Race’s endurance is Amazing
There are two ways to look at The Amazing Race Canada, as the remaining teams race to Quebec City from Regina, at the midpoint of the 10-week Race. On the horizon: Iqaluit, Halifax, St. John’s, then doubling back to Toronto for the stretch to the Sept. 16 finish line.
The first way is to regard Amazing Race Canada as a thrilling summer diversion that has averaged a betterthan-expected three million viewers a week since its start at the Niagara Falls Butterfly Conservatory on July 15.
Those are Big Bang Theory numbers, the kind of audience that tunes into TV in mid-winter, not during those all-too-brief weeks when most viewers would rather be outside, enjoying the last rays of the evening summer sun.
The second way, inevitably, is to compare it with the original Amazing Race, which has always been more popular in Canada than in the U.S., relative to the size of the two countries’ populations. International boundaries and exotic cultures aside, Amazing Race Canada has proven every bit as engaging as the original, from the brisk pace, fast cutting, peppy music and, most importantly, that lifeaffirming joie de vivre that makes Amazing Race so unlike other reality-TV competitions.
The Amazing Race Canada has not disappointed. Villains have emerged — those darn hippies! That cussin’ fitness guru! — and unlikely heroes. Armchair travellers have had an eyeful of their home and native land over the past five weeks, from Drumheller, Alta., and the Ranchman’s Cookhouse in Calgary to Great Slave Lake and the Yellowknife Bay Floating Bed & Breakfast, with side-trip detours to the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden in Vancouver and, last week, Taylor Field in Regina.
Some watch The Amazing Race for the scenery; others watch for the excitement of the Race itself, forming rooting interests along the way and holding out hope that, whoever crosses the finish line first, they’ll be worthy. (9 p.m., CTV)
Dean Norris might not be hardest working man in show business right now, but it certainly seems that way. Norris, Big Jim in Under the Dome and Hank Schrader in Breaking Bad, appears on The Late Show with David Letterman. Also on the guest list: Olivia Wide and John Mayer. (11:35 p.m., CBS, CFMT)
The mystery deepens on Under the Dome — for those who haven’t read the book, that is — as Big Jim (Dean Norris) and Barbie (Mike Vogel) learn they have more in common than they supposed, this after a mystery woman (guest star Natalie Zea) shows up unexpectedly in Chester’s Mill. “Unexpectedly” is the operative word, as a giant, impenetrable, transparent dome has all but cut off Chester’s Mill from the outside world. (10 p.m., CBS, Global)
Freezing temperatures, sudden snow and dwindling hope push some of the realityTV contestants to the brink of insanity in Siberia. Sure, it sounds like any other reality show but it isn’t really: Siberia is a hypothetical fictional drama about what could/ would happen if people were pushed to their limits. (10 p.m., NBC)