I’ve just started watching this.
I can’t get over how good it is! The characters are hilarious and have depth. The actors are fantastic. How have I never heard of this show before, 'eh?
So, are there any other shows as obscure to Americans that I could get into?
Note: I did a search on Trailer Park Boys and all the threads are 3+ months old, so didn’t want to resurrect an old thread.
My line manager in work loves the show, keeps quoting a line about a “shit spark” that turns into a “shitnami”. All said in a Northern Irish accent, which is mean to be a Southern US accent, as far as we can tell 
Which doesn’t even make any sense, being as the show and characters are Canadian.
Funny as hell, though.
And of course it’s more fun not to tell your line manager it’s actually supposed to be a Canadian accent of some sort…
We haven’t even seen it, we’re just going by his impressions and the name. We assumed it was set in the US, but a Derry accent is as far from either country as is possible 
The show is set in Nova Scotia, and that is how many people do talk there.
I discovered this show about three weeks ago. As of last night I’ve watched every episode and gotten four other people hooked. Sparky! we don’t know each other in real life do we?
Anyway, the show really is genius. Incredibly funny, and reminds me of the place where I grew up, minus the Canadian accents.
Bubbles: This isn’t about big bags of dope or idiots who don’t wear shirts!
My brother and I absolutely love this, we’ve watched the first six seasons. There’s an Irish (web only) show called Hardy Bucks that is in a similar vein. I remember when I first saw TPB on I just presumed it was a Jackass style show and had 0 interest. It took a while for me to cop on.
Man I’ve been into this show for a while, and every time I lend it to someone to watch they’re just blown away.
I was watching another Canadian show, “Holmes on Homes” (it’s a home renovation show, not a sitcom) and the guys on there have the same accents and colloquialisms as TPB. It cracks me up if I close my eyes and imagine Ricky and Julian renovating people’s homes
I can see how, to an outsider, it all sounds like a Canadian accent, but within Canada the accent heard on TPB is very distinct and specific to the area. Nobody talks like that where I live.
I like to learn about accents. What are the defining characteristics of a Nova Scotian accent? I tried looking online, and there are references to sing-songiness, Northern Irish-similarities, and, in general, of it being a strong accent. However, to my ears, the characters on Trailer Park Boys don’t have a terribly strong accent. I can hear it in the “ou/ow” sounds which become something closer to a long o, or between a long o and an “oo,” (the latter being the typical American representation of a Canadian accent) but I can’t quite pick up what the other features are.
The characters on the show don’t really have the strong accents you hear elsewhere in the province. In the more remote areas the accent gets quite thick and is similar to what you described, especially in Cape Breton.
ETA: A quick Google search brings back this which is a pretty good example of a common accent here.
I love this show, it is one of my all-time favorite comedies.
It’s hard to describe, and not being a linguist I can’t give you any technical reference points. It’s just one of those things: You know it when you hear it.
Oh, yeah, that one’s a clear accent. As for Trailer Park Boys, I think I was halfway through the first episode before I realized the show was set in Canada, and it was that “ou/ow” sound that gave it away.
Alex Lifeson of Rush has made a few appearances on the show as well
I don’t hear that sound. That probably means I do it too. I’m in New Brunswick but I go to Nova Scotia all the time
The show is filmed in the Halifax area, just outside of Dartmouth. I’m not sure where all the actors are from. I met one of them briefly in a video store. Nice guy, I can’t say I recall much about the way he spoke. It’s a larger city with not quite as much of that stereotypical accent. Newfoundlanders have a much stronger accent again. Their’s can be unintelligible to many people.
Just got the 1st movie from netflix - now I gotta get the series too! What I didn’t get was that in the movie there were deleted scenes that were freaking hilarious - so why’d they take’em out??
That they do. I used to work with one fellow from Newfoundland and it was not unusual for him to utter an entirely incomprehensible sentence. Most people from Newfoundland are fairly easy to understand, but not this guy. Very, very strong accent.
I am not from Canada, but at my high school there was a lot of overlap between the propeller heads (old-school nerds), the machine heads (auto shop guys), and the dopers (our common enemies were the Jocks (and our common pleasure was, what? Dope? Holley carbs? COBOL? All of the above?), and the guys on TPB are very much like some of my friends. Without that particular funny accent, as we all spoke Suburban Chicago, without so much of the sibilant S made famous on SNL’s “Super Fans.” It’s there, but we, unlike others, don’t normally notice it.