#Kith voted #8 of Top Ten Canadian Contributions to Nerd-Dom
10 Great Canadian Contributions to Nerd-Dom
8) The Kids in the Hall
Nerd-dom’s secondfavorite sketch comedy troupe (after Monty Python, obviously) first appeared on CBC and HBO in 1989 and later moved to late nights on CBS. Reruns were shown on the Comedy Channel — the network that would become Comedy Central. Scott Thompson, David Foley, Kevin McDonald, Bruce McCulloch, and Mark McKinney formed their comedy troupe in 1985 and named it after an old Sid Caesar quote: If one of his jokes bombed, Caesar would claim it was written by “the kids in the hall,” his term for a group of young writers hanging around the studio.
In 1988, Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels saw The Kids’ show in Toronto, and smelled a potential TV series. I’ve always considered The Kids in the Hall‘s relation to its “big brother”Saturday Night Live to be somewhat analogous to the U.S.’s relationship to Canada; SNL is bigger, flashier, and has more popularity (or at least more notoriety), while KITH is smarter, subtler, and much more consistent. And even though SNL might be leaps and bounds more famous and successful, but it’s also had long periods where it’s been frankly godawful, KITH maintained a high standard of quality and humor throughout the entire run of the series — it didn’t really have any “off” periods or seasons, though their humor did lose a little of its edge when they started making shows for CBS in 1993. Which is the better show (or country, for that matter) is, of course, purely subjective.
Related posts:
Leave a Reply