Source : Globe & Mail

Hello again and Happy New Year.

Apparently it's been exciting while I was on leave. A disoriented vagrant was presented on TV as a captured Saddam Hussein. Alliance Atlantis shut down Salter Street Films and generally behaved with the pre-Christmas ruthlessness that, in fiction, guarantees a place in hell for the perpetrators. Britney Spears got married and ditched the hubby, all in one day. Hell for her too. Mike Bullard kept complaining. He'd better watch it.

According to one source -- the brother -- the windy TV critic for the National Post is now working in the Prime Minister's Office. Again, sounds like hell.

By the way: It's so untrue that while all of this unfolded I was lollygagging at home with the cats, getting merry on dry sherry and listening, over and over, to Dean Martin's exquisite rendition of that timeless classic Canadian Sunset. I worked. But I digress.

This is a very big night on Canadian TV. Well, it's very big for CBC, which unveils three big-ticket items. In fact, it's so darn big that they've brought in Nicholas Campbell, best known as Dominic Da Vinci, to host the evening. This sounds odd, because Da Vinci is a coroner, called in to examine dead things. Go figure.

In truth, it's a night of good satire, sadness and bittersweet fun, with bits of brilliance.

Rick Mercer's Monday Report (CBC, 8 p.m.) is, I suspect, what the great Canadian public is eagerly awaiting. Mercer's gift for cutting humour and tomfoolery is well established. He's one of the very few Canadian performers who is a television natural and his skepticism about authority is unmatched. Apparently he's doing his patented rants and generally tackling the news. It's taped close to broadcast so nothing was available in advance, but we get the picture and we're looking forward to it.

The Newsroom (CBC, 8:30 p.m.) ain't what it used to be. It's sadder. Ken Finkleman is back mocking all media and being bitingly clever, but the beginning feels joyless. Tonight's first episode of a 13-part series does have a few genuinely funny Finkleman bits. The standout line involves airhead anchor Jim Walcott's excursion into an American TV career. He's told, "People will pay a lot of money to piss on Jim Walcott, because they can smell the integrity." There follows some sharp digs at phony post-Sept. 11 American patriotism.

However, much of what happen involves Finkleman, as George the TV producer, sitting around with actors (Matt Watts and Douglas Bell) who blithely imitate his low-key acting style. They even do that irritating, endless hand-to-the-forehead routine as they deliver lines about all women being crazy. As George's appalling shallowness and petty neuroses are trotted out again and again, you see an off-putting dourness creep into Finkleman's take on the world.

Women get the worst of it in this Newsroom series. Tonight, a pretty, blond news anchor is, inevitably, attracted to George and then cruelly dispatched. In a later episode, producer Karen (Karen Hines) is obliged to play dumb in order to interest men. Throughout, George's assistant, Claire (Holly Lewis), is treated benignly, but only because she's too young to understand the awfulness of what's around her. This Newsroom is about lies and self-loathing and that's not a barrel of laughs.

This is Wonderland (CBC, 9 p.m.) is a joy and a jumble of comic madness. A broad satire of our legal system, it captures the entire chaotic canvas of life at Toronto's busiest courthouse. It's brimful of verve, smarts and has great comic moments. It doesn't always click but it sure is sassy.

Created by playwright George F. Walker, the series is a big gamble for CBC. There is much Canadian talent involved, but without a deft touch it would be a disaster. It isn't one of those.

Our heroine is Alice (Cara Pifko, seen recently as the do-gooder daughter in Human Cargo), and with her we enter the looking-glass world of the corridors, jail cells and courtrooms at Toronto's Old City Hall. A kind of Ally McBeal/Elaine from Seinfeld, Alice is a gung-ho young lawyer entering the courts for the first time. Her boss and mentor has disappeared and she's thrown in at the deep end. (The boss shows up later, nicely played by Michael Healey who, next to Walker, is another of our great playwrights. Canadian TV drama is wonderful.) This charmingly addled Alice barely manages to stay afloat.

There is a lavish amount of absurdity in Alice's new world, and it all amounts to a devastating picture of our court system. A man that Alice represents is held on minor charges, but because his name is similar to another man charged with serious assault, a toxic sort of confusion persists and, in the end, it's not very funny. An Asian family erupts into vicious in-fighting in a corridor, while the badly beaten matriarch stands ignored. Every time Alice tries to bring peace and justice, things get weirder.

As Alice, Pifko is the right blend of pert and bewildered. Others involved in This is Wonderland should have been told to restrain themselves. Michael Riley is, at first, vastly entertaining as a seedy, hyperactive lawyer, but even before the first hour is over, you wish he'd stop already with the mannered, manic behaviour. Sometimes, when actors are told they're performing broad satire, they go berserk.

There are fine comic strokes in This is Wonderland and some clangers too. It's a messy, maddening, new Canadian series and worth your attention. Some will find it isn't slick enough, but it's got a zany, entertaining lilt and a sharper bite than any American network series that covers similar ground. It's a good end to a mixed night of new CBC entertainment.

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