Brad Oswald

Former late-night host brings new series to Netflix

When he left, he said he was glad to be gone; that he had nothing left to say on late-night television.

Two-and-a-half years later, it’s clear David Letterman still has a few things on his mind. And that TV remains the forum in which he feels best suited to say them.

Letterman, 70, returns to the small screen — and, for that matter, any other device on which you consume streaming content — this week with the debut of the new Netflix series My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman. The six-part, 60-minute series finds the still-bearded, but business-suit-attired Dave sitting down for extended conversations with subjects whom the host thinks sufficiently interesting to be worthy of an extended chat.

It’s obvious now, as this new effort unfolds at a decidedly measured pace (a new instalment will be made available on Netflix each month), that it wasn’t television in general that Letterman had grown tired of, after 30-plus years behind a talk-show desk; rather, it was the formatted nature of his past endeavours, the repetition, the daily grind and the requirement, because of the cross-promotional nature of the genre, to suffer through the endless stream of conversations with showbiz types with not all that much to say beyond pre-packaged quips about a latest movie or TV show.

A month's worth of holiday TV programming to get you in the festive spirit

Well, a very festive hello to all! It’s your old TV-watching pal Brad here, making a brief holiday-season drop-in on the entertainment pages in order to A) take a short break from the deep-thoughts work that occupies most of my time on the Perspectives pages these days, and B) check in on my friends in the Arts & Life section as they embark on the inevitably frenzied festive season.

And while I’m here, I simply couldn’t resist the urge to throw together another of our annual ever-so-useful clip-and-save guides to seasonal TV programming — a few new titles, a handful of old chestnuts, and the usual assortment of essential-viewing holiday-TV favourites. Here’s hoping your must-see selections are somewhere to be found on this year’s decidedly nice list — and remember, since we’re working well in advance here, be sure to check the local listings to confirm dates and times.

Happy festive-season flipping!

Final four face off in Canadian TV contest

As most sports fans know, the biggest and baddest of the bracket-driven competitions is the annual NCAA Basketball Tournament, otherwise known as March Madness.

But there’s another bracket brawl brewing these days, and it’s aimed at determining the greatest-ever Canadian television thing. For the sake of the discussion that follows, and with a respectful nod to bracketology’s apparent affinity for alliteration (the progressive stages of the NCAA’s “Madness” march are nicknamed the Sweet Sixteen, the Elite Eight and the Final Four), let’s call the Canuck-TV countdown “November Nuttiness.”

The bracket gimmick was unleashed online earlier this month by self-described journalist/ranker of stuff Justin McElroy, a Vancouver-based CBC staffer, under the heading “Canada’s Most Memorable (English) TV Thing.” On his website (As most sports fans know, the biggest and baddest of the bracket-driven competitions is the annual NCAA Basketball Tournament, otherwise known as March Madness.

But there’s another bracket brawl brewing these days, and it’s aimed at determining the greatest-ever Canadian television thing. For the sake of the discussion that follows, and with a respectful nod to bracketology’s apparent affinity for alliteration (the progressive stages of the NCAA’s “Madness” march are nicknamed the Sweet Sixteen, the Elite Eight and the Final Four), let’s call the Canuck-TV countdown “November Nuttiness.”