Yep. If there's one thing America doesn't have enough of, it's homegrown cop shows. Enter those plucky Canadians to pick up the slack.
The made-in-Canada police procedural Motive returns for a second season at 9 p.m. Wednesday on ABC. There will be 13 episodes to ease us through the summer solving crime.
Motive is one of those "inverted mystery" series (like Columbo) where the viewer learns up front what the crime was, who the victim is and "who done it." The rest of the hour we spend watching Homicide Detective Angie Flynn and her team figuring it out, navigating flashbacks and solving the puzzle along with the "motive."
Kristin Lehman stars as the working class single mother Flynn, with Louis Ferreira as her steady, no-nonsense partner Detective Oscar Vega. Others on the team are Brendan Penny as Detective Brian Lucas and Lauren Holly as Dr. Betty Rogers.
Newcomers for the season are Valerie Tian as "very keen and ambitious" Officer Wendy Sung, and Warren Christie as Sergeant Mark Cross, the "confident and charismatic" new commander of the Metro Police Department homicide team.
Cross is a former undercover detective with a mysterious link to Flynn's past that she would prefer to leave in the past.
Note: Two more ABC summer dramas are waiting in the wings. Season 2 of Mistresses is set for 9 p.m. June 2, and Rookie Blue returns for Season 4 at 8 p.m. July 19.
• Voice / Idol. American Idol's Season 13 finalists -- Jena Irene and Caleb Johnson -- square off at 7 p.m. today on Fox. That will be be followed at 8 by the live season finale of The Voice on NBC.
Overkill? You bet. I've really struggled to stay excited, but neither series holds my interest anymore. The format has been done to death. The singers are too polished, too molded and too packaged in some preconceived, boring network mold.
And if I see one more insipid audience full of starry-eyed girls waving their arms rhythmically in the air, it'll be too soon.
The shows have gotten boring.
America agrees. From it's once mega-show status of 30 million viewers, Idol is lucky to manage a modest 7 million these days. Fox is cutting back the series next season to be more in line with reality.
Reality? The last big star Idol produced was Carrie Underwood. That was eight years ago. Do you even recall who won last year? (It was Candice Glover.)
Idol had an outstanding run and earned Fox billions, but these types of shows have inundated the airwaves and sooner or later the saturation point is reached. Just ask Simon Cowell. His copycat The X Factor fizzled abysmally.
If you still care, Idol will announce this season's winner at 7 p.m. Wednesday.
• Dancing. And, of course, TV makes it tough for those still interested by scheduling its big finales opposite one another.
Dancing With the Stars takes up the entire ABC lineup tonight. A special, The Road to the Finals, airs at 7 p.m, followed by the live two-hour finale at 8. The Season 18 champ will be crowned and awarded the coveted mirror-ball trophy.
Dancing has suffered the same viewer fatigue and slipping ratings as all the other competition shows. Next season ABC will only air the series one night a week. What's worse for the network is that its median viewer age is now over 62.
• The Middle. The one-hour season finale features a corporate-serving trip to the ABC mothership (Walt Disney World) at 7 p.m. Wednesday.
• Modern Family. The season finale, "The Wedding, Part 2," is set for 8 p.m. Wednesday. There is the expected chaos, but all turns out well.
• Mixology. Watch it one last time at 8:30 Wednesday. ABC has pulled the plug and there will be no Season 2.
• The Killing. Here's your reminder that Linden and Holder (Mireille Enos, Joel Kinnaman) will be around for one final season. The catch: The AMC twice-canceled series will be available only on Netflix. All six episodes of the fourth season will be available Aug. 1.
The series will wrap with the duo investigating a murder at a boys' military academy.
• Big money. NBC has paid $7.75 billion (with a B) for the Olympics broadcast rights through 2032. That's three more summer and three winter games.
By comparison, Major League Baseball charges $1.5 billion annually in deals with ESPN, Turner and Fox; NASCAR gets $820 million a year from NBC and Fox.
• Crews up. Terry Crews is the new host of the syndicated Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. He'll replace Cedric The Entertainer this fall.
Crews stars in the Fox sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which has been renewed for the fall.
The TV Column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Email:
mstorey@arkansasonline.com
Style on 05/20/2014