Maurice Tougas

2 weeks ago | brioux.tv | Maurice Tougas

One thing you can say about Apple TV; it’s never been afraid to spend big. It doesn’t always work, of course. (Check out – or better yet, don’t – Apple’s $180 million film flop, Fountain of Youth.) But sometimes the gamble pays off big; Severance is rumoured to cost $20 million per episode, and it’s been a zeitgeist-y hit for Apple. I don’t know what Apple spent on The Studio, its hugely entertaining, very funny satire/paean to Hollywood filmmaking, but they got their money’s worth.

1 month ago | brioux.tv | Maurice Tougas

I have a rough rule of thumb when choosing a book to read: anything over 400 pages is just, as the kids say, TMI. More than that tells me that the author simply couldn’t decide what to take out, so they left everything in, say, the subject’s great-great grandfather came to America in 1852 and started a butcher shop on 129th Street and 102nd Avenue in Brooklyn. Nobody cares!That’s why I almost didn’t pick up Lorne, subtitled The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live.

Mar 28, 2025 | brioux.tv | Maurice Tougas

Once upon a time, back in the long-ago era of the 1980s, there were two ‘pay TV’ stations that started life on the high road. One was named Arts & Entertainment, or A&E. It specialized in theatre, plays, foreign films … artsy stuff. The other was called The Learning Channel, or TLC. Its goal was educational programming. Both stations exist today but could not be further from their initial lofty goals.

Feb 25, 2025 | brioux.tv | Maurice Tougas

Chances are that Donald J. Trump, the now and possible future President of the United States, has never heard of the CBC. He probably thinks the first two letters refer to Cheese Burgers. But the ‘very stable genius’ may have handed our embattled national broadcaster a lifeline. Canadians are in a patriot fervor these days, or at least as patriotic as this famously undemonstrative nation ever gets.

Jan 14, 2025 | brioux.tv | Maurice Tougas

Any debate over the best show in TV history would have dozens of candidates. But there is no debate over the single worst program in television history – The Jerry Springer Show. For 27 seasons and 3,891 lurid episodes, Jerry Springer lowered the TV bar, then dug a ditch and lowered the bar to hell. The new Netflix documentary series, Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action, looks back at the series TV Guide correctly called the worst show ever.