The Importance of Not Being Earnest
by licensed television critic Farrell ChildeWhy can't Canadians make a decent cop show? It's not as if they don't have examples to copy. You can't turn on the television without finding a cop show on somewhere.
This television season features three Canadian cop shows, and all are derivative (it's hard not to be in this genre). The problem is that they are derivative of the wrong things.
Chasing Cain, the CBC's entry this season (trust the CBC to throw in a Biblical reference), seems to be derived from British cop shows, in particular Prime Suspect. Its most noticeable borrowing from British cop shows, however, is the lousy sound. As in many British shows, extraneous noise often drowns out the dialogue.
Cold Squad (CTV) is derivative of Law and Order. All Cold Squad has borrowed, though, is the format. Despite all the good actors who have appeared on Law and Order, Cold Squad hasn't bothered to borrow the classic understated American television acting. Like most Canadian TV dramas, Cold Squad is directed as if it were a stage play. The actors emote as if they were trying to make sure buddy in the back row can follow the play. To buddy on the couch, though, the overacting is just annoying.
Canadian cop shows also seem to do far less research than foreign shows. The characters are usually less than persuasive, for example. The characters on Blue Murder (Global) articulate as if they were playing Shakespeare, and Peter Outerbridge on Chasing Cain doesn't look like any cop I've ever seen. Canadian shows also fail to throw in the large dollops of specialist knowledge that American shows throw in. Audiences like that kind of stuff, especially mystery audiences. That's why Law and Order has so many informative disquisitons by characters in all types of role.
The actors of course are not helped by scripts which often seem to have been written by people who've been living in monasteries since birth – monasteries with vows of silence, too. The dialogue and situations are often artificial and beyond any help the actors can give them. Canadian scripts also tend to be short on action and plot twists, preferring long, long over-explained scenes.
Canadian cop shows could also profitably copy the restrained and appropriate camera work of foreign shows. Canadian cop shows suffer from a general failing of Canadian drama – dizzying and distracting camera work.
The most offensive camera work by far among our three cop shows is found on Chasing Cain. Its director, Jerry Ciccoritti (Trudeau), seems to have spent far too much time in his formative years in the Ontario pavilion at Expo 67. In Face, the latest episode of Chasing Cain, split screens and various hyperactive camera gymnastics ruined an interesting character portrayal of a spaced-out and grieving young woman (unfortunately I cannot tell you the actor's name, since the credits flew by at the speed of light and the CBC does not list her on its website).
Mr. Ciccoritti actually provides close-ups of the detectives' note-taking so that you can catch up on the information you've missed because you were distracted by the camera work or bewildered by the sound. And although it was Canadians who made the extreme close-up an object of ridicule, Face was full of them.
The plots of Canadian cop shows are usually bad, but that's a common failing of the genre. I've never seen on a Canadian show a plot as ridiculous as some of the plots they've been fobbing off on us on Law and Order this year. The solution of Face was weak, though, and presented in a way that emphasized its weakness.
So why can't Canada produce a good cop show? The answer is the usual one, one that Mordecai Richler was pointing out fifty years ago. Canadian cop shows display the characteristic Canadian failing of earnestness. Foreign cop shows want to entertain, ours want to Do Good.
Jerry Ciccoritti, for example, has described Face as an examination of Toronto's cultural diversity. It's not just a cop show, it's an analysis of an important social issue! The problem, as usual, is that earnest examinations of serious issues by creative types are usually irrelevant. The examination of cultural issues in Face was hackneyed and cursory. It did raise an interesting issue of cultural diversity early on, but then transformed it into a tired old plot of a new cop winning the respect of old cops.
Earnestness also requires that the program be a morality play. Law and Order does not shrink from depicting its police and legal protagonists as cowboys so intent on getting convictions that they bend the law as far as they can without breaking it, and sometimes farther. On Canadian shows, the protagonist must be Good (in Face the cops didn't get their man, but they got some bad cops disciplined). What Canadian producers of cop shows forget is that cop shows are part of the mystery genre, and that what the audience is interested in is the mystery, not whether morality will prevail.
So the lousiness of Canadian cop shows is probably inescapable. Canadians show no sign of becoming less earnest. Having spent a lot of time slagging Chasing Cain, though, I would like to acknowledge that it is much more watchable than its rivals on CTV and Global. I actually watched all two hours of Face, while I have never been able to watch more than ten minutes of Cold Squad or Blue Murder without screaming in exasperation.
The acting in Chasing Cain was accomplished and judicious, even when the lines were awkward. The leads (Alberta Watson, Peter Outerbridge, and guest star Karen LeBlanc) did well with roles which were often artificial, and the supporting and character parts were also well played. The policemen even acted like real policemen. Of course, Mr. Ciccoritti gets some of the credit for the acting, and for doing the research necessary to help his actors act like policemen (the show consults with the Toronto Police Service).
Perhaps Chasing Cain will get better (so far only two two-hour instalments have been shown) and disprove what I have written here. Mostly what it needs are punchier, more tough-minded scripts and a little discipline in the cinematography. If you want to bet that will happen, though, get some odds. Long ones.
The Importance of Not Being Earnest © Coolth, 2002
February 6, 2003
