One day before its fall preview, CBC announced its plans for summer, putting Sturla Gunnarsson’s latest on the schedule alongside Shakespeare, the Von Trapp family and Nelson Mandela.

Reality star search How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? will run Sundays at 8 p.m., starting June 15. The series will, after seven weeks, send one of 48 hopefuls on to star as Maria von Trapp in a new stage production of The Sound of Music, and is produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber, David Ian and David Mirvish.

The Maria debut will lead into Othello, a two-hour adaptation of the play by William Shakespeare. It stars Carlo Rota (Little Mosque on the Prairie), with Christine Horne (The Stone Angel) as Desdemona, Graham Abbey (The Border) as Cassio and Matthew Deslippe (Across the River to Motor City) as Iago. It was adapted by Matthew Edison (A Nero Wolfe Mystery) and Zaib Shaikh (Little Mosque on the Prairie), who also directs.

The nine-episode Mitsubishi City Chase will premiere Monday, June 30 at 8:30 pm. Filmed during obstacle course/scavenger hunt events in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal, the series will feature each city in two half-hour episodes, and will conclude with a one-hour finale.

Promising specials on CBC’s summer schedule will likely draw some eyeballs with the star power of Nelson Mandela, Will Smith and Coldplay.

The Ceeb is the exclusive Canuck broadcaster of the June 27 concert in honor of Mandela’s 90th birthday, which will be hosted by Smith. It will rerun the following Saturday on both the main network and its digi-channel, bold. The event will also be broadcast on cbc.ca and CBC Radio.

In sports, the pubcaster is pushing its coverage of the Beijing Olympics. Live coverage kicks off Aug. 6 with a preliminary soccer match between Canada and Argentina. The opening ceremony will air Aug. 8 at 7 a.m. ET, hosted by Ron MacLean, Ian Hanomansing, Scott Russell and Diana Swain in Beijing.

The Ceeb is also airing coverage of the 10-day Calgary Stampede starting July 4. The coverage includes more than 90 hours of coverage on CBC, cbcsports.ca and bold — its most extensive coverage ever for the 96-year-old event.

Documentaries airing this summer include Air India 182, Sturla Gunnarsson’s provocative take on the 1985 bombing, on June 22; The Nature of Things‘ four-part Antarctic Mission, and the six-parter Wild China.

From Media in Canada