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Friday, July 8, 2011
Save Endgame Canadian TV Series with chess champ as detective
Chess blog for latest chess news and chess trivia (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2011
Hello everyone,
Have you signed the petition in support of Endgame yet? Remember the Canadian television series with the character of Arkady Balagan - the crime-solving chessmaster? Endgame was not renewed for a second season even though it had impressed television critics and garnered a broad international audience. A campaign is afoot to save the series. Have you signed it?
The series can be viwed online via Hulu or on YouTube at this link. The campaign to save Endgame can be found at www.saveendgame.com. The petition has over 5000 signatures and Endgame has fans all over the world. Here is the part one from the first episode and you can see more.
Online petition to save the world chess champion's television show!
Chess blog for latest chess news and chess trivia (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2011
Hi everybody,
Okay, okay, don't be mad at us if you find the headline misleading. Nevertheless we just wonder aren't there enough people watching a detective show with a world chess champion?
Fans of the TV show, Endgame, which stars Patrick Gallagher, have gone online to petition to save the television show Endgame which Endgame started its 13-episode run in the spring but earlier this month its network, Showcase, announced it was not renewing the show.
A couple of fans immediately set up an online petition, as well as a page on Facebook, to get Showcase to change its mind.
Within two days they had more than 700 signatures and shortly after hit the 1,000 mark for the petition, which is at http://petol.org/endgame1. They have also set up an official site at www.saveendgame.com.
"I would have to encourage people who are on Facebook to not only sign the petition, but to also come to the page and become active," says Nikhi Cormier, who helped start the campaign. "Saving Endgame is completely doable, but we, the fans all have to stand together and speak up."
Endgame is set in a ritzy Vancouver hotel where something always goes wrong: murder, burglaries from the safe, hostage-taking. World chess champion Arkady Balagan (played by veteran actor Shawn Doyle) is a hotel resident who turns each mystery into a game. He is the only one capable of cracking the code, and he's always several moves ahead of the hotel's slow-on-the-draw security chief Hugo Lum, played by Gallagher.
"A chess player turned gumshoe? It's hard not to approach Endgame without a dollop of scepticism. The good news is that the series does not dwell on the chess bit," Scott Stinson wrote in The National Post. "Balagan doesn't apply chess gambits to his cases, but he does apply smarts."
The fans say ratings within Canada do not tell the whole story. In the case of Endgame, it has attracted viewers from far away, even though the show is not broadcast on regular TV channels and fans have to find other means to watch, such as streaming online video.
"The viewership of the show is worldwide. Some viewers go through extreme trouble to find a way to watch an episode outside of Canada," says Sabrina Thomas, Cormier's partner in the campaign.
For his part, Gallagher is gratified by the fans' support. "What amazes me is how many people from Europe, the U.S., South America and all over the world are writing in. We didn't even air outside Canada. We were very proud of it," he said.
Well, the show is premiering this Monday and there are previews aplenty on the Internet. So, how could we miss a little info too! We found a nice one here.
Endgame, which premieres Monday at midnight on Showcase TV, follows the adventures of a chess grandmaster who uses his superior analytical skills to solve crimes that leave average-brained cops befuddled. His seemingly infallible genius is offset by the fact he's deeply agoraphobic - afraid of public places, and as a consequence unable to leave the downtown Vancouver hotel he calls home - and therefore must count on others to do his investigative legwork.
Watch the preview video:
Shawn Doyle (The Eleventh Hour, Big Love) stars as Arkady Balagan, a Russian-born former world chess champion who developed his debilitating agoraphobia after witnessing the murder of his fiancée outside the hotel that is now both his residence and his prison.
He fills his days drinking and playing exhibition chess matches, but his inability to travel has put a serious crimp in his finances and he's on the verge of being evicted from his luxury suite. After overhearing his favourite bartender talking to a distraught friend about a missing child, Balagan offers a theory that the cops haven't considered, which turns out to be correct and leads to the rescue of the young boy.
But in order to prove that his hunch is well founded, Balagan must enlist the help of an aspiring chess master, Sam (Torrance Coombs), bartender Danni (Katharine Isabelle) and a hotel housekeeper named Alcina (Carmen Aguirre) who's the only one he trusts to clean his suite. Along with hotel security chief Hugo (Patrick Gallagher), who loathes the Russian for his arrogance but has a grudging respect for his intelligence, Balagan's loose-knit team of at-first-unwilling amateur detectives demonstrates a surprising knack for finding the people and clues that validate the chess master's moves.
The show gets a bit too gimmicky at times -- Balagan's imagined crime-related scenarios are acted out in soft-focused sequences that include talking chess pieces and conversations with victims and villains. But there's something sufficiently compelling about Endgame's central character that makes this show worth tuning in at least a time or two. The producers have opened with a genuinely original notion. The next move is yours.
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12th Women's World Chess Champion
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