SCTV

“…Thursday at 9!”

 I suppose this entry could be called “Canadian TV”, although it only concerns one particular variety thereof.  I mentioned earlier that American TV and movies are the only ones in the world with any reasonable expectation of being exported to foreign markets.  The TV industries of most other countries, even England and its BBC, are primary inwardly-oriented with little pretense of appealing to foreigners as a broad category (leaving aside foreigners with some particular preference, e.g. married to a Brazilian so you watch TV Globo novellas). 

 I’ll also leave aside Canadian TV actors: Michael J. Fox and William Shatner being the big two.

 So SCTV is arguably Canada’s most important TV export.  It ran from 1976 to 1984, for six seasons, and was eventually picked up by NBC.  It pretended to be an independent network.  Some of the “sketches” (which I found the weakest) were intra-studio politics between Johnny LaRue (Candy), Guy Cabellero (Flaherty) and others.  If you watch closely, you’ll notice that practically every preview for a show promises the show’s airtime to be… Thursday at 9 p.m.

 Cast: John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Andrea Martin, Dave Thomas, Rick Moranis, Tony Rosato, Robin Duke, Harold Ramis, and Martin Short.  These names probably sound familiar!

 I liked Mel’s Rock Pile, featuring Levy as a hilariously unhip music show host (similar to his dad role in the “American Pie” films) – and the Russian TV spoof.
 Another survivor: Martin Short’s Ed Grimley character made the transition to Saturday Night Live.  Tony Rosato and Robin Duke also went on to SNL. 

 They sometimes parodied Hollywood types, with O’Hara as Lola Heatherton, Flaherty as Sammy Maudlin, and Levy as Bobby Bittman.  I thought these were just as weak as the intra-network dramas.  The impressions were the best: Dave Thomas as Lee Iacocca and Bob Hope, Andrea Martin as Barbra Streisand, Rick Moranis as Dave Cavett, Merv Griffin, or Woody Allen (surely his talents were wasted in the “Honey I Shrunk…” movies), Joe Flaherty as Gregory Peck (in “Taxi Driver”: Are you talking to me?).   Despite the low-budget look – which was all part of the charm and fun – the cast was incredibly talented and the writing was quality, in fact competitive with SNL.

 By far the most famous “skits” which survived were the Bob & Doug McKenzie “Great White North” segments, which even resulted in a full movie, “Strange Brew”.  Bob (Rick Moranis) and Doug (Dave Thomas) sat on a couch drinking Molson and generally acting stupid.  They had their own Canadian equivalent of Valley Girl slang, mainly to end sentences with “eh”, greet each other with “Good day”, and accuse each other being “hosers”.   The funny thing about this was that at the time (early 80s) we were going to high school in Paris, and several of our best friends were Canadian (all from Ottawa).   They did not talk like this, but they did find B&DM to be amusing anyway…so long as we didn’t let on that we thought these were typical Canadians (…eh).  Geddy Lee ended up helping them do “Take Off”. These skits were due to Canadian TV regs requiring “Canadian” programming.  Aside from Mounties and lumberjacks, what more could they do?  Well, they also parodied Canadian TV with such items as Monday Night Curling and Magnum P.E.I. (Prince Edward Island).