New Reality Show May Feature Jackman, Maine

I admit it , I like MOST reality TV. This has my attention.  A reality show in Jackman, Maine and it would be kinda, sorta based on “Northern Exposure”.  Remember that show?  It was a TV show about life in a small remote community in Alaska.

According to the KJ, the company looking at Jackman, is Cineflix. OH and they do programs that are cool. They produce "American Pickers" on the History Channel, "Property Brothers" on HGTV. It also produces other shows that run on Oxygen, TLC and Animal Planet. So this could be a respectable look at small town life in a remote part of Maine.  The will be back in Jackman in April to shoot some things for the pilot to see it is a go!

Let’s face it, sometimes when Maine is in a TV show, reality or faction, we can look a little “off”.  I watched one of Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” was in Maine. As a Mainer, I was kind of embarrassed as to how it was handled. Andrew Zimmern’s “Bizarre Foods” did a show in Maine as well. He Dad lives in Portland. Part of the show did highlight the good, but there was some weird parts about foraging for foods in the forest and eating beavers. There is “North Wood Law” about the Maine Wardens Service. I have seen a little of it and this does look like a GOOD show!

Maine was also the setting for "Murder in Small Town X". It was a reality type solve the mystery set in Eastport. In a very odd twist, the winner was a New York City fireman, Ángel Juarbe Jr. He died a week after the last show aired in the collapse of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.

Then we get into Maine as a setting for fiction stories. Some of it is OK. For example, Maine is the setting for “Haven” on Syfy. (Oh not only do they do an OK of being respectful to Maine, but the little shout outs to other Stephen King works is kind of cute.) An all the other Kings works that Maine is the basis for his settings. Maine is the setting for “Dark Shadows”.  Let me not forget that in “M*A*S*H” Hawkeye was from a small town in Maine.

But the winner, reality or fiction, for making Maine look crazy is “Murder She Wrote”. Really that just  made Maine look ridiculous. The bad accents and the fact that so many people were just getting killed in “Cabot Cove”, it was just sad, sad, sad!