MUM’S THE WORD: Remember when she romanced little Tom Hanks in Big? Ageless head-turner Elizabeth Perkins is playing Sarah Chalke’s mother in a new TV pilot, How To Live With Your Parents For The Rest Of Your Life. Who’s playing Dad? Brad Garrett. And John Dore is
ROSEANNE: pilot project
somewhere in the mix too … Lily Tomlin, so good last season as the malevolent matriarch in the hypnotic Glenn Close series Damages, is playing Reba McEntire’s mother in Reba’s new comedy pilot, Malibu Country … Marcia Gay Harden and Kevin Nealon are headlining Howard Busgang’s new pilot Isabel, inspired by the CBC Radio Canada series Le Monde De Charlotte … Matthew Perry plays a sportscaster in therapy in his new pilot, Go On. No word yet on who’s playing his mom … and the woman some folks would describe as the mother of them all, and I do mean the one and only Roseanne Barr, is taking another kick at the can with a weekly series, without TV daughter Sarah Chalke (she’s busy) but with TV hubby John Goodman already on board. Roseanne’s new pilot, Downwardly Mobile, is about a trailer park boss –guess who? — who serves as a surrogate mother to all her tenants. And the beat goes on.
FLIGHTS OF THE PINSENT: “Guests may never wash their arms again after rubbing elbows with Gordon Pinsent,” reported the Ottawa Citizen after Pinsent showed up at a benefit party to promote this summer’s Ottawa 
International Chamber Music Festival. Pinsent will make his Festival debut there on July 30 by narrating Ogden Nash poetry to Saint-Saens‘ Carnival of the Animals and Tennyson‘s Enoch Arden set to Strauss. He’ll also wing to Halifax next month to participate in April 15 events marking the 100th anniversary of the Titanic. In the meantime, his new CD collaboration with Greg Keelor of Blue Rodeo and Travis Good of The Sadies, Down And Out In Upalong, is scheduled to drop next week; his latest movie project, the 3D IMAX film Flight of the Butterflies, which he just finished shooting in Mexico last month, is currently set to premiere in September; and his new autobiography, Next, is due in stores on October 16. For the inside scoop on the Upalong album, click here. And if you’re in Toronto on April 12, stop by The Drake Hotel and see Good, Keelor & Pinsent showcase their new CD in person. So don’t say I didn’t warn ya!
DICKINSON: big decision-maker
GRAND FINALES: If it’s April it must be Season Finale week on CBC Television. Tonight Gerry Dee wraps up the first season of his freshman comedy Mr. D. with Jonathan Torrens and Bette MacDonald, followed by the much-anticipated very last episode of Little Mosque On The Prairie with Zaib Shaikh and Sheila McCarthy. (I believe Little Mosque is the only Canadian sitcom to be inducted into the Museums of Radio and Television Science in both New York and Los Angeles, and last week’s episode, by the way, was a real church-burner — literally!) Also saying sayonara is Big Decision, which wraps up its four-show test-drive tonight too, with Arlene Dickinson on deck as the decision-maker. And tomorrow night we’ll see the season closers of Rick
MR. D & Mr. M: on CBC's Season Finales
Mercer Report and 22 Minutes. Also calling it a season this week: Dragons’ Den, now this country’s top-rated home-grown entertainment show; Republic Of Doyle, coming off its best season yet; Marketplace, which attracted a hefty new audience this season; and the fifth estate, which after 36 noteworthy seasons saw some of its largest audience numbers in more than a decade. Hey, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Somebody must be doing something right.
TOMORROW: Watch for the Glenn Gould Foundation to announce the details of a Gala evening celebrating the ninth Glenn Gould Prize laureate Leonard Cohen. A stellar line-up of musical stars and honourary speakers will take to the stage to salute Cohen’s lifetime achievements in music and poetry. Stay tuned.
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By George 