Source : Edmonton Journal

CBC takes plunge into TV's reality pool: Public broadcaster's entry into reality programming a real challenge to watch

Say what you like, but's there's no question that Canadian Idol is the runaway national TV hit of the summer, if not of 2003 so far.

Earlier in the week, at a time when pollsters keep telling us we're collectively all off at a cottage in central Ontario, 2.4 million Canadians voted Newfie songbird Jennie Gear off the video wharf into the big briny.To put that into perspective, that represents just about the same number of Albertans and British Columbians who cast ballots in the last federal election. And while eventually consigning someone named Gary Beals or Audrey de Montigny to a professional life of bad hotel food and record company vultures doesn't seem that elevated, returning the likes of a Stockwell Day or Myron Thompson to Parliament isn't so darned impressive either.

We love spinning off American shows, which, come to think of it, have occasionally been copped from British ideas. There's nothing new to the phenom; it's as Canadian as apple pie with cheddar cheese. It's the commercial networks that generally take the (usually deserved) blame for bottom-feeding off someone else's bright ideas. But if you caught the CBC anniversary retrospective last year you know that, right from the very beginnings of radio and TV, our national public broadcaster liberally sprinkled its schedules with borrowed concepts from the States and Britain.

Considering the network's relatively dire budgetary problems, which apparently only allow for two or three original drama series per season, you might be forgiven for imagining that the current fashion for reality TV in its many guises would have been embraced with open arms by CBC brass. In general, reality TV is cheaper to produce, authentically Canadian by definition if it is made here, and, not without its many casualties, a hot entertainment form by any measure. Yet the Corp has been glacially slow off the mark. Even in the very beginnings of the wave several years ago, it doggedly resisted taking the cues.

It was the BBC which inculcated the likes of Changing Rooms, Ground Force, Bargain Hunt and even The Antiques Road Show. Each concept and several others have been nicked by American, and in some cases, Canadian producers to profitable and often entertaining effect. That's just the small stuff. CBC, particularly CBC Radio, has long been interested in national talent contests. How did CTV get there first with Idol?

Well, better Nate than Trevor, as the old dirty Cockney joke goes. This coming Tuesday, our national public broadcaster unveils its secret weapon in the Real TV youth sweepstakes. It's called Kenny vs. Spenny, a 26-episode series starring two screenwriting Toronto pals, Kenny Hotz and Spenny Rice. The duo seems to live in Los Angeles in real life, signed to Will Smith's production company, and the new vehicle also comes from the private sector via Ira Levy's and Peter Williamson's Breakthrough Films & Television. This is just to let you know that a bored CBC vice-president didn't fry this sick puppy up on his loaded Weber in Don Mills on a slow news week.

With that dazzlingly contemporary flair for hip copywriting favoured by tenured CBC publicists, Kenny vs. Spenny is described as "The Odd Couple meets Survivor," a "darkly comic commentary on male behaviour and human nature, a reality sitcom the likes of which has never been seen on television." Well, yeah.

You'd think someone might have noticed that choosing Who Can Stay Awake the Longest? for the debut episode would be tempting fate. I confess. I lost the contest, and I was watching it on a moving treadmill, which can be dangerous.

Unlike a lot of people you see on so-called reality TV shows, Kenny and Spenny are not stupid. Intelligence flickers across the eyes of these two glib, likable guys, even after 66 hours spent in the unremitting hades of a new $500,000 Toronto townhouse without sleep. Kenny is the bouncier guy, popping caffeine pills and sucking oxygen from a nose canula, cracking wise. Spenny is the grouchy, more reflective sort.

But Jerry Seinfeld and Simone de Beauvoir in matching party frocks couldn't make this interesting. The guys are fine, the idea is dumb, literally as boring as watching two people try to stay awake. That's real, and the lids are getting heavy.

Something to look forward to: Who can sit on a cow the longest? Who makes the most convincing woman? Who can get more autographs?

Then there's my personal favourite: Who has the remote?

© Edmonton Journal