For many years, “sketch” was a word that would get you thrown out of a TV network’s boardroom.
Broadcasters in English Canada, hungry for ratings, just weren’t interested in what they saw as yesterday’s genre. Instead, the search was on for the next Corner Gas. The show was proof, it was thought, that Canadians wanted nothing more than a good sitcom.
Canadian networks commissioned several sitcoms, including a couple of old-fashioned, four-camera studio audience comedies. While a few survived (a deal with Rogers brings Mr. D back to CBC for a fourth season starting Jan. 20 and Spun Out returns to CTV in March), none broke through as hits.
So it was back to the drawing board.
What has Canada always been good at, besides hockey? Sketch comedy. This is, after all, the nation of Wayne and Shuster, the Royal Canadian Air Farce, the Kids in the Hall, This Hour Has 22 Minutes and SCTV.
Suddenly, sketch-inspired comedy is in again and some of the main players from those glory days are leading the way.
SCTV hall of famers Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara star in Schitt’s Creek. The crudely-titled comedy also features Levy’s son Daniel. It premieres Jan. 13 on CBC.
Bruce McCulloch is behind Young Drunk Punk, an Alberta-based sitcom about his post-high school years before he joined the Kids in the Hall. It launches Jan. 21 on City.
Those are shows where Canadian sketch veterans are tackling a sitcom format — much as Andrea Martin, with Working the Engels, and Dave Foley, with Spun Out, attempted in the past year or so.
A couple of other new shows are more of a sketch-sitcom hybrid: Man Seeking Woman (premiering Jan. 14 on FXX Canada) stars Jay Baruchel as a hapless nerd in his late twenties trying desperately to meet the girl of his dreams. Scripted, and based on the short stories of former SNL scribe Simon Rich, there is nevertheless a fanciful sketchy-surreal element to this Toronto-based series.
The new series which really pushes sketch into sitcom is Sunnyside, which premieres Thursday on City. It’s created by writer/comedians Dan Redican and Gary Pearson. Both had been finding sketch comedy was a tough sell to networks. Each had a pitch in to City when Rogers’ director of original programming, Nataline Rodrigues, suggested they team up. Sunnyside is the result.
The first six episodes of the series were shot last fall in Winnipeg, suddenly a busy Canadian TV and film production hub thanks to the nation’s most aggressive provincial tax credits. An advance order for seven more episodes will send Sunnyside back to Winnipeg this spring.
