The Listener is Not All "Aww Shucks We're Canadian". Thank Freakin' Goodness. (New Series, Supernatural, CDN, CTV/NBC)

For once, we have a Canadian supernatural show that doesn't look like CTV scrounged under the sofa cushions for a budget. The Americans even like it! NBC has picked up The Listener for their spring lineup.

If you liked Roswell, Buffy/Angel, Kyle XY and Dark Angel, you'll like The Listener.

It's about a paramedic from Toronto (although they play refreshingly coy about the setting) who can hear people's thoughts, à la Sookie Stackhouse. But this show is more like Medium (soft police procedural), and Kyle XY (soft sci-fi/YA). It's all about a young man trying to figure out how his special gift works while helping others, placing this show firmly outside the horror genre and separating it in tone, structure and subject from True Blood.

The Listener is an interesting mix of bilsdungroman, scooby doo'ing, and ESP, especially since I haven't seen Canadians do YA without trying to be all after school special meets Degrassi High. There is a pleasant lack of the irritating moral lessons lodged into most Canadian shows like an axe into a corpse. The Listener is just straight up drama-lite, attractively shot with bright colours and warm lighting. There is no Vancouver look here! Plus, did I mention Colm Feore plays his mentor?

Of course, our hero Toby Logan (no, not Colm Feore) also has a mysterious and tortured past and doesn't know much about where his powers came from, but he is going to use his powers to help the people he encounters as a paramedic. The show creators aren't pushing the boundaries of this type of story at all, but I'm just happy that CTV has done a good job of doing a straight up eye-candy-does-supernatural show. Also positive is that the lead is not a private detective, journalist, cop or boy genius.

I didn't know anything about The Listener when I started watching. I didn't even know it was Canadian until, of course, the lead said "eh" and the lead and sidekick took a break from their paramedic duties to go for a double-double (is there a hospital in Canada that doesn't have a Timmy Ho's?). So that part was a bit obvs., but you'd never guess this was Canadian from the production values, or more importantly, the casting.

This is a show with a early-twenty-something lead, Craig Olejnik, who has quirky, arty-boy good looks. My beef with most Canadian shows is that most of the male actors look like they're from small-town Ontario and have played amateur hockey since they were three. It's a perfectly fine look, but it's always the same look for every show. All you Canadians know what I'm talking about. My only other beef is that the CTV website has very little information about this show, so you'll have to troll for local listings.

I'm definitely adding this show to my regular watching lineup.