DVD: SCTV, Volume 2
Published December 18, 2004
I first stumbled onto SCTV while channel surfing late on a Sunday night during the Carter administration. Saturday Night Live was still going strong at the time, but this was SUNDAY night, so SCTV was a much needed comedy fix several hours before I had to begin yet another miserable work week at a job that was almost as much fun as walking barefoot on thumbtacks.
I quickly became a rabid SCTV fan, searching out the syndicated show as it moved from station to station and time-slot to time-slot. Over the years the show wound its way through syndication (in its 30-minute format) to eventually land, in a 90-minute format, in a late-night slot on Fridays at NBC. The show and its cast enjoyed enormous critical success, earning 13 Emmy nominations and winning two Emmys for writing. One hundred eighty-five of the original 30-minute shows were produced, and continue to run in syndication.
But the on-again, off-again availability of the show in syndication offered me no guarantee that I could get my SCTV fix. So I began taping any episode I could find as the show popped up on various cable networks. Of course, I taped them in Betamax format, which eventually meant starting from scratch to capture as many episodes as possible on VHS.
My stack of SCTV tapes includes one on which I captured an SCTV Christmas special, which consisted of several holiday-themed sketches, apparently pieced together from earlier bits. That tape gets trotted out every year when we set up the family Christmas tree. The audio-video quality of this aging tape has seen better days, and that's exactly why I was so excited to learn that SCTV would be available on DVD.
As with SCTV, Volume 1 - Network 90, the recently released SCTV, Volume 2 draws on the show's 90-minute format as repacked for NBC. The five-disk set includes nine episodes, including the SCTV Staff Christmas Party. This episode consists of several extended sketches, including Street Beef, which finds the late John Candy in his Johnny LaRue persona, drunk, dressed as Santa, trying to conduct man-on-the-street interviews. Also included is the Dusty Towne Christmas Special, featuring Catherine O'Hara as the raunchy dirty joke queen, and John Candy in an over the top impersonation of John Waters mainstay Divine.
The stuff is brilliant, of course, as is everything in this new collection. Watching the SCTV cast in action, it's little wonder that the surviving members continue to make significant contributions to the art of comedy. And the superb quality and clarity of the digitized programs beats the hell out of watching grainy, muffled, deteriorating video tapes.
A third volume of SCTV on DVD is due early in 2005. I've already cleared a spot on my shelf.
- DVD: SCTV, Volume 2
- Published: December 18, 2004
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- Section: Video
- Writer: Bob Rhubart
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I loved Strange Brew! And I agree completely with your assessment of the other programs/troupes. But one has to give special credit to the original SNL cast and writers, since their show was live, and did not have the advantage of after-the-fact editing or other enhancements to fine-tune a sketch. Indeed, the second-best SNL cast IMHO included Martin Short, Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, and Billy Crystal, and incorporated far more pre-taped skecthes than SNL seasons before or since.
Any conversation about modern TV sketch comedy must also include the Ben Stiller Show -- which I only recently learned is also available on DVD. Another sketch stand-out from about the same time, and also on Fox, was a show called The Edge. The cast included Julie Brown (and, if memory serves, Jennifer Aniston), and was produced by David Mirkin, who continues to produce The Simpsons. The writing staff of The Edge included a bunch of guys from the original Letterman show on NBC. Their sketches were bold, dangerous, and hysterically funny, but the show never got the necessary ratings and never returned after its inaugural season.
And now that I'm thinking about this stuff, I must also mention HBO's now defunct Mr. Show, with David Cross and former Stiller cast member Bob Odenkirk. Free of the restraints of network TV, Mr. Show ventured into some weird but consistently funny territory.
Lately, I think the Dave Chappell Show is very good.
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I've actually never seen The Ben Stiller Show or Mr. Show, but both are slowly making their way up my Netflix list.
Another strange cult show that I've neither seen nor heard from in years is MTV's The State, which was way out there in terms of experimentation. As might be expected, there were some colossal bombs in the mix, but there were also some of funniest/most memorable skits and characters I've ever seen in sketch comedy (the two lounge players sitting in $240 worth of pudding especially springs to mind... why $240 worth of pudding? Shhh.... baby, don't you worry about nothing like that... it ain't none of your concern...).
Okay, this thread is demanding that I do a lengthy investigation into the best sketch comedy shows of all time. I'll do a little research to see if anything like that has been done on Blog Critics as yet.
Eric Berlin
Dumpster Bust: Miracles from Mind Trash
http://dumpsterbust.blogspot.com
I am also very happy to see SCTV on DVD, but unfortunately, the series has been edited musically because of music clearance issues. I am attempting to create a group of people who will support my SCTV on DVD Campaign. For more information, please read my FAQ page on the campaign site.
Thanks,
Shawn
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I feel so fortunate, after reading your story and history with SCTV, that I had it so easy.
I discovered SCTV in the early 90s. The half-hour version was on every day on my college campus TV station, always, it seemed, in a break between my classes. Immediately I sensed the quality and talent afoot as I had been a fan of John Candy, Rick Moranis, and the film Strange Brew (a powerhouse of a low budget comedy).
Isn't it always great and special to find such a talented, strange, and wonderful group of entertainers working and experimenting with their craft? The only equivalent examples I can think of at present are the original cast of Saturday Night Live, Monty Python's Flying Circus, and another band of Canadian comedic fury: The Kids In the Hall.
Eric Berlin
Dumpster Bust: Miracles from Mind Trash
http://dumpsterbust.blogspot.com