’s gonna be me talking into the camera for an hour” — but we’ve got a great staff. I do make calls when they need me to, and hopefully, it matters when the host calls and says, “We’d love to have you on. With the presidential administration, it’s a whole different thing, because they want to control their message or put out whoever they want on or whatever.
Early in the week, we’ll talk along the lines of, “Who do we want? Who should we get? What do we think the story is?” You look for the “sweet spot,” and you don’t get an expert on the military if all hell is going to break loose on health care. You want to be in the same place your audience is.  Q: How much of a help is it to have “Nightline” and “CBS Evening News” veteran Tom Bettag as your senior executive producer?
A: He’ll say, “You know what? If something else comes along and we just have to do it, we’ll blow up the show and do (the planning) all over again.” I knew what we were getting in terms of the platinum name, but I didn’t know that he would outwork every last one of us.
He’s here earlier and later than anybody … although I outlasted him one day. He knows the Sunday show genre, since he worked with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week”, and he does the work of three people. He’s pretty amazing, and I’m very happy about having him.
Q: Did you have much conversation with John King about assuming “State of the Union”?
A: John and I talked even when my name was only in the mix and I had no idea of what was going to happen. We talked about the show and the staff and what he found difficult. Every now and then, I’ll go into his office and say, “OK, I’ve had it” — and he laughs, since he’s been busy putting together his own show. Before and after the choice, I’ve talked with him.
Q: Do you feel you have an edge over your Sunday morning rivals on such programs in being the lone female anchor?
A: I raised two boys, and as much as I try to toe the party line by saying it’s in how you raise them …  we’re different! I think you can react or observe differently without it being a sexist thing.
We’re not alike, so I’m necessarily going to have a different style, but not because I’m a girl. It’s because I am who I am.
Q: Was anchoring a program something you ever aspired to?
A: It never dawned on me that it was in the cards. I’m a reporter, it’s what I do, and I love it. I like the “lone wolf” part of it, so this has been an adjustment. Listen, I’ve interviewed presidents and kings, and I’ve traveled all over. I never thought to want more.

SHARPE BATTLES AGAIN

Sean Bean is back as British soldier-hero Richard Sharpe, a rough diamond who has risen through the ranks of the army on the back of his brave exploits. Set during the Napoleonic Wars, “Sharpe” is based on the popular novels of Bernard Cornwall. A year after the battle of Waterloo, dispatches from India warn that a local Maharaja is threatening British interests. Sharpe is sent to what turns out to be his most dangerous mission to date in “Sharpe’s Challenge.”
War weary and retired, Colonel Richard Sharpe (Sean Bean, The Lord of the Rings) is summoned by the Duke of Wellington to find a missing agent, but he resolutely declines. When he learns the MIA officer is his old friend Sergeant Major Patrick Harper (Daragh O’Malley), fighter and free spirit Sharpe quickly reconsiders, and begins a perilous adventure amidst rebellious forces in British India. Sharpe’s seemingly impossible mission: storm an impenetrable fortress, rescue the daughter of a British general and quell the rebellion. With the odds stacked against him, Sharpe confronts shifting allegiances, incompetent leadership within the British troops, the conniving seduction of Madhuvanthi (Padma Lakshmi, Top Chef) and an explosive confrontation with an old foe. Has Sharpe finally found one challenge he won’t be able to conquer?
Sharpe’s Challenge is based on the characters created by novelist Bernard Cornwell. The first 11 books of the Sharpe series (beginning in chronological order with Sharpe’s Rifles and ending with Sharpe’s Waterloo, published in the US as Waterloo) detail Sharpe’s adventures in various Peninsular War campaigns over the course of 6–7 years.
Subsequently, Cornwell wrote a prequel quintology – Sharpe’s Tiger, Sharpe’s Triumph, Sharpe’s Fortress, Sharpe’s Trafalgar and Sharpe’s Prey – depicting Sharpe’s adventures under Wellington’s command in India, including his hard-won promotion to the officer corps, his return to England and his arrival in the 95th Rifles.
He also wrote Sharpe’s Battle, a novel “inserted” into his previous continuity, taking place during the Battle of Fuentes de Oñoro. It has been alleged that Cornwell was initially dubious about the casting of Sean Bean for the television adaptations, but if this true the doubts did not last as he was subsequently so delighted that he dedicated Sharpe’s Battle to him, and has admitted that he subtly changed the writing of the character to align with Bean’s portrayal. Since 2003, he has written further “missing adventures” set during the “classic” Peninsular War era.
Cornwell was born in London in 1944. His father was a Canadian airman, and his mother was English, a member of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. He was adopted and brought up in Essex by a family who were members of the Peculiar People, a strict sect who were pacifists, banned frivolity of all kinds and even medicine. After he left them, he changed his name to his mother’s maiden name, Cornwell. He attended the University of London, and after graduating, worked as a teacher.
He attempted to enlist in the British armed services three times, but was rejected on the grounds of myopia.
He then joined the BBC and became head of current affairs at BBC Northern Ireland. He relocated to the U.S. in 1980 after marrying an American. Unable to get a Green Card, he started writing novels, as this did not require a work permit.
As a child, Cornwell loved the novels of C. S. Forester, chronicling the adventures of fictional British naval officer Horatio Hornblower during the Napoleonic Wars, and was surprised to find that there were no such novels following Lord Wellington’s campaign on land. Motivated by the need to support himself in the U.S. through writing, Cornwell decided to write such a series. He named his chief protagonist Richard Sharpe, a rifleman involved in most of the major battles of the Peninsular War. In June 2006, Cornwell was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen’s 80th Birthday Honours List.
Sharpe’s Challenge airs Sunday, March 28 at 9pm on KCTS

JACKIE & TARA RETURN

Sometimes too much of a good thing is wonderful. That’s certainly the case on MC1 starting Monday, March 22, as the dazzling double bill of “Nurse Jackie” and “United States of Tara” returns with new episodes.
Two more entries in TV’s current (and blessed) bumper crop of shows built around strong, complex and mature women, both of these cable series feature actresses at the top of their game. In “Nurse Jackie,”
triple Emmy winner Edie Falco (“The Sopranos,” in case you were away from planet Earth during most of the past decade) stars as virtuoso ER nurse Jackie Peyton, who jeopardizes both her work and family life with her pill popping. It’s a comedy — dark, to be sure, but very funny.
“Tara,” the edgy series from Steven Spielberg and Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody, stars Aussie actress Toni Collette in a tour-de-force performance as Tara Gregson, a suburban wife and mother grappling with dissociative identity disorder. Yet while her TV character may be plagued by multiple personalities, Collette is single-minded in her passion for this show, which earned her well-deserved Emmy and Golden Globe awards for the first season. “Working on ‘Tara’ has been such a brilliantly fulfilling experience for me, and awards enhance the show, which then enhance my experience,” Collette says.
As the new season opens, Tara is doing well on a new cocktail of drugs, and an atypical sense of order and routine rules the home she shares with long-suffering husband Max (John Corbett) and their two kids. Don’t expect the show to turn into “United States of Ozzie and Harriet,” though.
“As we pick up a few months later, Tara’s really happy,” Collette says. “Everything’s going swimmingly. She’s feeling even, optimistic. Visually the show looks happier. It’s more colorful and has new vibrancy. That lasts for a while until she realizes that all is not as it seems.”
And when that happens — well, “all will be revealed” is all that Collette herself will reveal.

Meanwhile, over on “Nurse Jackie,” Jackie Peyton needs to worry about a few revelations of her own. Eddie (Paul Schulze), the hospital pharmacist with whom she used to have “nooners” in exchange for narcotics, has been replaced by a new automated drug dispensary, but he’s not happy about being shut out of Jackie’s life – even after he finds out she has a husband and kids. And this season sees a newly recovering addict joining the staff, someone who picks up on the fine points of Jackie’s addictive behavior. “The situation with Eddie will explain itself as we move along, but she doesn’t see him as a total threat,” Falco says. “In some regard, yes, but it’s the kind of threat that excites her. Probably the reason that she got tangled up in the first place is that she thrives on the chaotic energy he provides her. It nourishes her in a way.”
And, if Jackie is flirting with even more personal chaos, her real-life alter ego is enjoying an even more relaxing mood on the set this season, which many viewers may find more overtly comical than season one. “It feels different, and I enjoy it more,” Falco says. “The first year we were having a great time, but had no idea what we were doing. We were thinking, ‘What kind of show is this, and will people respond to it?’ Now that we have feedback, we feel like, OK, we’ve got viewers interested in seeing this.”
Both actresses are delighted at the new roles for mature actresses such as Glenn Close (“Damages”), Holly Hunter (“Saving Grace”), Kyra Sedgwick (“The Closer”) and Mary McCormack (“In Plain Sight”), even though their schedules rarely allow them to see the work of their peers.
Falco, whom Collette found “totally mind-blowing” in “The Sopranos,” likewise is aware of cable’s new appreciation for truly adult women. “Over the past couple of years I’ve become aware there are a lot of women who’re not 19 years old,” she says. “They’re mature gals. They don’t have to eschew their sexuality to be powerful. It’s a fantastic change, and I think it reflects the culture right now. I, for one, could not be happier about it.”

WILD THINGS

Maria, Tiara and Cassandra – the three gorgeous transgenders who won the hearts of mainstream audiences in the hit documentary film “Trantasia” – embark on a wild 8-week road-trip with a unique mission: to raise money for Maria’s brother who is suffering from a life-threatening disease.
From bull-riding for bucks to boxing for bread to cat-fishing for coin there is nothing these beauties won’t do to raise some cash. Week after crazy week we’ll discover each of these women’s fascinating personal journeys and learn what it takes to become a real woman.
With their big hearts and infectious spirits Maria, Tiara and Cassandra are easy to watch and hard to resist… and the wild things they’ll do to raise money for a friend make for an irresistible adventure.
In episode one, “Bull-Riding Ranch-Hands: “Do you ride it bareback,”
The girls meet cowboy Judd and are treated to a wild bull-riding demo from some real cowboys. They barely survive riding a mechanical bull before getting down and dirty working on the Ranch, reulting from which Maria and Cassandra get into a serious no-holds brawl!

DANA STORMS NATHAN’S CASTLE

Nathan Fillion and Dana Delany just can’t stay away from each other. On the short-lived 2001-02 Fox series “Pasadena,” they played Glenn Collins and Catherine McAllister, who had an illicit affair.
When Delany landed on ABC’s “Desperate Housewives” in 2007, playing Katherine Mayfair, there was Fillion as her younger husband, troubled gynecologist Dr. Adam Mayfair. Now it’s 2010, and Delany is still “Desperate,” but now Fillion is the star of his own hit ABC drama, “Castle,” which premiered in 2009 and airs on Mondays. He plays mystery novelist Richard Castle, a charming rogue who, through his friendship with the mayor, has insinuated himself into the crime-fighting efforts — and life — of ambitious NYPD Detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic).
On Sunday and Monday, March 21 and 22, Delany and Fillion give it another go in a two-part episode of “Castle” (part one follows “Desperate” on Sunday), but this time, if romance is involved at all, it’s not theirs. Delany guest stars as Jordan Shaw, an FBI agent who, along with her partner (Leonard Roberts), teams up with Castle and Beckett to track an elusive killer. “I’m Beckett, older,” says Delany, taking a break between shots on the show’s New York police precinct sets (actually, on this day, in a very rainy Hollywood). “I come in, I’m successful. I’m good at what I do, and yet I’m also married and have a kid. She’s been thinking she can’t have it all, and she shouldn’t get romantically involved with Castle.
I’m an example of somebody who’s been able to juggle that. Not that it’s perfect, but I am able to do it.”
In an earlier scene, Shaw and Castle were batting ideas in the case back and forth before coming to a sudden realization and then charging off to follow up on the lead — leaving Beckett looking (and probably meant to be feeling) like a third wheel.
“It’s strange, for Beckett,” Katic says, “first of all, to have someone else take over a case, because she “That’s their version of courtship,” he says. “That’s their version of foreplay. That’s their version of romance. “As you can see in the scene just now, Jordan Shaw starts seeing the value of Castle. The two of them start connecting on this level of, ‘We’re solving crime together.’ There’s chemistry there. There’s electricity there. Beckett is, of course, as you would expect, ‘What the … how … you don’t … you and I are supposed to … that’s not … .’ “I like it. It’s fun.”
Delany played an FBI agent in an unsold pilot at the turn of the century — co-starring, coincidentally, Julie Benz, her “Desperate” character’s new love interest — and she had to revive the skills she learned then for “Castle,” more or less. “We did a SWAT team scene,” she recalls, “where I wore heels and a flak jacket, and I’m running with my piece. One of the camera guys say’s, ‘Man, if the fed’s’re ever after my ass, I’d want an agent just like you, because honey, those suckers would never get they’re hands on me.’

THE BRIDGE: WALLS & SNAKE PITS

“The Bridge” is one cop show that’s as much about bad management as bad guys. The series, airing Fridays on CTV, blends the procedural drama of police work with some brand-new material: the behind-the-scenes politics of a big-city police force.
The character at the center, Frank Leo (Aaron Douglas, “Battlestar Galactica”), is a blue-collar street cop and the head of the police union in a large North American city. And Craig Bromell, the co-creator and executive producer of the show, knows a little bit about both. He’s a former cop and one-time head of the Toronto police union. “The head of the police union is up against the politics and the politicians, and the brass, and the media,” he says. “You’re never dealing with that cop saving people.”
“Bridge” co-creator and writer Alan Di Fiore interrupts: “In a big city, you’re dealing with 3,000 calls every day, and 10 percent of those calls are going to result in an offi cer in trouble for some reason or other. And that can be as simple as failing to follow procedure. “Part of the series is about the idea of how far Frank Leo will go to protect a cop, and how far will he cross the line to get the job done, to fulfi ll the police contract with society.”
The series co-stars Paul Popowich, Inga Cadranel, Frank Cassini, Theresa Joy and Ona Grauer.
It also features Michael Murphy (“This Is Wonderland”) as police chief Ed Wycoff, a coldblooded operator who would just as happily destroy Leo as use him for political gain. “When Alan created this character, and I looked at it for the fi rst time, I could easily picture fi ve or six different police chiefs,”
Bromell says. “It’s a fascinating character, and I think a lot of chiefs are going to look at him and go, ‘That’s so-and-so.’ ” There’s a fair amount of moral ambiguity in the series, and the cops certainly aren’t portrayed as white knights. One female officer tends to lean a little toward the use of unnecessary force — especially if she wants to get off shift in time. Another is living in his car because his wife threw him out. And at the center of the two-hour pilot episode was a cop who led a band of freelance thugs dressed as cops on missions to rip off drug dealers.
One constant is the band of “white shirts,” the top brass, who usually seem to be more interested in doing what will advance their careers than in backing their officers or fighting crime.
“Most cops just want to do their job,” Bromell says. “Just let us go and catch the bad guys. But there’s a lot of interference, just for political gain, usually from the brass down, and from the civilian versight. “Once you have politicians involved, or once someone becomes a politician, like a chief or a deputy, it’s all personal:
‘How do I look?’ ‘How am I going to survive this?’ “It’s not ‘we’ anymore. It’s ‘I.’ And it causes a lot of problems in the major cities.”
From 1997 to 2003, Bromell was head of the Toronto Police Association, which put him in confl ict with the chiefs of police. Like Frank Leo, he came to prominence by leading a wildcat strike in his division, And like Leo, Bromell worked in a division that spanned a rich and privileged neighborhood and a poor, crime-ridden one, connected by a bridge. “The inner workings of a police union only deal with negativity,” Bromell says. “We never dealt with the hero cop. When I ran the union here — or the guys who are running it in any major city in the world — it’s all negativity. It’s when the cop is in trouble, whether it’s justified or not. We were always trying to improve a situation that was really bad.”
Bromell says he didn’t want the show to be autobiographical. So when they started work on it, he asked Di Fiore to “go off and create the characters and create the incidents. And he was able to get pretty well what I wanted, but he made it all up.”
Di Fiore has done a lot of TV about cops. In addition to doing scripts for “Da Vinci’s Inquest” and “The Handler,” he wrote the TV movie “The Life,” about Vancouver drug cops. “I’ve ridden with a lot of cops, so I know a lot about cops,” he says. “So stuff that Craig talked about resonated immediately with me, because I had heard this from other police officers over the years. “Police officers are faced with two battles. Not only do they have to battle the guys on the street, but they have to battle their own brass to do what they need to do. So we have this unwritten law in society: Do whatever you can to protect us, but if you have to break the law to do it, don’t let us catch you at it.”

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