It wasn’t “live TV” comedy.
The cast was, to a one, contemporaries of the Americans and Canadians in the first cast of “Saturday Night Live.” But “SCTV” came on years later, and was sporadically on the air years after the original “SNL” cast moved on.
Which figures into funnylady Kathryn Hahn’s comparison of the two in “SCTV: The Best Show You’ve Never Heard Heard Of.”
“‘SCTV’ is like your older, ‘cooler’ cousin out smoking cigarettes in the back” of any family reunion.
This documentary was first announced back in 2018, with Martin Scorsese directing and Jimmy Kimmel producing and hosting “An Afternoon with SCTV” as a reunion show, with clips. Kimmel is still here as a producer. And the reunion, filmed by director Jason Hehir (ESPN’s Jordan doc series, “The Last Dance”) proves to be revealing and poignant.
It was shot in 2025, shortly before star Catherine O’Hara’s death, shortly after the death of original cast member Joe Flaherty and long after founding fathers John Candy and Harold Ramis’s passing. And Andrea Martin kind of breaks your heart when she leads the others into recalling a flourish of glory, the cast hearing the audience of TV stars, insiders and bigwigs at the 1982 Emmys, roaring in laughter at Eugene Levy as a barely mobile version of an ageing crooner who insists on still starring in TV “specials” — “Perry Como, Still Alive.”
The cast never knew if it was working, Martin says. “We didn’t think anyone was watching,” Levy adds. They did this cut-rate, always-failing show, off and on for half a dozen seasons over eight years just “to see if we could make each other laugh.” Here was proof, at last, that other people thought it was a hoot.
Veteran “SNL” writers Bob Odenkirk and Conan O’Brien sing the show’s and especially the performers’ praises. This cast could be stunning impressionists, from Levy’s Perry Como to O’Hara’s mean riff on American network favorite Joey Heatherton, and the most spot-on Katharine Hepburn (again O’Hara) you’ll ever see.
It’s a wonder Merv Griffin and Dick Cavett survived being cut to ribbons by Rick Moranis.
We hear a fresh version of the story of how Moranis and his new sparring partner Dave Thomas improvised this “throw away” “Canadian content” sketch, The McKenzie Brothers of “The Great White North,” into the series’ first culture-shifting bit. And we hear how hard that was on the rest of the cast, struggling to hold up their funny end of the stick while those two “hosers” were getting magazine covers, a stand-alone movie and all the attention.
Odenkirk praises the series for its “conceptual” comedy conceit — each episode following part of the broadcast day of small town Mellonville’s one-TV station “network” — with daffy owner Guy Cabellero (Flaherty), program director Edith Pickney (Martin) presiding over, hyping or apologizing for assorted weird chat shows, screwy newscasts and comic solo and duet acts featuring the cast.
Candy played an outsized, blustery and “famous” version of himself, Johnny LaRue, a “big star” by Mellonville standards. Flaherty dressed as vampire Count Floyd to host spooky movies. Films and TV shows and commercials were sent up, one after the other.
If you’ve never seen the most serious rival to “Saturday Night Live,” the old episodes are archived on Netflix for fresh viewings of O’Hara’s many big screen impersonations, Martin’s almost-cruel riff on a tragic singer’s songbook of downers (inspired by Connie Francis), Levy and Candy’s hilarious Lawrence Welk era polka band with a TV show (a side hustle for their travel agency), Candy and Flaherty’s “Farm Film Report” and Thomas and Moranis as outlived-his-shelf-life Bob Hope and Woody Allen, trying to find a way to make a movie together.
Catch phrases? “Take OFF, eh? Y’HOSER.” “It’ blowed-up, blowed-up REAL good!”
Martin Short, like Robin Duke and Tony Rosato, a later seasons member of the ensemble, marveled that any of this got on the air south of the 49th Parallel.
“Will it play in Des Moines,” the onetime Ed Grimley, Jerry Lewis and Jackie Rogers Jr. remembers wondering? “I don’t know.” And neither he nor anybody much cared.
When NBC’s Brandon Tartikoff tried to get them to make the show more “family friendly” for a Sunday night prime time slot, Levy’s remembered for famously snapping “NO.” And that was that. They did it their way.
Lorne Michaels doesn’t appear here, except in recollection. He “auditioned” the main members of the cast and was “very rude” in his dismissal of comic legends in the making Candy, Levy et. al. One of the things the “Lorne” documentary leaves out is anecdotes like this, how much of a snobbish prick the Canadian turned into when “SNL” blew up.
“SCTV” producer Andrew Alexander comes off as a much nicer guy, mocked by his cast, struggling to get the show back on the air every time it was canceled, moving it to Edmonton, Alberta for most of its glossier, later seasons, with the makeup and wardrobe crew earning tearful appreciations from the cast.
Behind the scenes footage gets at how TV production (and filmmaking) savvy the cast became as performers turned to writers (under head writer Ramis for a bit, Dave Thomas for a bit) and learned what shot-and-edit combos could make something funnier.
You won’t find much dirt on this likable lot, or even a fresh reminder for what an insufferable, insecure jerk Milton Berle was (sent up by J.K. Simmons in the film “Saturday Night”) at the Emmys.
Tom Hanks was a big fan and remembers “analyzing” in depth why the show’s comic bits worked with his early-career “Bosom Buddies” co-star Peter Scolari. Hahn, Fred Armisen and Bill Hader break up laughing at the assorted sketches and players that inspired their comedy careers.
Levy and Martin are the historians, the rarely-seen Moranis and his pal Thomas are the best storytellers. And O’Brien and Odenkirk are the deepest “analysts” here, with O’Brien going so far as to say “I wouldn’t wanna know” anybody who doesn’t “get” and “revere” “SCTV.”
Fair enough. But the cast themselves admit that the first couple of seasons are pretty much “unwatchable” and “not ageing well,” and not just because of the high school theater cheap production values.
The show was written, rehearsed, staged and taped, so it was never “Live” in the “Saturday Night” sense. It always lacked that “live,” “working without a net” energy. Sketches often ran too long, well past having any post Python absurdist point and not every character “played,” things that live audiences tell you in a flash.
But “a live audience can be a trap,” O’Brien insists. And having sketches that were written and performed just once, with “everything they wrote” ending up on the air — no “rehearsal audience” or last minute Lorne Michael cuts — let some of the strangest, most “out there” bits gets on the air.
“Leave it to Beaver” gone to seed, anyone? A “Mayberry” with the perviest Floyd the Barber (Levy) ever? John Candy as “Yellowbelly,” “the biggest coward in the West,” shooting anybody who mocks his cowardice in the back?
No, it was never as “young” and druggie and hip and frenetic as “Saturday Night Live.” There’s no substitute for that live show energy, with a live band and guest hosts’ in over their heads. The better comparison for “SCTV” was always the gold standard for sketch shows, “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” whose entire universe was its main cast (no guest stars) and was shot and edited on film.
“SCTV” was smart, edgy and sometimes mean, and produced memorable, witty bits. But beloved as it is, there just weren’t as many winners as there were on the full run of “Python” or the first five seasons of “SNL.” That’s why it helps to remember Martin Short’s maxim, that only about 20 percent of any comedy act, show, etc. really “works.”
Some nights you’re Johnny LaRue, a “big star” on a roll. Some nights you’re Bobby Bittman (Levy), maybe “the worst comic in the world.” But most of the time you’re just praying it “blowed up good,” you’re just Bob and Doug, fryin’ up some back bacon, slurping your way through “two-fours” of Molson’s and affably waiting for what comes next and hoping somebody’s watching. Eh?
Rating: TV-14
Cast: Andrea Martin, Eugene Levy, Rick Moranis, Martin Short, Dave Thomas, Catherine O’Hara, Joe Flaherty, Tom Hanks, Kathryn Hahn, Conan O’Brien, Bill Hader, Fred Armisen, Bob Oedenkirk and Andrew Alexander.
Credits: Directed by Jason Hehir. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1″28
