or so.
Anything like “Must See TV” or Star Trek: The Next Generation or 60 Minutes or such?
I’m aware of some of the imports, like Doctor Who and the BBC America shows and the game show ideas. What I want to know is, when we sat to watch Seinfeld, what were y’all watching? What are you watching now?
Other countries, too, I just listed the English speaking countries because that’s what I speak (more or less 
)
Canada: SCTV
Yes, that was good.
I’m watching some Rik Mayall out takes from a show I don’t recognize. What’s he been doing since The Young Ones ?
SCTV was an American show too, though.
Canada doesn’t have that many good serials, IMHO, but the made-for-TV “Anne of Green Gables” was one of the best miniseries ever made in any country. I don’t even like the whole Anne of Green Gables thing, but it was one hell of a miniseries. The sequels were not up to the same standard.
You were probably watching stuff from Bottom, a series he made with Ade Edmonson, Vivian from the Young Ones. I haven’t seen much of it, but my sisters love it.
-Lil
Rik Mayall also did a long running Political comedy called The New Statesman (which is probably where the outtakes were from), and he just did something else which I missed, which was Believe Nothing I think.
In which he played a character called Canute but spelled Cnut.
Made in Canada aka The Industry, starring Rick Mercer. A blisteringly funny satire of a TV/Movie studio sort of in the Larry Sanders style.
This Hour Has 22 Minutes, a Daily Show-like fake news program. Where Rick Mercer got his start. Probaby largely unaccessable to non-Canadians. There’s also Royal Canadian Air Farce, which is the Jay Leno to 22 Minutes’s Letterman.
Street Legal, a lawyer drama in the mid-80s which is one of the few long running home grown dramas from this time. There was also E.N.G. (Electronic News Gathering) which was about a news crew that also lasted a long time but I wasn’t a fan.
There was an Australian show called The Games that may be the funniest series I’ve ever seen on television. The Boston PBS station did a marathon last New Year’s Day (all 26 episodes), but I didn’t hear about it in advance. I’m hoping they do it again this year, I’ll be taping the whole thing.
It’s a mockumentary about the organizing of the 2000 Sydney Olympics; sort of a combination of “This is Spinal Tap”, “Sports Night” and “Cops”. Apart from that, it’s hard to describe. It’s brilliantly absurd, delivered in perfect deadpan. There’s a scene where the head of logistics asks the stadium contractor how long the track is for the 100 meters. The reply is “About 100 meters.” The organizers than have to convince him that they had something a little more specific in mind.
And Sam Neill, of all people, turns up in one episode.
How about Due South? Good enough to get picked up by U.S. networks.
Kingswood Country
Robot Arm, if you liked The Games you should keep an eye out for Frontline - it’s older, done in a similar mockumentary style, a behind-the-scenes look at a current affairs tv show.
The same team also had a sketch comedy show called The Late Show. I have no idea if anyone outside of Australia would show it, but some of the best scenes are on DVD. Sadly, it ended in 1993, and was the last really good sketch show (Champagne comedy!) done in Australia, imho. The group then went on to make the movies The Castle and The Dish, both excellent films but perhaps not really on-topic?
And when everyone in the USA was watching Seinfeld, we were watching it too. And we still are - without ever having been a big fan, I’ve seen almost all of the episodes either on their first run or in repeats. It seems like it’s always on.
Well, I’m fond of Canadian “Heritage Minutes”, little 30-second history lessons typically describing some concept that was invented in Canada and/or making the Americans out to be scum by comparison.
The one where a pre-chocolate Laura Secord single-handedly routs the American army is a particular favourite of mine.
Robot Arm is right about The Games. That was one of our best TV efforts ever. Had NO idea they were ever shown overseas though. Another high point of the series (aside from the excellent ‘100 metre track’ part that Robot Arm mentioned) was when the people in charge of making the ticket-slips to get people into the events tried to convince people they had NOT in fact made the tickets ‘too big’ for the ticket-scanning machines, but that the people in charge of said machines had made the ticket-slots ‘too small’ for the tickets.
We did have a great comedy/game show called ‘Good News Week’ - but I believe we ripped the format directly from a British show, so it’s not really ‘ours’ as such.
There was a good ‘sitcom’ a while back called ‘Mother & Son’ which was great. I believe the show was made the generation before mine (I caught the repeats) though I’m not entirely sure of the years.
‘Frontline’ - a comedy set behind the scenes at a TV news service (a ‘current affairs’ type show). Again, this was a few years ago, it’s in repeats now.
And our spoof-news-program - CNNNN. (Chaser Non-stop News Network…with a pioneering use of an extra ‘N’). This is the only thing on my list of our best thats still on air.
I’ve just realised mine are all comedies. Well, I’ve never seen an Aussie drama that I’ve been able to like much - though there a few from other countries that I like.
Oh, and while you were watching Seinfeld - it was pretty popular down here too.
Was Mother and Son (which was airing in NY around the late 1980s) set in a Austrialian suburb with a divorced son who moved back in with his highly arguementive mom (the only episode I can readily recall was when a greek family moved in next door, and the too eldery spiteful mothers keep sabotaging each’s others gardens, until they realize they both perfer nagging their sons together).
The only other Australian show I can remember airing in NY (they were lumped into the same category as BritComs, BTW, and the only way you could tell they were Aussie, according to my friend, was the sky was a “deep, sunny, clear blue the likes of which you never seen in the UK”) was “Bingles Garage”, which as it’s name implies follows the “antics” of several misfit mechanics/body repair men in (I believe) a Canberra repair shop (Bingles Smash Repair) (OK, here I think most of the outdoor shots were in front of painted backgrounds). Although sometimes it was silly, it did touch on some interesting topics (Insurance Fraud, Immigrants Rights, the National Front).
Absolutely Fabulous- in all its drunken glory
Ade Edmundson was on that sometimes…
30 years jeez!
Nah, I’ll just name something recent.
Spaced
This Canadian show featured Don McKellar as an agoraphobic TV-addict and Molly Parker as his (sometime) girlfriend. Callum Keith Rennie ran the corner store; I learned about the show as a Due South Fan & CKR was, of course, the second Lt. Vecchio.
The show was oddly funny & featured a changing cast of weirdo Canadian actors. Two members of Kids in the Hall played a prominent talk show host; different actors being used in each of the show’s two seasons was explained by a “cranial transplant”.
It was shown sporadically in the US on Bravo–with all the “bad” words beeped out!
If there were any justice in the world, there would be a DVD!
Yep, that’s the one. The mother was played by the late great Ruth Cracknell, one of Australia’s great ladies of stage and screen. Mother & Son was pretty much regarded as the only above average sit-com our country has ever made, until the huge success of Kath & Kim.
This one was at the other end of the spectrum. “Bingles” comes from a long line of extraordinarily bad Australian attempts at situation comedy. It lasted barely one season, and was pretty much relegated to late night viewing after a couple of eps. The graveyard of Aussie sit-coms is highly populated.
Among those to avoid -
Brass Monkeys - Comedy set at an Antartic base station. I remember a clip shown during a “Forty Years of Australian Comedy” special had audible groans from the audience.
Hey Dad - Not unlike Wings this series had an incredible run despite not having a single person admitting to be a fan of it. By the final season they had replaced almost every single actor in the cast. Also unsual in that it had a spin-off, the rarely seen or enjoyed “Hampton Court”
Bob Morrison - The trials and tribulations of a average family, as seen by their dog.
Where Aussie comedy gets it right is in satire. The Games and Frontline being the most lauded in that genre. The former is the brainchild of Ex-pat kiwi John “Fred Dagg” Clarke and Bryan Dawe. Those two have been doing this kind of thing for almost two decades now, although not in a story based format.
For mine Frontline is probably the best tv show our country has produced. Extremely funny, with an incredible ability to throw in last second sting-in-the-tail type moments.
As for other’s I recommend any of the gritty limited season ABC cop dramas like Phoenix I & II, Janus, Blue Murder, and Scales of Justice. And Shaun Micallef’s often miss-spelt Micallef P®ogram(me)