Little Mosque on the Prairie

The CBC has coughed up a lot of awful comedies over the years. Air Farce comes to mind. And now Little Mosque on the Prairie. This was supposed to be a controversial show that pushes the envelope with big laughs. Well, I was right to assume that this show would not be very controversial and wrong to assume that any laughs might be forth-coming.

This show relies on stereotypes to sell the same old tired jokes. It is fitting the show is set in the prairies because these are jokes you can see coming from ten miles away. Typically they'll set up a joke, you'll think "I wonder what the twist will be because there's no way they are going with such a predictable joke", and then they'll do that predictable joke, and then you'll groan and wonder why you gave this show another chance.

I've sat through five episodes of this show and I want my 2 1/2 hours back. CBC please stop spending our tax dollars on such awful shows. It's a good premise and I recognize some good actors in the show but this show is just not funny, not interesting, not controversial, not good at all.

LMOTP is very much in the vein of earlier comedies about a new ethnic group integrating into the new world. OK, Muslims are not AN ethnic group and the Muslims of Mercy are am ethnic mosaic unto themselves. Admittedly the show started off pleasant, but less than brilliant and has been sliding on its charm - a bit thin and predictable. Still it's no worse than a lot of sitcoms. A bit gentle and old-fashioned for some tastes, but is that so bad?

Even though I'm a Muslim I enjoy the sex-and-violence appeal of something like "True Blood" -- totally absent here -- but as a Muslim I find it very relaxing, even therapeutic, to see something about Muslims on TV that is gentle and bloodless. Some of these reviews complain that it's not controversial. Why should everything about Muslims have to be controversial? I'm tired of nearly everything on the tube about my religion and my community dripping with snark or going for the adrenaline. If this is a bit quaint and soporific, even if it is simple and clichéd it shows Muslims with a sense of humor, Muslims as ordinary people who might be your neighbors, and you'd be OK with that. That alone makes this show unique and very welcome.

Arguably we all deserve better on a lot of counts, but like it or not, for humanizing Muslims on TV this is the best we have so far, and on that count it's far better than anything in the USA. Flawed as it is, LMOTP is a welcome first step in the right direction.

Let's face it: Most Canadian sitcoms have been and are currently crap. There are exceptions (I like "Corner Gas," and does "Un gars, une fille" count as a sitcom?). But overall, Canada has produced very few quality thirty-minute comedies.

I was thus skeptical when I watched the pilot on YouTube (I'm American, by the way). It is funny. I laughed out loud, and never felt that it was trying to force its humour. Baber and Yasir are both very funny characters, played by very funny actors. I also think that Sitara Hewitt, who plays Yasir's daughter, has some real potential. My biggest reservation is the lead: Zaib Shaikh, who plays the imam, is easily the weakest member of the ensemble. I hope that this improves over the course of the show, or it will face difficulties.

While this show would quickly perish in American network ratings, I think that it will be able to subsist on CBC, hopefully maturing and gaining depth as it progresses.

(I didn't even mention the potentially controversial set-up, but I just want to note that hardly anyone could find this sitcom offensive. Only fundamentalist Muslims who hate everything Western, and white fundamentalist Christians who hate everything non-Western).

My partner and I laughed out loud many times during the one episode we have seen so far. The humour is based on townspeoples' exaggerated fear of the innocent actions of a group of bungling Muslims trying to set up a mosque in the basement of an Anglican church.

The comedy rips along at such a pace the show is over in what seems like a few minutes. It is not at all like your usual TV sitcoms with long stretches of laugh track after every lame joke.

There are many juicy characters. The humour is not based on cheap insults, the way so many sitcoms are.

It has so much fun with stereotypes, both poking fun at them and demolishing them.

It is not degrading to Muslims, any more than your average sitcom is degrading to Christians. You enjoy and love all the batty characters.

The handsome young Imam is the straight man, who acts as a foil to the eccentrics in his congregation.

Having caught the first episode this evening, I was pleasantly surprised that the CBC has produced a quality comedy, even in light of the controversial content. This show should earn notoriety through its fine acting, intelligent commentary, and its combination of palatable slapstick and wry humour, thankfully with heavier emphasis on the latter. Instead the controversy behind the fact that it is primarily about a group of people that follow a religion that has been completely demonized in the western world has powered its media attention. Their is nothing about this comedy that should incense people, it is not a Muslim extremist justifier, it is not an attempt to integrate violent people into docile Canadian culture. It is just what it should appear to be: a fish-out-of-water comedy with a relevant, modern twist. The hatred and prejudice that has been spewed about this show (weeks before it aired even its first episode) is completely unjustified (and plain old racist in my opinion) can only show that those doing the spewing haven't even watched the show, and due to their own shortcomings, probably never will. Too bad, cause its damn funny.