EIGHT AT CHINOOK

A 13- EPISODE DRAMEDY

After losing their Mount Roy al home in a downturn, a family of eight ( Mom, Dad, a boy, four girls and a goldendoodle) find a way to make Chinook Centre their home from day to night to day.

Dad was in Fort Mac. Mom was in hot yoga. Now they’re back together and doing their best to look after their sweet-but-spoiled kids in the lifestyle to which they’ve grown accustomed. Eight at Chinook is inspired by old- school “tough times dramas” such as The Waltons and

Little House on the Prairie that cashed in on American fears by telling citizens that poverty and hardship build character. Only, this show has way cooler clothes.

Mom and Dad have decided that the kids don’t need school: the uncivilization is on its way. What they need is to learn to survive. So each episode finds our young brood palming pork crackling from the plates of sozzled patrons at Double Zero; pocketing discarded dragon rolls from the heaping bus bins at Globefish; and drinking dreg- samples at Orange Julius, which are proffered by the high- turnover staff there, who never notice the ubiquity of our cunning Artful Dodgers.

The girls get product samples at Aveda and buy clothing from Aritzia and Club Monaco on their Visa pre- paids. Then, instead of doing laundry or paying interest, they make endless returns, like obsessive- compulsive Cinderellas who will never really “own” ( except for the Kate Spade monster sunglasses they share between them as they take turns walking Buttercup, who spends her days now camouflaged as a service dog searching for a place to relieve herself in the grass- barren mall).

Meanwhile, little brother spends his days at the Apple Store, hacking code so that they may, as a family, erase all security tapes and spend each night as they always have: in Pottery Barn beds and on chaises, braiding each other’s hair or tucked in to Keller- stitched quilts and Rosalie Paisley shams, while Buttercup nibbles on a decorative twig orb.

Like John- Boy and his tribe, they wish each other “good night” at the end of each episode ( albeit this crew does it by the glow of their iPads, which, blessedly, still work). But, unlike the Waltons, Mom and Dad stay up real late at the Banks Extending Dining Table, sipping little heels of nifty Merlot scooped from Joey’s, downing the last of their Ativan and figuring out their next moves.

Eight at Chinook is a tender- tough

tale for our times.