Michael Triller

SCTV Gue - Features - A History and Episode Guide

Michaeltriller V Berry En Template Talk:WestMidlands Railstation Stub Michael Triller

The group gathered on that day - especially Second City stage performers Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Harold Ramis, and Dave Thomas - had more reason than most to want to duplicate the success of Saturday Night's Noteady for Prime Time Players. Three of the emerging starsof NBC's new sketch show, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, and Gilda Radner, had honed their comedic skills at the Second City. Driven by envy, pride, and the knowledge that Saturday Night producer Lorne Michaels hadn't drafted anywhere near all of Second City's best talent, the decision to mount another television show was made.

The concept of Second City Television - a satire of television programming presented in the format of a broadcast day from a low-budget TV station - arose fairly quickly during the meeting, and has most often been specifically credited to Second City stage director Del Close and eventual SCTV associate producer Sheldon Patinkin. The concept was a brilliant one and stuck for 135 shows - 52 half-hours for Canada's Global TV, 26 half-hours for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 39 90-minute shows for NBC, and 18 45-minute shows for Cinemax. But the cast, who doubled as writers, and who at various times included (in addition to Flaherty, Levy, Ramis, and Thomas) Second City stage veterans John Candy, Catherine O'Hara, Andrea Martin, Martin Short, Robin Duke, Tony Rosato, and former disc jockey Rick Moranis, was too ambitious to forever stay within the confines of that concept.

Only the first few SCTV episodes actually presented a "broadcast day" from the sign-on program "Sunrise Semester" to the sign-off sermonette "Words to Live By." Sketches soon became longer and more complex. The cast introduced countless characters and then evolved them far more dramatically than the characters their former Second City colleagues were performing on Saturday Night Live: Levy's Bobby Bittman went from hack comedian to hack dramatic actor in a remake of On the Waterfront. Candy's Johnny LaRue went from sleazy showbiz mogul to sleazy political candidate. Flaherty's unctuous host Sammy Maudlin went from presiding over a parody of Sammy Davis, Jr.'s talk show Sammy & Company to presiding over a parody of Alan Thicke's talk show Thicke of the Night.

SCTV's actors and writers decided early on that it wasn't always enough to parody one television show or film at a time or even one genre of TV show or film at a time: Their style of "multi-layered" parodies became perhaps the show's signature ingredient. The show-length "Fantasy Island" sketch in SCTV's second season (show 44), which combined elements of the frothy ABC primetime hit, the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby series of "road" movies, and the film classics Casablanca and The Wizard of Oz, is the most successful example of this groundbreaking comedic style.