Lost Girl and Canadian Television

Katie recent­ly intro­duced me to Lost Girl, a show that is very obvi­ous­ly NOT an Amer­i­can show. It’s exot­ic and amus­ing and sexy—especially sexy. But then what do you expect of a show about a suc­cubus? I knew it was­n’t Amer­i­can as soon as I heard some of the ban­ter, which would­n’t fly on broad­cast TV in the U.S. (it’s on Sci-Fi, though! Watch it! But do try to do it from episode one.)

While cable tele­vi­sion in Amer­i­ca has pro­duced plen­ty of shows that could­n’t be shown on broad­cast TV, they’re large­ly the same kinds of things that are already being shown there. If they were edit­ed dif­fer­ent­ly, most of them could prob­a­bly be shown in prime time. I’m not so sure that Dex­ter and Break­ing Bad would be that shock­ing anymore.

But Cana­di­an tele­vi­sion has been will­ing to do shows about telepaths, vam­pires, and now the fae. I’m sure there are far more shows that I’ve nev­er heard of, but the ones I can remem­ber right away are an argu­ment for greater latitude.