Alex Strachan's review of the worst and best in TV this past year

Alex Strachan is a television columnist in Canada whose reviews and articles appear in many of the major newspapers across the country.
He did a sort of postmortem on the CBC shows that were renewed and cancelled. You can read his whole article here if you want.

http://communities.canada.com/shareit/blogs/tvguy/archive/2008/03/07/cbc-s-tv-renewals-more-notable-for-what-s-not-on-the-list-rather-than-what-s-on.aspx

But then he goes on to write about the the shows he really loved and I am glad we made his list, sort of.
He hits a few notes on his comments which we also wonder about and wonder whether if the series is renewed, we will go back to whence we came so to speak.
Just so you understand, Maureen was brought in on a consulting basis once the outlines were done and the scripts were in process. Neither she nor I really ever understood why the tone of the show moved away from the dark broody atmosphere of the novels and the movies of the week.
We are not complaining, we love the show, but we prefer the darker episodes which are more like the MOW's.
The humour is great to a degree and I strongly feel that there are a number of episodes in the series that are quite dark, check out next week's Still Waters, and Let Loose the Dogs was darker as well as Elementary, wait til you see Child's Play as well.
Anyway, if and when we are renewed, it will be interesting to see where they go with the show this year, so here 's what Alex said

. . . "The best Canadian dramas I saw over the past year — the most ambitious, dramatic and compelling to watch — were the murder mystery Durham County, which hailed from The Movie Network, Movie Central and Global TV, and Citytv's atmosphere-soaked period mystery Across the River to Motor City.
It was refreshing, too, to see Citytv take a flyer on Bravo!'s Murdoch Mysteries, though I remain more a fan of the original, darker TV films. (Bravo! originated the Detective Murdoch Mysteries made-for-TV movies; Citytv developed the concept as a weekly series.)"