Curling show doesn’t quite clear the hog line

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This article was published 15/07/2009 (6243 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Apparently a casualty of CBC’s decision to eschew half-hour dramas, the TV pilot for the locally produced dramedy Throwing Stones airs tonight as a kind of broadcast one-off.

As it stands, the Ceeb has no intention of ordering more episodes of the show from the Winnipeg-based company Original Pictures. But presumably, if enough viewers respond favorably, it may induce one of those reclaim-the-airwaves movements where we, the viewing public, might rise up and dictate the kind of programming we expect from the nation’s broadcaster, instead of taking the dictation.

In its favour, the show deliberately aims for female audiences with its core of diverse female characters, centring on Patti Thom (Patty Duke), the irascible skip of a Winnipeg women’s curling team.

A language-mangling force of nature, Patti corrals an unlikely cultural/economic cross-section of women onto her team, where the after-game drinks are deemed every bit as important as the game itself.

Annette Roi (Caroline Neron) is a French-Canadian minx who says goodbye to a different bedmate every Tuesday. (It’s debatable how French-Canadian audiences are going to appreciate the manner in which Annette represents.) Shirley (Barbara Radecki) is an upper-class matron who suspects her genteel, picture-perfect husband may be cheating on her. Cindy (Stephanie Anne Mills) has a different kind of husband trouble in that her angry cop hubby (Dan Petronijevic) is impatient, abusive — an outright jerk, in fact.

Into this mix comes a rude interloper in the person of Marge Merrick (Lolita Davidovich), a transplanted American Republican with two sons fighting in Iraq. At Patti’s invitation, Marge quickly learns the basics of curling, setting up a place for herself when a space on the team tragically opens up.

The chances of the show having a life beyond its pilot are reduced, alas, by a cloying, cute tone (Duke is the notable offender) and a generic sense of place. Sure, the gals may curl at a rink in West Kildonan and refer to the travails of living in “the SSRqPeg.” But workhorse Canadian director Mario Azzopardi, directing a script by his daughter Lara Azzopardi and Julia Cohen, delivers a glossy-looking product that might just as easily have been set in Scarborough, Moose Jaw, or any Canadian burg deemed to be Nowheresville.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

TV REVIEW

Throwing Stones

Starring Patty Duke and Lolita Davidovich

CBC

Tonight at 9 p.m.