SCTV: The Greatest Show You’ve Never Heard Of
(USA, 88 min.)
Dir. Jason Hehir
Prod. Chapman Downes
Ignore the patronizing title and get ready to laugh. SCTV: The Greatest Show You’ve Never Hear Of charts the amiable history of the Canadian sketch comedy show that launched enduring talents. This long-gestating Netflix documentary picks up the thread left by Martin Scorsese’s abandoned doc about the comics that was shot in 2018 with Jimmy Kimmel coming in to save the day as executive producer with Jason Hehir (The Last Dance) replacing Scorsese. The film resonates with a fan’s perspective. It credits the rambunctious cast, which included John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Rick Moranis, Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short, Dave Thomas, and American Harold Ramis during its short but significant run. The film affectionately illustrates how Canadian talents made their mark with modest resources by creating specific humour with universal appear.
The film reassembles the surviving members of the gang to reflect upon the show’s legacy. Shot before O’Hara’s death earlier this year, it’s another welcome record of Canada’s artistic greats. This jaunt down memory lane gets the gang together. They watch SCTV sketches while sitting on a couch and enjoying some glasses of wine. Having so many comics and lifelong friends in the same room ensures that the commentary flies quickly and wittily. Even the straightforward interviews have a signature SCTV comedic beat.
The perspectives illuminate how the show that began in 1976 cobbled comedic greatness together. The doc doesn’t settle the age-old dispute about who had the flash of genius to create the show, but SCTV’s surviving developer Andrew Alexander implicitly receives a nod for holding it together. (The show’s other developer, Bernard Sahlins, passed in 2013.)
The stories about stretching the sketch comedy bits on a budget of $7000 per episode illustrate the shrewd adaptability of artistic talents in these early days of Canadian broadcasting. The SCTV gang shares how, recognizing the shoestring budget, they made the cheapness of the production part of the design. Cue some fun stories about setting the sketches in the studio of some fictional Podunk town of Melonville where ambitions don’t jive with regional broadcasting resources. Wires run throughout the sets and the cheapness of the production design, costumes, and makeup are part of the charm. The gang’s sincerity, rooted in their musical theatre and live stage chops, sells it naturally.
There are great laughs to be had observing the go-for-broke humour of SCTV evolve. The gang reminisces about their individual journeys learning the fine art of imitation. O’Hara’s Katharine Hepburn sketches stand as a hallmark of the show, while Levy’s Gene Shalit numbers might especially delight a critic.
Comics like Kathryn Hahn, Conan O’Brien, and Bill Hader remember taking notice of the show and illuminate its influence. Tom Hanks, meanwhile, shares his love for SCTV and talks about recording the show in the early VHS days and bringing tapes to study with colleagues on the set of Bosom Buddies. The talking heads credit the show for making its mark in Saturday Night Live’s shadow. While SNL had more influence by generating “stars,” SCTV raised the bar by elevating comedy as an art form.
Moreover, the stories from all parties contextualize the massive effort entailed in giving a Canadian show such reach. Even while the national and international audiences grew, the gang remembers how SCTV struggled. There are stories about relocating to Edmonton when a billionaire fan put up the cash to make it survive. Meanwhile, participants like Levy and Thomas admit that stop-start production strained their enthusiasm to continue.
Similarly, the film looks at SCTV’s tango with cultural distinctiveness as a Canadian counterpart to SNL on public broadcasting. Fond memories and lingering tensions arise as Moranis and Thomas remember begrudgingly creating beer-guzzling hockey hosers Bob and Doug McKenzie to appease a request by CBC brass to include more discernible “Canadian content.” It’s funny to learn how much of these bits resulted purely from ad-libbed airtime filler.
But the documentary reminds audiences how these seemingly throwaway characters captured something in the cultural pulse. It tells how Canadians recognized their friends and neighbours in the cussing duo. Meanwhile, the few nuggets of tension in the SCTV gang arise as participants admit the strain of creative differences and the gaps in pay that resulted from these beloved characters. As an oral history of the formative show, this documentary provides a thoroughly entertaining chronicle. It captures the challenges of making Canadian entertainment in America’s shadow.
Passing hands to Hehir, though, this SCTV story carries a tangibly American lens. Pretty much all the interviewees outside the SCTV gang are outsider perspectives. There’s nobody but the cast to shed light on the show’s impact on Canadian viewers. There’s an overriding sense that the benchmark for Canadian success depends upon a show’s popularity in the States. The doc doesn’t really credit how much the SCTV talents gave back to the local scene when many entertainers go south without looking back.
Moreover, the passage of time between Scorsese’s first shoot and this doc’s release marks several celebrations of the SCTV crew. There’s no less than three documentaries about the gang that were released over the past year. Many of the stories from John Candy: I Like Me, You Had to Be There, and Marty: Life Is Short echo throughout this documentary. (Four, if one counts the Toronto-comedy-adjacent Lorne Michaels doc.) Quite a few sketches get an encore among the appraisals throughout the docs, but the magic of SCTV is that these bits inspire a laugh whether one encounters them anew or revisits them for the umpteenth time.
Many of the same players appear and share how Toronto was a mine for comedic gold. Even if the stories about the legendary 1972 Godspell production are familiar, and the tales of this ragtag crew coming together under the SCTV banner just as Saturday Night Live was flooding airwaves from down south, there are few better ways to spend an afternoon than with these comedy greats.
But perhaps that’s the charm that this documentary provides alongside its contemporaries. Andrea Martin notes in an interview that her greatest pride in the show is the enduring bond with the gang. They’re still friends decades later. Audiences likely feel the same. Having grown up with these funny folks as constant fixtures in TV shows and movies, they’re our friends, too. That resonates as a very Canadian marker for success.
