I am the first to admit that I am not a fan of Canadian television. Somehow we create amazing actors, singers, comedians, writers, directors, producers and they appear fantastic when they end up south of the border in a US production. I don’t know what happens but when they appear in a made-in-Canada production they usually end up sucking in a major way. Even the camera work and cinematography somehow devolves to look like something filmed by a high school student on a handy-cam.
But once in a while there are execptions and based on the first episode of The Border that may be one. I watched The Border tonight and it really looked and felt like a quality production. Usually I can tell a Canadian production within the first 5-10 seconds of the show…not this time. Even the shots of Toronto and Parliament Hill did not appear cheesy. The trailers for the next episode look even better. If you saw it let me know what you thought.
Harnessing Chaos 
Oh, I totally watched this, just based on subject matter. These were my non-edited, initial thoughts on the matter. You will obviously get that I have a definite bias on this, heh.Some of my thoughts:It\’s surprisingly awesome.It makes us look cooler than we
are, so loss of reality points there, but so far they\’ve managed to
refer to us mostly in the right way (1 – CBSA, Far more "Immigration
and Customs Security". There is, of course, Immigration and Customs
security, but it\’s part of CBSA, not a separate entity, unless it\’s an
IBET, which gets murky.).But they got quite a few things right.
Like the fact that CBSA, CSIS, RCMP all report to the same Minister
(though they refer to him as a "Deputy Minister" (Heh, Stock got a
demotion!). And the fact there\’s tension between the portfolio partners
— this idea that CBSA is the little annoying kid of the portfolio, and
the real enforcement is with the other partners. There is a bit of
that).Interesting. I\’m really glad that the "acting" in the
game on the CBC website doesn\’t seem to be an indicator of the acting
on the actual show.Man, are they ever making CSIS out to be the bad guys. And nice "veiled" reference to Maher Arar, guys.
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