I don’t like horror movies or movies that have a blood bath of killing, but there’s one TV show that I’ve watched week after week for the last six years. It’s a show that has more than its share of icky and gory carcasses, and there’s both romance and humour to be had while hanging around those carcasses. That show is Fox’s Bones, which is on every Thursday at 9:00.

The show is very loosely based on Kathy Reichs, a real-life forensic anthropologist who has written many best selling murder mysteries. I am a fan of that genre, but not one of Reichs’ style, which probably puts me in a minority. Reichs produces Bones and I really like the TV show a lot better than her books.

The plot revolves around a brilliant but socially inept forensic anthropologist, Dr. Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel) and her F.B.I. partner, Sealey Booth (David Boreanz, formerly the star of the show, Angel) who solve murder mysteries together. Booth is a former U.S. Ranger and sniper. He is warm-hearted and relies on hunches to solve mysteries while Brennan (Bones) is a firm believer in scientific method and logic to solve mysteries. Bones just doesn’t get people. The two spar constantly and the spark between them is reminiscent of the 80’s romantic comedy Moonlighting which spent two years with the tease of whether the characters (played by Cybil Shepherd and Bruce Willis) would ever become a couple. The two years in which they did become a couple was seen to lead to the cancellation of the show. Obviously, the writers of Bones have spent the last six years doing everything possible to avoid the “Moonlighting curse.”

Bones also relies heavily on the ensemble cast who support the two main players. Brennan’s best friend is Angela Montenegro (Michaela Conlin), the team’s forensic artist and computer whiz, who tries to teach Bones how to behave like a normal person and has her own romance with Dr. Jack Hodgins (T. J. Thyne). Apparently, the Moonlighting curse has not applied to them because, after an on-again-off-again relationship, Hodgins and Angela were “allowed” to marry and now Angela is pregnant.

They are the more off beat couple on the show as Hodgins, who comes from a ridiculously wealthy family, is mad for conspiracy theories and Angela is a warm, high spirited artist type who doesn’t exactly fit in with the squints or scientists. There is also a series of graduate students, each with eccentricities that adds comic relief to the mysteries that are solved each week.

This is the key to why Bones differs from the Law & Order and CSI series on television. There is more focus on characters and the development of their own lives interwoven with the mysteries makes the show feel more like a movie rather than an episodic TV murder mystery. This is why I think that I’m able to stand all the blood, guts and gore; there’s humour and character development from week to week. The characters have changed and grown from the first year to this, their sixth season.

Will Bones and Booth ever get together? I think that they will when the show has a series finale. Meanwhile the writers will do everything that they can to stretch out that romantic tension for as long as they can to keep Bones going into as many seasons as they can manage.

|

How many of you think that the Gomery Report is funny? How many of you can even remember the scandal that it investigated? You’d know if you watched This Hour Has 22 Minutes on Monday, January 17^th. No, it wasn’t doing a goof on Canadian History; the show itself was Canadian history, a good six years old. Political humour isn’t funny unless it’s current, but Comedy Central Canada just keeps playing reruns of This Hour Has 22 Minutes because even though it’s old and stale, it’s Canadian.

Good comedy almost always has an element of surprise. After all, a joke isn’t funny if you know the punch line. A pie in the face isn’t funny if you can see that pie coming from a long way off. Similarly, if you’ve seen the same stand-up comics do the same routines over and over again on Just for Laughs, it’s just not funny anymore. How many times can you watch Shaun Majumder do the most embarrassing shtick that couldn’t get a laugh from a college kid who’s had a few beers? It wasn’t funny the first time and it gets increasingly pathetic with each watching. A comic, who I’ve already seen, has to be particularly funny to get a laugh out of me after I’ve watched one of his pathetically un-funny introductions or eulogies to each comic’s routine. Yet I watch in hope, hope that one day I’ll see something new that will make me laugh.

While I applaud the mission of the CRTC to maintain Canadian content so that Canadian artists can be employed and that the country’s media reflects Canadian culture, there ought to be a law against the number of times a show can be broadcasted because it’s Canadian and cheap.

Speaking of Canadian content, if I’m paying for BBC in Canada, why can’t I see British programming? It makes no sense. When I watch ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox, I see American shows and not reruns of a bunch of Canadian home improvement shows just so the station can meet its Canadian content requirements. A little research answered this question. BBC Canada is owned both by a Toronto company, Alliance Atlantis (80%) and BBC Worldwide (20%), therefore the CRTC considers BBC Canada to be a Canadian network. (Please don’t try to read that sentence aloud – you may hurt your mouth.) As a Canadian company, they must show a certain quota of Canadian shows, and that’s why you get a lot of Debbie Travis and Holmes on Homes.

Much of cable TV, particularly during the day, is made up of reruns. I can accept this to a certain degree, but when primetime rolls around, I would like to get what I pay for if I have to pay for television. If I watch a network that advertises itself as a network of reruns – Déjà Vu, for example – I’m aware that I’m paying for old shows. When I pay for a specialty channel, I hope to watch new shows. As a fan of British television, it is extremely disappointing to pay for a channel called BBC and find that it’s a home and garden channel in disguise.

|

This is the time of year when you think that people will hang out with friends and family, eat too much shortbread cookies (all right, that’s probably just me) and drink a little too much wine or whiskey with our holiday dinners. Yet many of us will use television as a form of family entertainment after a big meal to kick back and enjoy the Christmas spirit, and what will we watch?

In the next twenty-four hours there are three movies that are going to be repeated on several channels: It’s a Wonderful Life, Scrooge (A Christmas Carol), and Miracle on 34th Street. Why are these three films repeated year after year on Christmas Eve? I think it’s all about what Christmas has come to mean in our secular Western society, the opportunity to have a second chance. Without question, this is many steps away from the kind of redemption that is implicit in the religious significance of the Christmas holiday for people of the Christian faith. Yet Christmas has been adopted as a winter holiday by people all over North America, and like it or not, when people celebrate the holiday, folks choose to look past the gift-giving to another purpose whether it’s a time for being with loved ones, showing an annual social conscience by giving to the poor, or looking to the hope of peace on Earth and good will towards all men and women.

Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, which was adapted into the film, Scrooge in 1951 with Alistair Sims as Ebenezer Scrooge, is all about redemption. As Scrooge is forced to review his life, he realizes that if he doesn’t change his ways, he will die alone with no one to mourn him and no one to say a kind word about him. Through magic, The Three Ghosts of Christmas manage to bring about a serious change of heart in Scrooge who becomes a real benefactor to the Cratchit family, and who most importantly, saves Tiny Tim’s life.

It’s A Wonderful Life, Frank Capra’s masterpiece of 1946 and once called “the best film to never win an Oscar,” tells a similar story, but in reverse. George Bailey is a very good man who always sacrifices his dreams for the good of others. When his uncle foolishly loses a bank deposit, putting George in danger of going to jail, George regrets all that he has done. He is about to end his life when a rather clumsy angel, Clarence, uses magic to help George see how important his sacrifices have been, and what a poorer place his community would have been if he had never lived. Once again, a supernatural intervention takes place through the auspices of Christmas to bring about a sincere change of heart.

A Miracle on 34th Street has two versions, one made in 1947 and a re-make in 1994. If you’ve never watched the old version, give that one a try as I find that it has a certain magic lacking in the modern one. There are some very tough messages in this one about faith for a secular society. Santa’s magic is on trial and the judge and jury are really an unbelieving single mother and young daughter. Yet in this film, the magic is much more subtle – is it magic or just a set of coincidences? The viewer is left to make up his or her own mind. For those of us who want to believe in magic, there’s just enough evidence to help us out.
If you want to believe that people can change, that the world can change, these three Christmas classics will help you convince that doubting Thomas uncle of yours that there is magic in the world, and that this magic is more likely to take place around December 25th. To all readers of The Record, I wish you all the joy and magic of the holiday season and then some.

Times and Channels: A Christmas Carol/Scrooge, CTV, Friday night at 11:30; It’s a Wonderful Life, Friday night, NBC at 8:00; A Miracle on 34th Street (1994), Friday night, CBC, 8:00. CBC will air the 1947 version on Saturday night at 11:00 PM.

|