POST TCA REPORT: THE TOP 5 PREMIUM SERIES TO CHECK-OUT THIS FALL

By BILL HARRIS Special to BellMediaPR.ca BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.: If you can’t be GAME OF THRONES, then go for the heart and Carrey on. Asked at the recent Television Critics Association (TCA) event about the state of TV comedy versus big-screen comedy, Canadian comic legend Jim Carrey gave voice to the widespread feeling of being overwhelmed by entertainment options. “There’s so many choices, so many ways, so many forms to do things in,” said Carrey, who is starring in a new series from SHOWTIME called KIDDING. “Now it’s just pick of the litter, wherever you want to go, there’s so much good stuff everywhere. “The hardest thing is to cut through the clutter. And the only hope we have of cutting through the clutter these days is either you go bigger than everybody else, where you’re lopping 10 heads off per episode, or you hit a nerve, and you touch people in a place that’s real. Because nothing gets to the back row like truth. “If the truth is in there, then people will be interested. They want to see themselves, they want to see their own truth.” So here’s the truth, as far as we’re concerned: KIDDING is one of five major new premium series coming to HBO Canada and CraveTV this fall – that got a lot of attention at TCA. And if Carrey is concerned about cutting through the clutter, well, it’s a good thing that we’re here! So let’s stop KIDDING around. Here’s the hot half-dozen:   KIDDING Begins streaming Sept. 9 at 10 p.m. ET on CraveTV Without a doubt, this is one of the most unusual shows we’ve seen in a long while. It’s hard to come up with something unique these days, with so much TV out there, but KIDDING appears to have done it. Carrey stars as Mr. Pickles, a beloved kids-TV host – sort of a Mr. Rogers-type character – who is navigating a life-altering family tragedy. He wants to address that tragedy on the air, head-on, but his bosses understandably are less keen on that idea. I’ve seen two episodes thus far, and there’s a different tone to them. The first episode is largely serious, while there are more chuckles in the second episode. “The idea of identity, the search for identity, what it is, who we are, what’s an authentic person, is a theme that’s always been attractive to me,” said Carrey, echoing some of the issues raised in his 1998 movie The Truman Show. “There’s definitely something in this piece (KIDDING) that calls me, as far as the idea of being hit by a freight train in life and trying to hang on to the idea of yourself that you had before it happened. That’s really attractive. That’s an incredible concept to me.”   ESCAPE AT DANNEMORA Begins streaming Nov. 18 at 10 p.m. ET on CraveTV Okay, this is the show that jumped out at me the most. I didn’t know much about it heading into TCA, but now that I’ve seen an episode, and talked to the stars, I’m on board, 100%. Based on a true story, this eight-episode limited series directed by Ben Stiller follows the daring and dangerous plight of two prison inmates, played by Benicio del Toro and Paul Dano, who in 2015 became the first two prisoners ever to escape from Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York. Scandalously, they were aided in their efforts by a vulnerable, excitement-seeking female employee at the prison, played by Patricia Arquette, with whom both inmates were engaged in a sexual relationship. They’re all using each other, with extreme and ultimately tragic results. “I don’t even know, in approaching a character, is there a bad guy?” Arquette asked. “I mean, everyone’s trying to get their needs met. It may not be the same needs from you to me. Or is it bad situations for a certain personality type that bring out the bad behaviour? “For people who are more predatory in some way, it’s like, ‘How do I get my needs met, and how do I win this? How do I find your flaw, your weakness, your thing in this situation, and exploit it so I get my needs met?’ ”   CAMPING Debuts Oct. 14 on HBO Canada How many adults does it take to make a camping trip really awkward, weird, and hopefully hilarious, for the viewers if not necessarily for the characters? Well, the new series CAMPING – which is a remake of a British series, co-created by Jenni Konner and Lena Dunham, and starring Jennifer Garner, David Tennant, and Juliette Lewis – endeavours to find out. Garner’s character is the tightly wound Type-A personality of the group, and her schedule of events immediately is upended with the arrival at the campsite of an unexpected guest, played by the always unpredictable Lewis. “She (Lewis) is not just a normal actor,” said Garner, who meant it as a compliment, really. “She can access a whole different level of freedom and wildness and spontaneity, and I just love working with her. She’s pure. She can’t do anything untrue.”   JANE FONDA IN FIVE ACTS Debuts Sept. 24 on HBO Canada Speaking of women who have blazed their own trails, this wide-sweeping documentary film about the life of Jane Fonda essentially plays out like a recent history of the United States. From acting to pop culture to politics, Fonda often has been a polarizing figure. “I would say that prior to my becoming an anti-war activist (during the Vietnam war in the late 1960s), I had lived an eventful life, an interesting life, but a meaningless life,” said Fonda in a rather harsh self-assessment. “I was kind of a pretty girl who made movies and kind of hedonistic. “So when I decided to throw in my lot with the anti-war movement, everything shifted. The way I looked at the world and other people, the people I was drawn to, what interested me, everything changed. Everything.”   MY BRILLIANT FRIEND Premieres this fall on HBO Canada Transforming a popular novel by Elena Ferrante into an eight-episode series, My Brilliant Friend explores the resiliency and complexity of a friendship between two women over the course of more than six decades. Significantly, this will air in Italian with English subtitles, marking the first time HBO has ventured into what technically is foreign-language programming. “One of the key things that Ferrante does beautifully in her book is sort of uses dialect to separate out class and education,” said executive producer Jennifer Schuur. “I think that was a big challenge for us, especially to try to create nuance for the worldwide audience. “I do think Italian-speakers will grasp that dialect and nuance very easily. But hopefully we did a great job of trying to translate that into an English language ‘understandability’, if that’s a word.”