An American in Canada

Shocked by the low ratings. I thought it was quite funny. The show was staffed by really funny writers and actors.

A disgraced news anchor gets a job at the lowest rated morning show in Canada. This shows humor lies in his struggles adjusting to Canadian culture. Which in my opinion is ripe for jokes. Canadians are almost exactly like us and yet different in many ways and I thought the show was quite funny. I recommend you take a look.

I have only recently come upon this series thanks to a PBS station. It is well written,deftly acted and paced perfectly. Such a welcome change from US situation-comedies which grow increasingly shrill as they become more and more predictable. While there are echoes of Northern Exposure and various news-room shows (The MTM Show,Sports Night,News Radio et al),An American in Canada manages to be fresh and interesting. The performers are just about perfect.

An unexpected delight.

I am not familiar with Canadian television and wonder what other worthwhile series there are. I was an original fan of SCTV and am addicted to Kids in the Hall.

I stumbled across this one as a surprise on my local PBS station; and fell in love with it immediately.

Jake's embittered by his situation and not the most likable person as a result. He falls in with a bunch of folks who, in his view, might well be escapees from the Twilight Zone. Conversely, his new co-workers regard his as a stereotype come to life...and an escapee from the Twilight Zone.

Watching the Yank and the Canucks learn first to tolerate than take a positive delight in one another is a riot. Judy, the news producer who is Jake's boss and foil, is a delight: Mary Richards as woman of (mostly) steel. Bill, the station manager is a continual laugh as a man who really believes he knows all about Americans but who really needs to get a clue or three.

This show is always fun for what is says about Canada and Canadians as much as what it says about us. Ultimately, no one escapes unscathed.

This was an average quality show. I like Rick Roberts and Stewart Francis is a funny stand up comedian. This show just was missing something. The jokes weren't that funny and it just seemed like the same old jokes. But the talent lifted it up some. Average show and average grade from me, 5/10.

I was sorry to see that this series didn't get renewed, as it was really just starting to find its feet. I'm an American living in Canada, and I really enjoyed it even though it was about a guy who wasn't here by his own choice and was constantly looking for ways to get "back home". At the end of the season (in what now seems to have been the final episode) we saw that Jake was finally getting past the stage of looking at Canada as a temporary annoyance, and was starting to think of it more as his new home and was finding many things about it that he enjoyed; now he's not even sure he'll take the job back in the States that he thought he wanted so badly. A highlight was Jake's frequent conversations with the wise, inscrutable middle-eastern owner of the doughnut shop; rather a more sophisticated version of the relationship between Tim the Tool Man Taylor and his over-the-fence neighbor Wilson, it also allowed us to watch our hapless American grow from selfishly considering him just someone to dispense his coffee and listen to his whining, into realization that he (and everyone else he knew in Canada) was a real person with life experience, and had something to teach him if he would shut up and listen.

It's really a shame that so many clever satiric Canadian programs don't have the big budget that American cookie-cutter schlock has. The writing is better and the ideas are fresher because they aren't simply trying to copy what worked on another show. If they ever got a chance, American audiences would probably enjoy "Made in Canada" or "An American in Canada"; instead they keep getting force-fed the same stuff over & over (whether it's called "Friends", "Will and Grace", or whatever) and they'll never know what they're missing.