For this newsletter, I wanted to focus specifically on Canadian media. As a Canadian, it’s so fun to watch or read work that is relatable to Canadian life, like there’s a fun secret joke just for me. I’ve always gravitated towards Canadian work, but lately because of shenanigans happening south of our border, I’m even more inclined to support my own country first.
That being said, I kicked off February by re-watching my favourite sketch comedy troupe, Picnicface. It took some digging to find episodes, but I finally found a channel on YouTube that has all the episodes. It was just as whacky as I remembered, and definitely not for everyone. My husband enjoyed watching me cackle more than the show itself.
After we finished watching Picnicface, we looked up some of the cast members and found a show on CBC called Cavendish. It stars two of the Picnicface members as brothers going back to their hometown to help out their absentee father. Each episode is a goofy little mystery with some light horror themes. It’s so fun and weird; we’ve never seen anything like it. It made me want to add more fun but creepy elements into my mystery series. We were howling at the haunted Fred Penner episode. If you love Canadian shows mixed with comedy horror (my two favourite genres), this is for you.
For films, we didn’t watch any Canadian made productions, but we did watch the latest Hannah Swensen mystery movie, titled Reality Bites. It was filmed in BC, my home province, mostly in Maple Ridge. These mysteries are light and fluffy, with familiar cast members and lots of baked goods references. They’re meant to be fairly predictable, cozy mysteries, which is what I depend on them for. Great for a relaxing night, filled with us saying “I know where that is!” as the locations change.
Speaking of mysteries, we’ve been watching Saint-Pierre, a CBC police show which stars and is co-created by Allan Hawco. He was the lead in Republic of Doyle as well, which I highly recommend. Saint-Pierre is still releasing new episodes each week, so I haven’t seen them all yet. It’s based on the french island near Newfoundland. The show started out very similar to Republic of Doyle in a lot of ways, but has turned into its own thing. I’ve been enjoying the development of the characters and I hope it continues. It focused heavily in the beginning episodes on showing the audience what the island was about and how the police department is run, but the last couple of episodes have started to work out the characters more.
I’m not going to lie, I didn’t read much in February. My book launched on February 25, and I had to re-read it a few times because I was paranoid there would be an error that I missed (there’s probably a few I still missed). I did end up making a lot of changes, which I think for the good. Picture evidence included.
