‘It really was the idiots in charge’: inside the TV sketch show that launched a generation of stars — SkimNews
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- Netflix added 134 episodes of SCTV to coincide with the release of a new documentary, SCTV: The Greatest Show You've Never Heard Of, which features new interviews with surviving cast members including Dave Thomas.
- Dave Thomas called the documentary's title 'kind of insulting' and said it skips the musical acts who performed and appeared in sketches, including the Boomtown Rats and the Plasmatics, plus the talented staff writers who joined later — while narrators Tom Hanks and Bob Odenkirk told the story of how the show was written.
- SCTV ran intermittently in Canada from 1976 to 1984, with its cast writing and starring; Thomas says the first two seasons were a failure and that the show's cheap look became its premise — a rundown TV station in the fictional rural town of Melonville.
- Rick Moranis and Thomas improvised two-minute pieces featuring dim-witted, beer-swilling, hockey-watching Canucks Bob and Doug McKenzie after being asked for more specifically Canadian content; the characters became a breakout success with albums and a film, and Thomas says their popularity sowed division behind his and Moranis's departures.
- Lorne Michaels had already raided Chicago's Second City improv troupe to build Saturday Night Live in 1975, taking Gilda Radner and Dan Aykroyd, leaving the remaining Toronto cast to make a Canadian sketch show while knowing little about television.
- SCTV's growing budget brought outside interference, with an NBC producer sent north reduced to tears in the cafeteria after the cast stonewalled him; network moves, time-slot changes and cast turnover followed until the show fizzled out in 1984.
- John Candy became a Hollywood star, Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara starred in Christopher Guest's comedies and Schitt's Creek, Rick Moranis starred in Ghostbusters alongside Harold Ramis, and Thomas wrote Spies Like Us with Dan Aykroyd.
Why it matters: Netflix's 134-episode restoration puts a 1976–1984 Canadian landmark in front of a new audience, but Thomas's objections locate the trade-off: the documentary credits Tom Hanks and Bob Odenkirk with the writing story while skipping the Boomtown Rats, the Plasmatics and the staff writers he says carried SCTV's multilayered edge.
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