Sexy cowgirls! Oil! Land! Money! Wild Roses is all about Alberta. Can you tell?

When you hear CBC-TV is airing a new drama set in Calgary, you hope it’s a good show. The Ceeb describes Wild Roses as a “Shakespearean” story about two families that clash over “land, love and loyalty.” That description makes you a tad suspicious. Then you see the full-page newspaper advertisement for the show: “Oil. Greed. Betrayal. Lust. Welcome to the new west.” And you think: uh oh. This is going to be bad.

The premiere episode begins in a Calgary bar with Lucy Henry (Sarah Power), a local musician, riding a mechanical bull. Because, you know, that’s pretty common here. Soon she’s off to Rivercross, the ranch her family inherited from a neighbour back in the day. Trouble comes when David McGregor (Gary Hudson), the greedy oilman who lives next door, decides to take back Rivercross after Lucy’s recently widowed mother, Maggie (Kim Huffman), tells him she’s not interested in hooking up. He quietly flips out over the rejection and battle lines are drawn: the Henrys are going to fight the heartless bastard for Rivercross. And there’s gonna be lots of sex throughout.

In the first episode, you meet exactly who you’d expect to meet in a CBC drama set in Alberta: the asshole oilman who cares only about oil and power; his spoiled, petulant daughter who randomly makes love to some guy outside a barn while her fiancé is asleep; a curmudgeonly old lawyer who, at a party, gratuitously spouts off about how much he hates Indians. There’s even a scene in which a car full of Calgarians, including Lucy, belt out “Home on the Range” as they rip across the prairies. That’s another thing folks around here do, I guess.

I want to find out what local folks think about the show, so two days after the première, I slip into Caffe Beano, buy an apple cider and start accosting customers and staff. “Have you heard of a CBC-TV show called Wild Roses?”

“I don’t think so.”

“That’s a radio show, right?”

“Sounds interesting. I’ll have to check it out.”

“What’s it called?”

A few people have heard of it, but nobody has actually seen it. Finally, I meet Paul, a kindly construction worker. Paul is aware of the show, but he got scared off by the promo commercials. Wild Roses looks like “dreck,” he says. “There are a lot better stories about Alberta than a story about a bunch of rich people fucking over oil money.” Paul concedes that he might watch an episode “just for kicks,” but he’s not hopeful. “Is this all we have to offer? Come on.”

Then something amazing happens. I find someone who actually watched the episode. Let’s call him Tom. (He wouldn’t give me his real name.) When I ask Tom what he thought of Wild Roses, he just shakes his head, unimpressed. “Kind of embarrassing,” he says of the show. “I was just kind of put off by the way the producers obviously feel about Alberta. I didn’t think it was a fair depiction…. Is that what they really think we do out here?” Our friend Tom clearly hasn’t ridden a mechanical bull lately. He doesn’t look like the “Home on the Range” type, either.

Will you keep watching, Tom? “No.” By now, he’s losing it. “There are so many stories that haven’t been done before, stories that might illuminate this part of the world in a new way rather than retreading old clichés. And I’m a CBC fan, generally. I believe in public broadcasting.”

Here’s the thing: Tom’s absolutely right. The show isn’t illuminating at all (judging by the first episode). The writers obviously wanted to tell an Albertan story, but as the ads suggest, there’s no substance or depth to it. Far from challenging stereotypes about Albertans, Wild Roses reinforces them. Even Toronto-based TV critic John Doyle picked up on the show’s empty portrayal of Alberta, writing in The Globe & Mail: “It has all the hallmarks of a show cooked up in a boardroom in Toronna, a couple of years ago, when Calgary was bursting at the seams with oil money and it seemed like a sexy setting for a drama.” Utter hokum, he calls it.

He’s right about that. He was wrong about something, else, though. Doyle thought “everybody” in town would watch the show. Nope. I randomly surveyed a total of 25 people. Of those, 11 people had heard of the show. Of the 25, only one person — Tom — had actually seen it. And we all know what Tom thought.

Since he’s the only guy I could find who watched the show, he gets the last word: “To be fair, maybe it gets better.” Here’s hoping.