Sign of Spring #7: TV critics tell us about all the great shows we haven’t been watching—right in time for the season finales

As the TV season begins its long hiatus for the summer, two perennial species of story start to pop up in our newspapers and magazines: stories about shows that will come back in the fall, and stories about shows that have been on all season and that we should have been watching instead of Googling funny videos of tigers, Charlie Sheen and Stephen Colbert. Today’s Globe and Mail doesn’t disappoint, with John Doyle writing about the CBC show Republic of Doyle in a way that manages a) not to sound like some cross-media nepotism, and b) to conceal the astonishment that any CBC prime time show could be described as a “hit.” We were surprised to learn from the write-up that the Republic of Doyle finale airs tonight at 9 p.m., and apparently we should have been watching it for the last two years instead of breezing past its subway posters while listening to NPR podcasts. (Sorry, Ceeb. I think it’s time we saw other public broadcasters.)

• It’s our Republic – and we like it [Globe and Mail]