Like me, you probably don't give a rodent's posterior that ABC's ludicrous reality show Wipeout is back for the summer, or that the loudmouth trainer from the The Biggest Loser, one Jillian Michaels, has her own spin-off show this summer.
Perhaps, like me, you savour the fact that summer brings considerably more interesting TV these days. These hot months are even hotter on TV. This summer will be like no other in terms of what coming and what's worth watching.
Take note, too, that what happens during the summer months in the TV racket can be groundbreaking and, sometimes, change TV for years afterward. It was about 10 years ago (on May 31, 2000) that Survivor first arrived in North America and was a stunning success that launched countless, lesser imitations. It was 20 years ago (May 31, 1990) that the very first batch of Seinfeld episodes aired. More recently, remember that Mad Men appeared out of nowhere in July 2007 and became the most talked-about show on TV, while the U.S. networks were promoting their silly fall fare.
This summer, hereabouts, two events will take up vast hours of television. The G8 and G20 Summits will last mere days, but their presence on TV will be as emphatic as the enormous disruption in Toronto. And then there's the big one - the World Cup, starting June 11 and ending July 11. CBC has invested heavily in the tournament and will air every game. Every night, there will be an elaborate one-hour World Cup round-up on The Score. Over on TLN, there will be coverage of all 64 matches live in both Italian and Spanish, with a nightly 7 o'clock game-of-the-day broadcast, plus tons of other World Cup features.
And if you think this might be some kind of minority-interest thing, all 64 matches are being broadcast in the United States, 10 on ABC, and the rest on ESPN. The great behemoths of the U.S. popular culture will be paying attention. It will be inescapable.
Meanwhile, five big shows that matter this summer:
1. True Blood (Sunday, June 13, HBO Canada) is back and if the first episode is any indication, the brilliantly outrageous vampire soap sizzles again. Some dead-sexy werewolves are on the prowl, as if Sookie (Anna Paquin) and her pals didn't have enough complications.
2. Mad Men (Sunday, July 25, AMC) is bound to be cranked-up as drama, now that Don Draper (John Hamm) and his colleagues are part of a new start-up advertising agency. Also, of course, his long-suffering wife, Betty (January Jones), has moseyed off with another guy.
3. Rubicon (Sunday, Aug. 1, AMC) is new, from the channel that gave us Mad Men and Breaking Bad. It's a political conspiracy thriller with James Badge Dale (from HBO's The Pacific) as an analyst at an economic think tank who discovers that his workplace actually engages in much more sinister acts than it admits.
4. Pretty Little Liars (Tuesday June 8, MuchMusic) has big critical buzz already. Sometimes called a teens-only version of Desperate Housewives, it's about four teenage gals, former friends but then enemies, who are obliged to reunite when a friend disappears. And somebody is sending them nasty text messages. It's based on a series of very popular young-adult novels by Sara Shepard.
5. Leverage (Monday, June 14, SuperChannel) has been airing in the United States on cable channel TNT and doing well. And now it's here. On the surface, a lightweight caper show - a band of con artists use their smarts to help people - but it is very well-written, with a casual drollery that's captivating. Timothy Hutton plays the leader of the gang, with gusto, and is doing his best work in years.
Airing tonight:
Community (NBC, 8 p.m.) is worth catching as it repeats over the summer. A deadpan social satire, it has much arch, prickly humour. At its centre is Jeff (Joel McHale), an oily lawyer who has his bogus degree exposed. So he enrolls in community college and forms a study group, mainly with the intention of impressing a woman. But the study group takes over his life and emerges as a community unto itself. Chevy Chase plays an obnoxious coot. The show can be excellent when it transcends a tendency toward sentimentality.
Into the Universe With Stephen Hawking (Discovery, 8 p.m.) is a repeat too, but definitely worth catching. It's a two-part special (part two is at 9) with the famous physicist and author brooding on the possibility that aliens exist and if it's possible to travel through time. It's visually sumptuous and Hawking's computer-generated voice is strangely mesmerizing throughout.
Larry King Live (CNN, 9 p.m.) has President Barack Obama talking to Larry King about the latest updates regarding the gulf oil spill and other issues.
Check local listings.