Clichéd

I'm curious what the popular Quebecois version was like. Because the quality of this English adaptation was quite low, which I think accounted for its lackluster reception. The writing was the major culprit. Really uninspired. This creative team hadn't dared to even peek outside the box. There was so much incident piled on incident it was accidentally absurd, and the characters were all vanilla suburban bourgeois. There was no edge to anyone or anything. I did wonder about the process of approval. Are the execs at the CBC unable to recognize poor scripts when they read them? Do they lack instinct? Are they unable to visualize scenes off the page?

There was also trouble with flat directing, and the acting. To be fair, the actors were saddled with the job of injecting life into the sterile writing, but they were - mostly - not up to that task. I think the actresses who played Natalie's daughters were okay, especially the eldest. Generally I found them better than the adults, but again, they had superficial material to work with.

Most of the actors tended to repeat a narrow repertoire of stock gestures. Doing too much and too little at the same time - classic bad acting. I couldn't sustain suspension of disbelief for long that Natalie or Maggie or Matthew or Oliver actually existed, let alone that Natalie really had cancer, that Maggie was a wild chick, that Matthew was a cardiologist, and that Oliver was an artist.

A standout exception among the adults was Shawn Doyle, who understands how to do a lot with a little. To my mind he stole every scene - mostly from Torri Higginson, since many of their scenes involved just the two of them - both by this efficiency, and by gestures that are unpredictable. Higginson mugged up a storm, while Doyle employed a modicum of gesture, and made his character feel real by not doing the obvious even though scenes were usually telegraphed and the dialogue was mundane. Again to be fair, Natalie's character was extroverted and impulsive, but the problem wasn't the vigour of her gestures but the fact that the actress' choices were expected and clichéd. She seemed to be "acting." Same thing with the other adults apart from Doyle. If the show's writers tended to write the expected, most of the actors and directors only increased the problem by doing the same in their jobs.

Adding to the difficulty suspending disbelief is yet another instance of a Canadian show recycling a familiar actor from a current show, this time Louis Ferreira as Natalie's ex - the character seemingly taking time off from his job as a homicide detective (Motive). There are no other actors to choose from? Worse, Ferreira is yet another actor who reliably brings a narrow range of stock gestures. He's like the vastly overused Hugh Dillon, the go-to for those intense stare contests and/or soulful stare-out-the-window-in-profound-reflection moments.

I also extend a fervent prayer that someday network/mainstream TV will finally, finally can the obligatory montage of Characters Having Deep Moments accompanied by that hackneyed soundtrack - you know the one, but I'll name it anyway - of indistinguishable, faux-passionate, instantly forgettable navel-gazing noodlings. I think the trend might have started with Grey's Anatomy. On the CBC it really got up steam with Being Erica. It's so predictable that it feels like the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail when the wimpy prince keeps wanting to break into song and his father has to keep interjecting to kill the swelling music. I've taken to hitting the mute button rather than enduring this tripe and spending energy cursing at the TV. The one network TV show I can think of that's always set a higher bar for music score/soundtrack is The Good Wife.


"You must not judge what I know by what I find words for." - Marilynne Robinson