‘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 SCTV: The Greatest Show You’ve Never Heard Of, whose new interviews feature surviving cast members.
- SCTV ran intermittently in Canada from 1976 to 1984, failed during its first two seasons, then built an audience, gained a larger budget and grew more sophisticated before eventually fizzling out.
- Second City’s Toronto outpost supplied SCTV’s core cast after Lorne Michaels recruited Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd and other performers for Saturday Night Live in 1975; the remaining troupe had little television experience.
- SCTV writers turned the show’s low budget toward character-based comedy, while a later Fantasy Island sketch layered parodies of Casablanca, Road to Morocco and The Wizard of Oz.
- Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis improvised two-minute Bob and Doug McKenzie pieces; the characters became breakout successes, recorded albums and made a film, and Thomas says their popularity was divisive and played a role in both men leaving.
- SCTV: The Greatest Show You’ve Never Heard Of omitted musical acts such as the Boomtown Rats and the Plasmatics along with later staff writers; Thomas said the show should have interviewed the people who wrote the series.
- John Candy became a Hollywood star after SCTV, while Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara later appeared in Best in Show and A Mighty Wind and starred together in Schitt’s Creek.
Why it matters: Netflix’s 134-episode addition gives viewers direct access to a series whose cheap-looking first two years freed writers for sophisticated character work and nested satire. Dave Thomas says the retrospective’s omissions also distort the creative record by excluding staff writers and musical acts, even as it celebrates the stars who emerged.
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