I Just Read About That…

Beloved Canadians The Kids in the Hall who were hilarious for five years on their skit show (and who ended their reign while still being very funny) have returned to TV after a sixteen year hiatus (not including their underrated movie Brain Candy and their awesome live tours, naturally).

I was beside myself with excitement when I found out about this show (and I’m rather vexed that I didn’t hear about it until it showed up on IFC recently.  Although I suppose if I had known about it sooner, there’s no way I could have watched it anyhow).   I was also kind of surprised at how little I knew about the show before it started.  How many episodes were there for instance?

So, the details (now that the show has finished its run on IFC, with repeats to come, no doubt): It is an 8 episode mini-series.  All of the Kids are in the show, and they each play multiple roles (although the opening credits and promo stuff suggest that they each play one character).  They play:

Bruce:  Mayor Bowman, “Big City” Lawyer (one of my favorites on the show), and Ricky (an obese man).
Dave: Mrs Bowman, Levon Blanchard (news producer), Dr Porterhouse (The town abortionist), and a wonderfully ambiguously accented, where-the-hell-is-she-from? nurse (my favorite minor character by far).
Kevin: Marnie (a forgetful, middle aged woman), Shaye (the news teams’ sound guy and hipster) and Sam Murray (depressed cat loving DA).
Scott: Crim Hollingsworth (1/16th Native and a great performance by Scott), Heather Weather (the TV weather woman), and Dusty Diamond (town coroner).
Mark: Corrinda Gablechuck (anchorwoman), The Judge, and the titular Death.
Bruce & Mark also play cops, like in the old series.

There are also other actors in the series, and (according to post show interviews) a lot of the locals from Shuckton, Ontario (which is really North Bay) were used as extras.

I admit that I was a little disappointed in the first episode. After the non-stop hilarity of the skit show, this one took some time to get going.  Exposition is a bitch.  But there’s enough humor (the opening with Bruce’s CGI bid for the 2028 Olympics, Death’s arrival on a kids’ bicycle (with a motor), and Dave as the drunken mayor’s wife) to keep the show interesting.

Once the exposition is out of the way though, the story is just fantastic and very funny.

The story is a sort of straightforward murder mystery.  The Mayor is killed by an unknown person.  The police quickly find a suspect in the local ne’er-do-well (Crim), and crazy police and citizen behavior ensues.  But the police are the only ones who think Crim really did it and when various citizens try to figure out the guilty party, just about everyone becomes a suspect.

The show skewers the oddities of small town life (Death, after all, takes up residence in the local Motel, everyone loves the town abortionist).  And also there’s some fun with the local media (the promos are awesome, and who doesn’t love Heather Weather!).  But mostly the show attacks abuses of justice and over-zealous trials (the trial (and Bruce’s big city lawyer) become an outstanding spectacle.  And when the town decides to become the only city in Canada to “offer” executions, the mayor tries to cash in and use it as a massive, especially when they decide to use it as a revenue-maker for Skuckton).

There’s tons of twisted Kids-stuff in here.  But what really stood out for me was how well jokes that seem designed just to shock or offend actually pay off (the town abortionist isn’t just a shocking joke–he actually figures in the plot).  And, of course, anything with Death can be played with lots of twisted humor (and Mark is one of the best Deaths ever…although this one is far more grotesque looking than the one in the series).

I’m saving perhaps the weirdest thing in the show for last.   The Mayor’s son.  His name is Rampop.  (And that name is never explained).   Rampop is special (he sees all the people in the world as cartoon butterflies), but he’s also the only one who knows how to work the remotes and…he’s the only one who can see (and converse with) death.

The show is smart and very clever, and there’s enough twisted jokes and little things that you miss to make you want to watch it more than once.  There’s even some KITH character cameos (Chicken lady!  Bellini!).  It’s probably too much to ask for another series from them, but if takes another 16 years, I’ll be waiting.

I was also curious about Scott Thompson’s coroner character who has chronic alopecia.  It turns out that Scott had cancer (this is probably common knowledge to any real KITH fan, and I’m even more embarrassed that I didn’t know about it).   And during the filming of the show, he was undergoing chemotherapy.  So, the coroner is Scott withOUT makeup.   I wondered how they made him look so convincingly hairless…it was the best skull cap I’d ever seen.  Well in fact he simply was hairless.  So, good for him for battling the cancer (and winning, evidently), and for having the strength to write and act (three characters!) in this funny production.

Oh, and the soundtrack is done by Craig Northey and The Odds.  I’ve been trying to find out if the (opening and closing) themes are old or new songs, and if they’re available anywhere.  They’re very simple, but I can’t get them out of my head.

I gotta job to do….