A new year, then. Some things change. Some don't. Global still airing cheesy TV movies on Saturday nights, about damsels in distress. This week it's In Her Mother's Footsteps (Saturday, 8 p.m.) with Emma Caulfield (Anya on Buffy The Vampire Slayer ) as Kate, who sees images of young women being murdered in the house she inherits from dad. Haunted? We think not! PBS plows along with cozy English period-piece drama. There's a ton of NFL football and NHL hockey and the wives on Desperate Housewives get ever more goofy and neurotic. Oh and there's a new Canadian drama, a medical one with both literary buzz and blood. And there are sweet birds of delight. That's the weekend menu: Pinafores, pints of blood and pretty things.
Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures
Sunday, HBO Canada, 8 p.m.
I wish I could tell you that this new series, based on Vincent Lam's Giller Prize-winning book of the same name, is brilliant. It isn't. It's no disaster but it looks and feels slight, attenuated. Adapted by Jason Sherman and made by Shaftesbury Films, it has the weakness that besets so many Shaftesbury production - it's anti-septic and doesn't seem to be set in anything approaching an authentic reality. Still, many of those who read the bestselling book will be curious to see it and it's not entirely lacking in sophistication. We meet Fitz (Shawn Ashmore, from the X-Men movies) and Chen (Byron Mann), the two young, male doctors who have had a relationship with Ming (Mayko Nguyen), who is also a doctor. Fitz is the free spirit, but considers returning to work in the hospital where both Chen and Ming work. Chen is all surface competence but hiding emotional turmoil. Ming wants to have a baby by artificial insemination. There is much room for raw anger, ardor and despair, but for all that's going on here, it has no oomph, no punch.
Return to Cranford
Sunday, PBS, 9 p.m. on Masterpiece Classic
This sequel to the hugely popular Cranford , a BBC production, has some of the charm of the original but makes the mistake of going a tad too far with the cutes. We're back in the English town of Cranford in the 1840s, and the drama, such as it is, focuses on small lapses in manners or outright silliness. The main characters are middle-aged or elderly women and they make the rules in a world that is changing while Cranford tries to remain the same. The first piece of dialogue we hear is, "We must make haste and change our caps. Calling hours have commenced." The speaker is Miss Matty (Judi Dench) and she's talking to a baby. The baby's mother is "a scullery maid." Soon after Matty is approached on the street by Miss Pole (Imelda Staunton) who declares, "I find myself charged with vile and pressing news!" Apparently some "navvies", men working on the looming railway line through Cranford, have been spotted in a local pub. There's the nub of it - the fear and ignorance of the outside world. There is much to admire here, especially if you're a connoisseur of English period drama, but there is an over-abundance of bonnets and babble about the coarseness of places other than Cranford.
Hummingbirds: Magic in the Air
Sunday, PBS, 8 p.m. on Nature
Don't know about you, but the arrival of a hummingbird in the garden is a magical, hushed event. This lovely and quietly educational program tells us a lot and uses stunning new footage to do it. We meet scientists who are in awe of the birds, the smallest warm-blooded creatures on the planet, but also among the fastest. We see all the exquisite moves and precision of the bird, close-up and in slow-motion. We're told, "Hummingbird metabolisms are set in permanent overdrive, requiring them to consume more than half their body weight in nectar every day, yet even so, they remain in constant threat of starving to death as they sleep. To survive the night, they fluff up their feathers and adjust their thermostats, decreasing their body temperatures by half and reducing their heart rate from 600 beats per minute to a mere 36." So, like, it's not just that they are stunningly beautiful to watch but are also amazingly adept and strong. A lot of what hummingbirds do has essentially been unknowable to humans but current technology allows us to see and understand more. And, really, you haven't lived until you've seen their extraordinary mating rituals.
Check local listings.