WHATS-ON-IN-VANCOUVER- ‘LUCK’ WITH HOFFMAN

After bringing the worlds of late 19th-century South Dakota gold miners and 21st-century Southern California surfers to HBO, David Milch follows up “Deadwood” and “John From Cincinnati” with a multilayered, multifaceted portrait of the world of Thoroughbred racing.

Going beyond just the horses to trainers, jockeys, veterinarians, shady quasi-criminal types and degenerate gamblers, “Luck” creates a canvas of intense desperation, burning ambition, devastating peril and staggering beauty, all set against the lush backdrop of Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, Calif., near Los Angeles.

After a sneak preview that aired on Dec. 11 following the season finale of “Boardwalk Empire,” “Luck” – which pairs Milch’s acclaimed writing and storytelling with the producing and directing talents of Michael Mann (“Thief,” “The Last of the Mohicans,” “Ali”) – launches its regular run on Sunday, Jan. 29.

Dustin Hoffman tops the huge cast as Chester “Ace” Bernstein, a man with a questionable past who gets out of prison and embarks on a career as a covert Thoroughbred owner, with his loyal driver, Gus Demitriou (Dennis Farina), acting as his frontman.

Ace is a careful, deliberate man who plays things close to the vest. For Hoffman, that came out of choices made in preparing for the role.

“It wasn’t a conscious decision,” he says. “What you’re wearing or not alters you. It doesn’t take much. You learn your lines, you’re told a few things. They say, ‘Do you ever wear your hair straight back?’ ‘No.’ ‘Will you try that?’ And Michael Mann says, ‘Hey, I like it with your hair straight back.’ ‘Let’s see what suit you’re going to put on.’

“He has an image of the character, and you’re going with that image. You learn the lines, then they just come out a certain way, and you’re altered.”

Among those followed on the backstretch are trainers Walt “The Old Man” Smith (Nick Nolte) – inspired by, Nolte says, legendary trainer Jack Van Berg – and Turo Escalante (John Ortiz), who has more than a professional relationship with his vet (Jill Hennessy). There are jockeys on the way up, such as Irish Rosie (Kerry Condon), and those trying to come back, such as Ronnie Jenkins (played by jockey Gary Stephens).

On the fringes of the track life are the degenerate gamblers, including one group – whose most socially adept member, Jerry (Jason Gedrick), also has a weakness for cards – struggling to find a way forward after a life-altering bet.

Although Milch has followed racing most of his life, owned Thoroughbreds and laid down more than a few bets, it took him a long time to get around to writing about it all.

“Certainly,” he says, “I had an adequate exposure to it. I did a lot of research, but the deepest truths of that world – I won’t say that they had eluded me, but there’s an expression, the ripeness is all, and I finally was ripe enough.

“These are not characters who let themselves be easily known, and a lot of them are composites. … It takes a little while for the world to fully declare itself, but I hope they will hang in, because it’s definitely worth the trip.”

For Mann, who’s more familiar with racing cars than horses, it was a foray into a new reality.

“The thing that surprised me the most,” Mann says, “was the first time I was in a vehicle, and we were doing a tracking shot, and I was three or four feet away from a racehorse going full out – and it’s stunning.

“David talked quite a bit about a sense of nature and the spirit of being that close, involving yourself with the animal, like a trainer does, like Escalante would do – but when you’re actually up next to what feels like a 1,500-pound jack rabbit, that’s a whole different thing.

“The athleticism of it, the spirit … it’s not like you have to encourage them to race; you have to repress the instinct to race. All they want to do is race.”

But these days, the slow romance of race day, with its long pauses and brief explosions of action, is fading in a world of instant gratification.

“The pity is,” says Nolte, “that horse racing is losing the imagination of the public. The mythology and the connection of man and horse is being lost. Gambling’s taken over. They want to turn horse-racing tracks into casinos.” W

WHATS-ON-IN-VANCOUVER-Canada’s smartest

Everyone has a neighbour, brother-in-law or friend who knows everything about everything – and never misses an opportunity to show it.

Executive producer Brad Brough and host Daniel Fathers have 10 of them.

And in “Canada’s Greatest Know-It-All” – debuting Monday, Jan. 30,on Discovery Canada – they get to take the wind out of the sails of at least nine. The one who is left will likely become the single most insufferable person in the country.

“We’re talking about knowing it all – everything,” says Fathers. “And that includes knowing how to play the game of life.”

Fathers is a British-born actor who has appeared in such Canadian series as “Combat Hospital,” “Heartland” and “Flashpoint.” This is the first time he has hosted a show like this.

“The goal for me was how was I going to wrangle 10 of the most A-type personalities with the hugest egos in Canada without them right over me,” he says. “It was my job to learn the personalities of all the contestants.

“The challenge for me was basically me versus the know-it-alls for the whole season.”

The creator and executive producer of the show is Brough, whose credits include “Canada’s Next Top Model,” “The Week the Women Went” and “Patent Bending.”

It was on the last show that the idea for “Canada’s Greatest Know-It-All” was hatched. The build master – the guy responsible for constructing the strange gadgets created from discarded patents – was one of those guys who are as handy with their hands as their brains. Brough says he got to wondering “what it would be like to get 10 of these guys together in a space trying to solve the same problem.

“These are the kinds of guys who are really smart, really inventive and really problem solving. But they also like to be the voice of authority in any situation.”

That more or less describes the eight men and two women who are vying to be named king or queen of the smart alecks.

These people are so smart, so competitive and so aggressively pedantic that the title is all it took to get them into the game. That’s all the winner of this competition walks away with. No prize. No money. Just bragging rights.

Over the course of the show, the contestants will work as two teams to complete problem-solving tasks.

As with all shows of this sort, each week contestants will be weeded out until there are only two left standing, who will compete for the title.

The tasks are mostly weird challenges that often involve constructing something out of oddball materials or destroying something and seeing what is left standing.

Contestants will compete to build cardboard houses that can withstand a hurricane and control the hurricane that tries to knock them down. They will blow up trailers and compete to see how many of their little dolls can survive the blast. They’ll pack containers, build boats, perform feats of memory and compete for scouting merit badges.

At the start of the first episode, one contestant says he thought the show would be “one big trivia contest.”

“It’s not a quiz show, and it’s not a game show,” Fathers says. “The goal is to find Canada’s all-round Renaissance person.

“There were a few who were incredibly humble in their knowledge,” he says. “And we had to remind them that the goal was to win the competition, and not to be Mr. or Mrs. Nice Guy.” w

WHATS-ON-IN-VANCOUVER-DiGiovanni

DiGiovanni assesses ‘strange decade’ on Comedy Network

Art imitates life for Canadian Comedy Award winner Debra DiGiovanni, so the focus is on being unattached and 40-ish as she brings her “Single, Awkward, Female” act to Comedy Network on Saturday, Jan. 28.

“Every one of my friends is married, and my sisters are having their third and fifth babies, so I’m at this strange decade in my life,” she says.

“When you hit 40 and you’re still single, it gets weird. You make some decisions in your life and realize, ‘Hey, this is where I am going,’ and start finding reasons not to go to weddings.

“I’m very truthful onstage, so what’s happening right now in my life is what is happening right now onstage, too.”

DiGiovanni jokes about how most men prefer women more petite than herself, but a bigger factor may be simply that this rising comedy star spends more of her time onstage these days, and while male comics are often catnip for women, that’s not true for most female comedy performers.

“Never, ever have I been hit on after a show, and that seems to be mostly true of my girlfriends who are comics as well,” she says. “If a man has a good set, it’s get out of the way, because [women make] a beeline to them.

“I think with most guys [in the audience], a female comic who makes them laugh slides into the buddy zone and becomes someone they want to hang out with. There’s an aggressiveness about comedy as well that I think attracts women. Most men don’t seem to like a very loud woman who wants to be the center of attention all the time.” W

WHATS-ON-IN-VANCOUVER-Canada’s smartest

Everyone has a neighbour, brother-in-law or friend who knows everything about everything – and never misses an opportunity to show it.

Executive producer Brad Brough and host Daniel Fathers have 10 of them.

And in “Canada’s Greatest Know-It-All” – debuting Monday, Jan. 30,on Discovery Canada – they get to take the wind out of the sails of at least nine. The one who is left will likely become the single most insufferable person in the country.

“We’re talking about knowing it all – everything,” says Fathers. “And that includes knowing how to play the game of life.”

Fathers is a British-born actor who has appeared in such Canadian series as “Combat Hospital,” “Heartland” and “Flashpoint.” This is the first time he has hosted a show like this.

“The goal for me was how was I going to wrangle 10 of the most A-type personalities with the hugest egos in Canada without them right over me,” he says. “It was my job to learn the personalities of all the contestants.

“The challenge for me was basically me versus the know-it-alls for the whole season.”

The creator and executive producer of the show is Brough, whose credits include “Canada’s Next Top Model,” “The Week the Women Went” and “Patent Bending.”

It was on the last show that the idea for “Canada’s Greatest Know-It-All” was hatched. The build master – the guy responsible for constructing the strange gadgets created from discarded patents – was one of those guys who are as handy with their hands as their brains. Brough says he got to wondering “what it would be like to get 10 of these guys together in a space trying to solve the same problem.

“These are the kinds of guys who are really smart, really inventive and really problem solving. But they also like to be the voice of authority in any situation.”

That more or less describes the eight men and two women who are vying to be named king or queen of the smart alecks.

These people are so smart, so competitive and so aggressively pedantic that the title is all it took to get them into the game. That’s all the winner of this competition walks away with. No prize. No money. Just bragging rights.

Over the course of the show, the contestants will work as two teams to complete problem-solving tasks.

As with all shows of this sort, each week contestants will be weeded out until there are only two left standing, who will compete for the title.

The tasks are mostly weird challenges that often involve constructing something out of oddball materials or destroying something and seeing what is left standing.

Contestants will compete to build cardboard houses that can withstand a hurricane and control the hurricane that tries to knock them down. They will blow up trailers and compete to see how many of their little dolls can survive the blast. They’ll pack containers, build boats, perform feats of memory and compete for scouting merit badges.

At the start of the first episode, one contestant says he thought the show would be “one big trivia contest.”

“It’s not a quiz show, and it’s not a game show,” Fathers says. “The goal is to find Canada’s all-round Renaissance person.

“There were a few who were incredibly humble in their knowledge,” he says. “And we had to remind them that the goal was to win the competition, and not to be Mr. or Mrs. Nice Guy.” w

WHATS-ON-IN-VANCOUVER-DiGiovanni

DiGiovanni assesses ‘strange decade’ on Comedy Network

Art imitates life for Canadian Comedy Award winner Debra DiGiovanni, so the focus is on being unattached and 40-ish as she brings her “Single, Awkward, Female” act to Comedy Network on Saturday, Jan. 28.

“Every one of my friends is married, and my sisters are having their third and fifth babies, so I’m at this strange decade in my life,” she says.

“When you hit 40 and you’re still single, it gets weird. You make some decisions in your life and realize, ‘Hey, this is where I am going,’ and start finding reasons not to go to weddings.

“I’m very truthful onstage, so what’s happening right now in my life is what is happening right now onstage, too.”

DiGiovanni jokes about how most men prefer women more petite than herself, but a bigger factor may be simply that this rising comedy star spends more of her time onstage these days, and while male comics are often catnip for women, that’s not true for most female comedy performers.

“Never, ever have I been hit on after a show, and that seems to be mostly true of my girlfriends who are comics as well,” she says. “If a man has a good set, it’s get out of the way, because [women make] a beeline to them.

“I think with most guys [in the audience], a female comic who makes them laugh slides into the buddy zone and becomes someone they want to hang out with. There’s an aggressiveness about comedy as well that I think attracts women. Most men don’t seem to like a very loud woman who wants to be the center of attention all the time.” W

WHATS-ON-IN-VANCOUVER-‘MARK BRAND’

Gambling on the ’hood in Gastown

 Even if you’ve been in Vancouver only a short while, you probably know the city’s Downtown Eastside area, often spotlighted in documentaries and news programs to demonstrate some of Canada’s most glaring inner-city problems with crime and drug addiction.

But while others saw this zone primarily as a sociological petri dish of problems, visionary social activist and entrepreneur Mark Brand saw something else: a neighborhood worth saving. And he’s put his money, time and energy where his heart is, most recently in the high-risk renovation of the historic Save-On-Meats building, a project chronicled in “Gastown Gamble” Wednesdays on OWN Canada.

“I moved to Vancouver around 2006, and the Downtown Eastside at that point just fascinated me, strictly from sort of a social aspect,” Brand explains. “It played a large part in my life in the last five years, in terms of where I lived and where I worked. Gastown itself has had this amazing history of highs and lows. There’s not a lot of density as far as people living there, but it has this wonderful feel and history and character. It’s one of the few places in Vancouver that hasn’t been developed heavily.”

But it was the residents of Gastown, not mundane real estate factors, that propelled Brand into tackling the Save-On project, as he calls it. “It’s one of those unique aspects of the neighborhood that inspires you so that you want to work harder,” says Brand, who also owns and operates several other businesses in Gastown. “It’s such an incredible blessing to be able to work there in the Downtown Eastside and then witness good change, if you know what I mean.”

Brand says he envisioned the renovated half-century-old diner and butcher shop as a lynchpin of a broader revitalization dream, a building that would be a tribute yet also something far more basic: a home.

“We wanted to make this space somewhere you could come and eat and frequent with dignity regardless of your station,” he says. “That was the most important thing to me. I wanted to make sure that it was comfortable for all ages and all people from all neighborhoods, essentially. Functionality was important, of course, but I really wanted to make sure it didn’t intimidate people who knew it before but also be inviting to people who never had been there.”

Reaction to news of the project was mixed. “People were actually quite nervous for me, but also what it was going to give to that block,” Brand says. “I think people took a harder look at me in general as a businessperson and wondered what my real motivation was. I had to answer those critics and also proponents of the neighborhood for the entire time we were building, in person. It was a wonderful experience. When you take on a task that you really, truly love, it’s a great thing.”

As Brand and his team were about to start work on the Save-On project, former CTV programming executive Louise Clark approached him about documenting the work in a series by Lark Productions, her new company. Brand agreed, but laid down some strict ground rules. “I said, ‘There can’t be any exploitation. There can’t be any script, and we need to have final say about what is going on if we are going to do this,’ which was very arrogant on my part because them wanting to do this to begin with was very flattering,” he recalls. “But, my major concern stays with the neighborhood and how it is portrayed.” W

WHATS-ON-IN-VANCOUVER-‘GERRY DEE’

Art imitates life in Dee’s new classroom comedy

 Gerry Dee went back to school for his comedy – as a teacher. The stand-up comic taught for years in a Toronto private school before turning to comedy. Now he’s back in class but still in comedy with “Mr. D,” which recently began airing Mondays on CBC Television.

“Mr. D” is based on Dee’s early experiences in the classroom. He had studied kinesiology and physical education and then found himself history and geography – courses he says he felt completely unequipped to handle.

“I’m not a really well-read person,” he says. “I was always a Coles Notes person. I never really got into reading books. I’m too ADD. And here I am, teaching subjects that really require a lot of based knowledge on stuff. “I actually thought I was doing a good job, but when I look back, it was probably horrific.”

In “Mr. D,” he plays a character not far removed from his real-life experiences. He’s a teacher who thinks he’s popular with the kids, but they really don’t care one way or another. And he’s teaching social sciences, a subject he knows almost nothing about.

The show co-stars Jonathan Torrens (“Trailer Park Boys”) and Booth Savage as the vice principal and principal, respectively. The supporting cast includes Bette MacDonald, Naomi Snieckus, Wes Williams and Mark Little.

As for the students, all but one are played by first-time actors from the Halifax area, where the show is shot. “The students we got we would put up against any Hollywood kid actors,” Dee says. “They were unbelievable.”

Dee is new to acting himself. Born and raised in the Greater Toronto Area, he grew up in a family where the main obsessions were sports and musical theater. “My mother’s side and my sister had some dancing and acting, and brother and my dad’s side had the athleticism,” he says. “Luckily, I think I got a bit of everybody’s.

“I used to sing ‘Evita’ with my sister … and then I’d go play hockey with my brother.”

He played varsity hockey at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia and was a good enough golfer to compete on a national level. He still plays with a 5 handicap. After university, he went to work as a teacher in Toronto, spending 10 years “embedded” in the education system.

For half that time, he moonlighted as a stand-up comic until, in 2003, he felt confident enough to quit the day job and try his hand in Los Angeles – a year after he became the first Canadian in almost three decades to win the San Francisco International Comedy Competition.

He says he never saw the move into comedy as much of a risk. “I always could have gone back,” he says. “I tell young comics this all the time: ‘Get a day job.’ It’s not a realistic goal to be a kid and think, ‘I’m going to be a comic.’ ”

Until a couple of years ago, he, his wife and two daughters divided their time between Toronto and Los Angeles. “I don’t want to raise a family in L.A.,” he says. “I’m very happy and proud to be Canadian. When I left L.A.,that was what I said: I’m just going to go back where I love it and try to make it here.”

 Since he came back, he has been moving into TV and film. He had a bit part in “Trailer Park Boys: The Movie” in 2006. Now with “Mr. D,” he has two TV gigs – he also appears on The Score as “Gerry Dee: Sports Reporter.” W

WHATS-ON-IN-VANCOUVER-‘PAN AM’

Making the Connection at ‘Pan Am’

The CTV/ABC drama “Pan Am” looks great on-screen because every detail is so sharp in person. From the 707 jet replica in a studio warehouse at the Brooklyn Navy Yard to the constricting undergarments the stewardesses wear, everything is authentic.

On a recent blustery day, the cast rehearses the episode airing tonight. The action unfolds the day U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Walter Cronkite’s voice, thick with emotion but composed and ever professional, delivers the first news that the president “is wounded, his condition is yet unknown.”

A pall falls over the set. It’s called for, yet everyone here is acting; no one is remembering. One of the ways to tell if people are baby boomers is whether they recall the grim events of Friday, Nov. 22, 1963; these actresses are Gen Y. But they learn about Kennedy, just as they have learned about the Cold War, girdles and how Pan Am hired the best and the brightest, not merely waitresses of the sky.

During the stewardesses’ weigh-ins, much is made of the girdle, but Christina Ricci’s character, Maggie, refuses to wear one. She is also daring and politically aware, and she adores Kennedy. After rehearsing the scene in which the first news about Kennedy is broadcast, Ricci says she had learned a lot about the ’60s from a high-school class.

“I learned so much and how fascinating it was and how much society changed,” she says.

Though there are many watershed moments from the 1960s yet to be plumbed, there was no announcement at this writing that “Pan Am” would definitely be on the air past February.

“It is on very late for people who have to work on Mondays,” Ricci says of the show’s time slot. “It is doing so well overseas, it doesn’t make sense to stop making it.” w

WHATS-ON-IN-VANCOUVER-ARCTIC AIR TAKES

For a country with such a strong northern mythology, it’s amazing how little use our TV and filmmakers have made of the place.

For example, take Ian Weir, executive producer and creator of “Arctic Air.” Until he was contracted to write the pilot episode for the series, which airs Tuesdays on CBC Television, he’d never been north.

“I’m not a northern guy,” he says. “So this was a chance to immerse myself in the world of Yellowknife. And I found it was a totally wonderful place.”

Like most of us, he says, he had some ideas of what the North was like, and a lot of them were wrong. “The first thing that took me aback was how cosmopolitan Yellowknife is,” he says. “I figured the cultural mix would be white European and First Nations. I discovered that you can walk down Franklin Street and hear Caribbean accents. The first taxi driver I dealt with was South African.”

“Arctic Air” may be the first fictional series set in the Far North since CBC’s “North of 60” back in the 1990s. The series is set mostly in Yellowknife and deals with a small airline that flies bush planes and Second World War vintage DC-3s to remote locations around the Arctic.

That would ring a bell for fans of History Television’s “Ice Pilots NWT,” a reality series about Buffalo Airways, which serves remote northern communities with a fleet of Second World War vintage DC-3s, DC-4s and C-46s. “Ice Pilots” and “Arctic Air” are made by the same production company. Buffalo Airways provided the DC-3 that is used in exterior shots (the interiors are done in an on-set mockup), airline personnel provided expert advice on the series, and Buffalo Airways owner Joe McBryan did some stunt flying in the DC-3.

“In Episode 4 … there’s wonderful footage of Joe doing an aborted landing on a DC-3,” Weir says. “And my God, that man can fly a plane. It’s absolutely thrilling footage.”

However, the similarities between the two series are completely superficial, Weir says. “We’re in the same geographical region, and we’re using a DC-3 in the Arctic Air fleet. But the fleet is more broadly based than the Buffalo Air fleet. And, of course, our cast of characters is quite different from the ‘cast of characters’ of ‘Ice Pilots NWT.’ ”

“Arctic Air” stars Adam Beach as Bobby Martin, an aboriginal businessman who has been living in Vancouver and has come home to take over his 25 percent stake in the airline.

“When I read the pilot episode, I was drawn to Bobby Martin and who he was, his struggles,” Beach says. “His reconnection with home, family and friends, and the fact that he wants to use the talents he has to better his family and the company, Arctic Air. He’s been out in the world. He’s studied. He’s achieved. He moved fast up the ladder.”

In other words, he’s a lot like Beach, who left his impoverished northern Manitoba reserve to pursue a career in acting, which led from stage roles in the West to Canadian films and television and such Hollywood movies as “Windtalkers,” “Cowboys & Aliens” and “Flags of Our Fathers,” where he worked with Hollywood legend Clint Eastwood.

One of Beach’s early roles was a recurring character in “North of 60,” which was shot in Calgary.

“Arctic Air” shoots interiors on a soundstage in suburban Vancouver, but the exteriors are shot in and around Yellowknife. “I haven’t been that far north before,” he says. “Yellowknife is beautiful. A very small city, where everybody knows everybody. But the landscape speaks for itself. You can’t help but feel surrounded by Mother Nature.”

Co-starring with Beach in the series is Pascale Hutton as Bobby’s childhood friend and love interest, Krista, the daughter of the crusty old bush pilot (Kevin McNulty) who runs the company.

One of the bonuses of working in the series, Hutton says, was getting to fly around in the co-pilot’s seat of a Buffalo Airways DC-3, getting a feel for the ancient warhorses. “We have learned a lot from flying with the pilots of Buffalo Air,” she says. “Not so much in terms of personality, because ‘Arctic Air’ characters are unique to our

show. But seeing the way they fly the DC-3s and being up with them was very informative, especially for Kevin McNulty, Adam Beach and me.”

Like Beach and Weir, the farthest north Hutton had been was Edmonton, where she went to university. And like them, she says she was astonished at just how cosmopolitan and lively the city is.

“Yellowknife is incredibly culturally diverse, which I don’t think many people know,” she says. “There are lots of First Nation people, but we also met a lot of people from Somalia and Ethiopia.

“There are lots of opportunities to make a lot of money, and that brings people from all over the world.” w

WHATS-ON-IN-VANCOUVER-11TH IDOL

 Who will be the next Kelly Clarkson?

Or Carrie Underwood?Or Scotty McCreery?

As usual, the question won’t be answered until May, but much of the fun is in the journey … as “American Idol” is determined to prove again.

The hugely popular Fox singing competition, which broadcasts in Canada on CTV, starts its 11th season Wednesday, Jan. 18, with the last round’s panel of judges – Randy Jackson, Jennifer Lopez and Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler – back intact, and Ryan Seacrest in his traditional role as host.

Cecile Frot-Coutaz, an “Idol” executive producer from the start, hints the latest round has “more variety than in prior years. We had good turnouts at the stadiums (for the auditions, footage of which always starts an ‘Idol’ season), a lot of diversity in the talent with some very interesting younger talent and some big voices. It’s been interesting.”

That should keep things fresh for the “Idol” judges during the weekly Wednesday and Thursday episodes, with Lopez and Tyler going into their sophomore stints. “It’s almost like the kids this year have studied the show,” Tyler says. “They know what to expect. The ones who are really good, they’re the ones Randy and J. Lo and I give the toughest criticism to. We want them to get through.

“You hear a beautiful voice out of a 15-year-old girl, and you ask her, ‘Were you in choir? How did you learn how to sing like this? Did you fall from a star?’ I don’t know how they got here without playing clubs. They just sang every day in their house, or listened to their favorite artist, and this grew out of it. It’s astounding to me, and I’m falling in love with it. I wasn’t sure last year.”

Grammy-winning music icon Tyler claims he was helped by watching video of Clarkson in the first “Idol” season. “You saw her get out of a car after driving hundreds of miles to get there, young and green and wet behind the ears, then she came out a superstar. How much bigger could you get than Kelly Clarkson got at that time? And the same with Carrie Underwood.

“That’s the part of the game I’m in it for. I know that between Randy’s ear and J. Lo’s and mine – and the melodic sensibility that I got from my father – we’re always going to pick something above and beyond what ‘Idol’ was before, if I may brag about that.”

Last season’s contest came down to two country-flavored talents, Lauren Alaina and eventual winner McCreery. “At the very beginning,” Frot-Coutaz says, “the show was clearly looking for a pop star. I think over the years, it has broadened in the kinds of contestants it’s attracting … and, therefore, in what it’s looking for. Over the years, rockers have come up a little bit more; we’ve had (Chris) Daughtry, then last year, we had James Durbin.

“We also started to see people like Paul McDonald last year, sort of jazzy performers. This year, we don’t have more country than we did before. You could have thought, ‘Well, now the country kids are going to show up,’ and we do have some. But because we had such diverse talent last year, more diverse people have come to the show. Aspiring artists who would go, ‘That show’s not for me; it’s too commercial,’ are now coming. I think that’s a real tribute to what the show has become.”

Auditions for the 2012 edition of “Idol” meant plenty of travel for Seacrest and the judges, but having been through the process once, Tyler believes he came back to it more prepared for what it is.

“Writing my own songs and going up onstage and being best friends with the guys in the band, it’s a lot different than this,” he notes. “I’m not going to lie – it was difficult last year, in the sense that I didn’t know the game; I didn’t know the rules. I’m getting it from the ground up. It wasn’t rubbed into me for 10 years.

“I’m seeing it as kids coming in and wanting something bad, but they’ve got to be that special something. The critiquing is easier for me this year. I want to be honest, but sometimes on television, they’re brutally honest for television’s sake. That’s a little hard for me to be, so as J. Lo has said, you nurture, and they come out even better in the next round. They don’t feel put down; they feel massaged with encouragement. And that’s worked for us.” w

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