ESPN documentary could shift your perspective on The Trade

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/11/2009 (5880 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For most Canadians, the only reference required is The Trade.

Aug. 9, 1988 — the day Wayne Gretzky left the Edmonton Oilers and became a Los Angeles King — is a day that has been endlessly debated and meticulously dissected in terms of its impact on hockey and its significance within the larger cultural context.

ESPN’s excellent 30 For 30 anniversary series of documentaries takes a fresh look at the trade in the Peter-Berg-directed film Kings Ransom (tonight at 6:30 on TSN), which offers both the useful perspective of an interested outsider (read: non-Canadian) and detailed, up-to-date comments from all of the principal characters involved in the deal.

Berg is a perfect choice for this project — as a filmmaker, he has a keen eye for sports-related material (having written and directed Friday Night Lights); as a fan, he’s been a hockey follower all his life; and as a hooked-up Hollywood celeb, he has let’s-play-golf access to Gretzky and can therefore get as close to the truth about The Trade as anyone has.

Kings Ransom was produced for an American audience, so its early moments find Berg asking Gretzky (yes, on a golf course) to reflect on the magnitude of the deal.

"To put it in perspective for people in the United States," the Great One offers, "what hockey means to Edmontonians and Canada is kind of like that two weeks of the Olympic Games, where you stop everything and that’s what you’re focusing on — that’s what the Oilers are for 12 months of the year."

With painstaking detail — thanks to lengthy interviews with Gretzky, former Oiler owner Peter Pocklington and ex-GM Glen Sather and former Kings owner Bruce McNall — Berg explores the financial circumstances that led up to the deal, how Gretzky finally came to decide to let it happen, and then looks back at the firestorm of controversy (mostly aimed at Pocklington and Gretzky’s new wife, Janet) that followed.

It’s a very well-crafted documentary. Even if you consider yourself to be a hockey scholar (something there’s no shortage of in this land), you’re sure to find a few facts or observations in Kings Ransom that will shift your personal perspective on The Trade.

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Frozen flights: Take a full cargo-load of the stone-cold-crazy daring of Ice Road Truckers, add in a measure of the fierce feuding at American Chopper, then throw in a few grizzled, wild-eyed characters reminiscent of The Beachcombers’ nemesis, Relic, and what you’ve got is a weird but watchable new reality/documentary series called Ice Pilots NWT.

This new History Television offering, which premieres tonight at 9, seeks to do for far-north aviation what Ice Road Truckers did for the winter-road transport industry — turn the unusual collection of characters drawn to this extreme-conditions lifestyle into reality-TV stars.

And among fans of this particular sub-genre of "unscripted" programming, Ice Pilots NWT is very likely to succeed. The folks who keep Yellowknife-based Buffalo Airways flying really are a pretty entertaining bunch.

The godfather of the outfit is company founder Joe McBryan, whose passion for big, old aircraft is matched only by his determination to provide a reliable essential service to remote northern communities. He has assembled a fleet of Second-World-War-vintage airplanes — DC-3s, DC-4s and massive, cargo-hauling Curtis Commando C-46s, mostly — and maintained them in a manner that allows them to fly regular routes in the coldest conditions imaginable.

There’s danger. There’s adventure. There’s conflict. And as anyone who’s endured one of those three-weeks-of-minus-40 Winnipeg-winter stretches can attest, there’s bound to be a few folks involved who’ve gone crazy from the cold.

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Damaged goods: Showcase TV’s latest foray into original programming arrives this week in the form of Cra$h & Burn, a darkly loopy comedy/drama set inside the shadier corners of the insurance industry. Luke Kirby (Tell Me You Love Me) stars as the aptly named Jimmy Burn, an insurance adjuster with the cutthroat instincts required to make it big in the small-claims business but also a deep-rooted morality that keeps him from crossing the line into sold-soul territory.

Jimmy’s workplace, Protected Insurance, combines a Sanford and Son style with a Glengarry Glen Ross attitude — it’s an ugly place to look at, and an even worse place to work. But Jimmy’s determined not to be one of the no-hopers who gets fired every day for non-performance — he’s got a fiancée at home and big dreams about the life he’s going to provide for her, so he’s determined to shift his status on the caseload board from "loser" to "winner."

When Cra$h & Burn works, it’s solely on the strength of Kirby’s performance; he makes Jimmy a very engaging character, despite his regular trips into places where bumblingly inept co-workers and cartoonish villains with ridiculous Russian-mob connections threaten to turn the whole operation into a farce.

There’s enough in the first couple of episodes to merit a second look, but I wouldn’t rush out just yet to purchase a long-term policy for a show that might soon do just what its title suggests.

brad.oswald@freepress.mb.ca

 

TV PREVIEW

30 For 30: Kings Ransom

Directed by Peter Berg

Tonight at 6:30

TSN

 

Ice Pilots NWT

Tonight at 9

History

 

Cra$h & Burn

Starring Luke Kirby

Tonight at 11

Showcase

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