BORDERline Addiction

Today was a sick day at home for this girl. There was no way I was going to be able to be productive and as such I decided to delve into some new Canadian Content, or CanCon as my brother has dubbed it; which I thought was fantastic for the purposes of saving those precious Twitter characters!

While I was couch-ridden, I took the opportunity to immerse myself in some new CanCon. I turned on the laptop and decided to give “The Border” a shot. Why, you ask? Well, mostly, I chose The Border because I saw a promo for it in the Subway on the way home the other day. Actual.

The Border, a CBC prime-time drama, is well into its third season and the ratings are not great. The ratings have been hovering around 500,000 viewers in the very competitive Thursday night 9:00 PM time slot (think Grey's Anatomy and Survivor - which I'm always surprised to hear people still watch!). Given that Thursday is a tough night for everyone our apartment to get to watch what they want, I decided to watch online and start from the beginning.

I started the pilot early this afternoon then before I even realized it, one of my roommates came home from work and I was getting into the fifth episode.

The Border – for those of you who’ve not yet heard of it, is a drama about the ICS, essentially Canadian Immigration, a government agency based out of Toronto, and the many cases that come across their country lines. National security issues, a team of highly trained field experts, big guns, computer and satellite tricks, all brought together to capture the bad guys by a fearless leader… The Border is pretty formulaic in the Law & Order crime solving meets NCIS team dynamic and partial character storylines kind of way.

But The Border also differs from all those other shows in that it deals with more than one organization and government. There are power struggles between the ICS and CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service – basically the Canadian version of the US’s CIA), sometimes the Department of Homeland Security from the US is involved, and Ministers and Members of Parliament in Ottawa are almost always pulling the strings based on their agendas. So not only is the show chock-full of action, but it adds another layer of complexity, and therefore interest, by involving the politics.

I’m still deciding whether I really care about the characters though. The cast is pretty large, there are a lot of people to keep track of and I really only know one of them by name: Major Kessler; the Horatio Cain-like leader at ICS. And to be honest, I think I might only know that character’s name because I think he’s super distinguished and kindof-slash-really attractive. I’ve only seen five episodes so far, and I’m hopeful that sooner rather than later there will be more to the characters because from what I can tell, there are certainly some acting chops on that show.

The Border is a pretty big production with gunfights, explosions, and generally a lot of action but it manages to remain very Canadian with its shots at American politics and of Tim Horton’s coffee cups. The Parliament buildings make an appearing in every episode, locals speak French Joual in a small eastern Quebec towns… It’s nice to see that The Border showcases more than just Toronto. It took viewers to the St-Lawrence thousand islands and Pembroke, and you guessed it: border towns.

I am really into this show right now. I should be in bed but I’m probably going to go watch another episode now...

If you like the standard crime-solving drama, I say give The Border a chance. It’s just as good as the others, it’s pure CanCon, AND you can watch it online. And if you’ve been watching The Border from the beginning – good on ya, now tell your friends to catch up and start watching weekly.