One of my favorite moments in the Netflix documentary “SCTV: The Greatest Show You’ve Never Heard Of” occurs when a group of SCTV legends gathers in a living room to share memories, and we see Catherine O’Hara cradling a glass of white wine and curled up on a sofa next to Andrea Martin, reacting with sheer delight while watching the classic 1982 sketch “The Recess Monkeys.”
In the bit, Rick Moranis, Eugene Levy, and John Candy play an earnest and utterly awkward pre-teen band performing a terrible cover of Chilliwack’s 1981 rock hit, “My Girl (Gone, Gone, Gone).” Levy notes that he had to keep his head down because he couldn’t stop laughing at Candy’s performance. O’Hara sings along with the chorus, laughs, and says, “Oh, Eugene!”
It’s such a lovely and heartfelt moment—and it’s so bittersweet, because we know that O’Hara and Levy teamed up some 30 years later in spectacularly successful fashion to play Johnny and Moira Rose on “Schitt’s Creek,” and we know that within six months of this filmed interview, Catherine O’Hara was gone.
The story behind this 90-minute love letter to the cult Canadian hit that launched the careers of a half-dozen comedic legends is almost worthy of its own documentary. About eight years ago, SCTV legends O’Hara, Levy, Joe Flaherty, Martin, Martin Short, Dave Thomas, and Moranis reunited at Toronto’s Elgin Theatre, with Jimmy Kimmel moderating. It was to be the centerpiece of a planned Martin Scorsese documentary.
Years passed. Scorsese focused on other projects. The doc seemed unlikely to happen—but when Netflix acquired the rights to the entire SCTV series, Kimmel saw a chance to rescue the project. He brought in director Jason Hehir of “The Last Dance” to helm the film, and they arranged a new reunion, filmed at a Toronto residence. (Flaherty, who died in 2024, is missing from the new ensemble interview. John Candy and Harold Ramis, sadly, have long since passed away.) That fresh footage is intertwined with fantastic archival clips from “SCTV,” along with present-day interviews with famous fans, including Tom Hanks, Bill Hader, Kathryn Hahn, Fred Armisen and Conan O’Brien, who notes that if someone tells him they watched “SCTV” and it wasn’t for them, he doesn’t want to know them. Life is too short.
Of course, “SCTV” isn’t really a show “you’ve never heard of”—but it had a checkered history on Canadian, and eventually American, TV, and for younger generations, a series that concluded in 1984 is like “I Love Lucy” or “The Honeymooners” to me. Ancient history, but invaluable history nonetheless. The documentary proceeds largely chronologically, taking us back to Toronto’s comedy scene in the 1970s, which featured everyone from Dan Aykroyd to Gilda Radner to Martin Short to John Candy, to name just a few. When the Toronto native Lorne Michaels launched “Saturday Night Live” and tabbed Aykroyd and Radner to join the original cast, a group of young talents decided to create their own show before everyone scattered to New York City. (We’re told that John Candy, Joe Flaherty and Dave Thomas auditioned for “SNL,” and Lorne Michaels told them, “Don’t give up your day jobs.”)
Thus was born “SCTV,” a meta sketch show about a fictional TV channel that was “the pride of Mellonville.” Harold Ramis joined as head writer, the budget was $7,000 per show, and it featured behind-the-scenes sketches at the station, plus snippets from satirical soap operas, newscasts, talk shows, commercials, sitcoms, and dramas. Tom Hanks waxes rhapsodic about the “Leave it to Beaver 25th Anniversary Party” sketch with the Beaver and Wally et al. as adults, calling it “dark as all get out.” Fred Armisen and Kathryn Hahn say “SCTV” was cool precisely because the comedy was so edgy and not everyone knew about it. Armisen calls it “like a secret code,” while Hahn dubs it “Comedy from the wrong side of the tracks.”
We’re reminded of brilliant bits like “20 Depressing Hits by Connie Franklin,” “The Sammy Maudlin Show,” and O’Hara’s vapid, over-the-top Lola Heatherton asking Andrea Martin’s Mother Teresa, “What do YOU get out of this?” Sure, the humor targets a bygone era, but it’s universal and timeless. (I loved the moment when Bill Hader is laughing uncontrollably just REMEMBERING the comedy.)
“SCTV” chronicles the friction within the team when the Bob and Doug McKenzie characters became a huge breakout hit, with Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis eventually exiting the show—but for the most part, it is a pure celebration of a legendary series. This is a no-frills film, relying on those golden-old clips, the warm, witty, and insightful memories of comic giants, and the sharp observations of modern-day talents. That’s more than enough.
Says Thomas, “Even a low-rated show is going to be making a million people laugh. And when you think of a million people laughing together, you go, ‘Oh my God, what a wonderful thing that we did in our lives.’” We cut to a shot of Martin Short reacting to that observation, and we can see it hit him right in the heart.
Us too.
