SCTV Network 90

Too bad they don't Write shows like this any longer. Canada truly Delivers With Comedy and it's Actors!

Finally SCTV on DVD. The first 5 DVD's released contain the first 9 episodes from the 90 minute series on NBC. Thirteen and one half hours.

There are more to come. HOORAY!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mine arrived today. Already I have watched the first three episodes. Talk about holding up. After 23 years, these shows are just as funny and refreshing as they were in 1981. In fact, I think I laughed harder today then I did a long time ago. SCTV never took cheap shots or the easy way. Their sketches had wit, charm, and intelligence. They never played down to the viewers. For example, I remember their version of T S Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral. Except they set it around a space shot at Cape Canaveral. One of my sons and I once tried to list all the characters each person played. Try it yourself. You may never get to the end. I could go on and on, but the time I spend writing this is keeping me away from the next episode.

PS

I'm glad my Spam blocker let the e-mail notice for these DVD's from Amazon come through. I bought 6 sets. One for me and one for each of my grown offspring. When they were little I let them stay up late on Friday nights for SCTV. Probably the best thing I ever did for them.

Unlike SNL, which is 30 minutes of comedy crammed into 90 minutes, the entire hour and a half of SCTV was hilarious. In fact, the shows intricate plot lines usually built and built and built upon themselves, rewarding the dedicated viewer with great comic payoffs near the END of the show.

It's truly unfortunate that when the shows are re-broadcast, these 90 minute gems are chopped up into 30 minute "episodes". The pacing and the build-up of comic energy, that was so integral to the original show, is completely lost. Indeed, I feel very fortunate to have watched the original airings. I doubt we'll see anything like it again.

Sorry to pose the question, since I have to say I don't know myself. This was easily the cleverest show I have seen. And it's the only TV comedy I know that is sometimes really fascinating.

In the episode where the broadcast is jammed by the Soviets, I found that along with the funny premise and its very funny execution (the stroboscopic image, the "new mini-cam", "Uzbeks"), there was a genuinely creepy vision of media under state control.

But it would give entirely the wrong impression to suggest that the show was ever preachy, even though it belittled the socially irresponsible from time to time. It was always exuberant fun.

Just so everyone understands, this was the series made for NBC, not the original lower-budget (but very good) years, nor the following year on Cinemax, which I didn't see.

Unfortunately I haven't seen any of them in over ten years. This is one of the very few things I would own on DVD if it were available.

"Battle of the PBS Stars", "Chariots of Eggs", Guy Caballero forgetting to stay in his chair, the frightening lust of Edith Prickly, and of course "Great White North". They deserve to be preserved.

In an alternate universe, SCTV is still on the air after 30 years, and SNL was cancelled after the 1979 season. And the people living in that alternate universe are both much happier and better off than we will ever be.

SCTV is simply one of the greatest television programs ever. Surreal, topical, and laugh out loud funny, it simply must be experienced to be believed. And the performers were easily the most talented bunch ever to work on a television comedy. Now an entirely new generation can behold and enjoy this gem.

Thank God for DVD!