Ok, which is your favourite?
I’d especially like to hear from Canadians on this.
I’ve only seen one episode of Corner Gas, I thought it was amusing but generally kinda of lame, I suppose gentle, slightly surreal humour. Only one ep though so it might grow on me. I’ve seen people recommend it on here so I am willing to give it another go.
Trailer Park Boys, this has been on air here for sometime and it took me quite a long while to realise it was anything other than a Jackass style show. When I realised what it was I sat down to watch it and I absolutely loved it. I watch any episode that I can, it’s on a few different stations here, albeit usually late at night. I love the characters, the ongoing conflicts, the ridiculousness, and some of the recurring stuff like the character who permanently has a glass of vodka(or gin?) and coke in his hand, even during an armed robbery.
I don’t get it. I live in Canada and the guys in TPB seem pretty much like my neighbours, eh? I didn’t even know it was a comedy. I thought it was a slice-of-life daily drama.
I think that Trailer Park boys is over, but don’t know that for sure. The last episode gave a summary how everyone was doing fine with their lives, and the boys had a lot of money, so I do no know where they could go from there.
I liked both shows a lot. Corner Gas in its first season made me laugh a lot harder than TPBs ever did, so I like it better. After that I think CG had exhausted some of their best material, but there are still some very good episodes. I am from Saskatchewan originally, so I got a real kick out of a good show coming from my province.
I like how Corner Gas concentrates on dialog. Sitting and talking in cafes having coffee is how a lot of time is passed in small towns.
I think the episodes of TPB I see are all out of order from different seasons but I’ve only seen about a dozen of them. I’d like to see Corner Gas again but the scheduling is a bit iffy. I might try to pick them both up on DVD.
I prefer Corner Gas quite a bit, but then Dog River is a lot like the town where I grew up and where my parents now live.
featherlou mentioned awhile back that Corner Gas will be available in the US soon. She mentioned the station, but I think it’s one I don’t get - maybe she’ll pop in with a link?
Maybe I will.
If I had one of them there super-duper memories, I could just tell you what the station was. I got it from the Corner Gas website - let me link that for ya. Okay, the station is Superstation WGN. You should all go to the Corner Gas website anyway - it has COMBINE RACING!!! The only thing that could top that would be Zamboni Racing!
My vote is for, no surprise, Corner Gas. Yes, the humour is mostly gentle, but there have been episodes when we’ve laughed until we were crying. I don’t know how many people I’ve hung around or worked with who virtually were Brent Butt.
By the way, Ginger, it looks like the Season 4 dvd is just about ready to be sold.
It’s hard for me to pick a favorite between the two shows because I love them both so much. TPB is definitely better for the belly laughs, over-the-top scenarios, and incredibly creative foul language (long live shit talk!):
Corner Gas, OTOH, is a lot more subdued and incredibly sarcastic. It’s funny in an entirely different way from TPB, and it manages to do so without strong language or any material that could be construed as even remotely offensive.
Unlike TPB, it’s really something the whole family can watch, and from what I’ve read, it’s an unbelievably huge hit in Canada - hell, two sitting Canadian Prime Ministers have guest-starred on the show!
They have managed the occasional off-colour joke, but they make it extremely subtle - the example that comes to mind is Brent getting a haircut from Karen, and saying, “I’m getting a little trim from Karen” and then looking a wee bit shocked at what he just said. And yes, part of the allure is seeing who they’ve got for guest cameos (the recent one from the premier of Saskatchewan was a nice touch, we thought. And Brent bugging Lloyd Robertson was a Canadian comedy classic - Lloyd Robertson is the Canadian equivalent of Walter Cronkite, having been doing the national news for approximately 200 years now.)
And he was very well parodied as “Floyd Robertson” on SCTV, where he was played by Joe Flaherty.
I’ll put in a vote for Corner Gas. The more subdued and gentle humour makes me laugh longer and louder than the in-your-face and unsubtle TPB. The latter reminds me of the comedian I once saw who, when his jokes were falling flat, decided that dropping a few “fucks” and “shits” into them would have us rolling in the aisles. We didn’t, and I still don’t. Regardless of language, you’ve gotta have funny material to work with, and Corner Gas does.
I watched Billable Hours and was impressed with the first episode I saw. I watched it again several times and it did not do anything for me, so I stopped recording it. The jokes were too forced and the characters too unsympathetic. Just not funny enough.
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