People always look at me with a hint of skepticism and disturbance when I tell them just how much television I watch on a weekly basis. It’s true that the amount is substantially higher than that of the average passing university student, but there’s also the generations-old stigma attached to television that calls it an inferior art form and insists it is essentially trashy. What these people don’t seem to realize is that over the past few years television has changed drastically. New shows like Breaking Bad and The Good Wife present all the drama, profundity, and depth of character of cinema while others like Community take full advantage of their self-aware medium and present smart, funny comedy on a weekly basis. With the end of the calendar year, mid-season schedule changes will replace old shows that were floundering in the ratings (among them Glee and, unfortunately, Community) with these new, exciting, television programs:

Bombgirls
Starting January 4
Following in the nostalgic-historic vein of Mad Men, Pan-Am and the now-cancelled Playboy Club, Bombgirls is a six part miniseries depciting the lives of several Canadian women who work at a munitions factory during World War II.  Though billed as a drama that will explore discrimination and societal problems, advertisements and teasers show there will likely be a substantial presence of music, fashion, passion, and the like to appeal to an audience eager to romanticize about the past. Oscar nominee Meg Tilly will lead the program as one of the bomb girls.

Smash
Starting February 6
The long-anticipated Spielberg-produced TV musical Smash is about the cast and production team of a Broadway musical about Marilyn Monroe, set to music by Marc Shaiman (Hairspray) and starring Debra Messing (Will and Grace). Though production began years ago, its premiere will come just a few short months after Glee’s extended hiatus began, scooping up a dedicated fanbase eager for musical television melodrama. Smash‘s original music and lyrics and grown-up cast are likely to give it a very different vibe from Glee, however, so don’t expect it to be more of the same.

Apartment 23
Starting January 16
Originally called Don’t Trust the Bitch in Apartment 23, this ABC sitcom centers around two contentious young women (roommates) and their quirky friends and neighbours. Currently airing programs that are more or less identical: 2 Broke Girls, New Girl, and I Hate my Teenage Daughter, which is to say nothing of the dozens of odd-couple sitcoms that have passed through the airways over the years. Perhaps Krysten Ritter (Breaking Bad, Veronica Mars, 27 Dresses) can make the show stand out in the slew of otherwise similar sitcoms.

The River
Movies like The Poughkeepsie Tapes, Cloverfield, and Apollo 18 have popularized the found-footage genre of mock home videos in recent years and shown just how effective they can be for supernatural horror-thrillers. The River capitlizes on this idea as it purportedly shows the actual footage taken by a family and rescue crew searching for a lost father deep in the Amazon. Created by Oren Peli of Paranormal Activity fame and starring Joe Anderson from Across the Universe, The River has the distinct possibility of creating a new genre of found footage television.

Arctic Air
Starting January 10
Good Canadian television airs so infrequently that it is a rare treat that two such promising shows should be debuting in the mid-season. Like Bombgirls, Arctic Air is an hour-long Canadian drama. It focuses on the lives and missions of pilots flying supplies to remote communities across the north, and is centred in Yellowknife. Based on the stories of real pilots and adventures, Arctic Air will star TV veteran Adam Beach (Law & Order: SVU, Flags of Our Fathers) and promises to offer excitement and thrills or, at the very least, mild patriotic enthusiasm.

Other shows debuting this winter:

• An animated TV series of Napoleon Dynamite
• a suspenseful drama by J.J. Abrams called Alcatraz
• a Texan comedy called GCB (Good Christian Bitches)
• a quasi-supernatural thriller called Touch, starring Kiefer Sutherland
• a spin-off of Bones called The Finder
• an action-drama called Missing
• a legal thriller based on a John Grisham novel called The Firm

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 7th, 2012 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Arts, Canada is the Greatest Nation on Earth, Entertainment, General, TV, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.