Crawford

Written by Mike Clattenburg (Trailer Park Boys), Crawford is a surreal and strange comedy that follows Don (Kyle Mac), a heavy metal musician, as he moves back home outside Toronto to live with his parents. Things start going awry as he realizes he can talk to the racoons infesting the neighbourhood. Honestly one of the most confounding shows I've seen as of late, that description doesn't even touch the tip of the iceberg of weirdness. Every character in this is a character, but not at all in a bad way, it all feels very comedic. I laughed a decent number of times and I thought the surrealness was clever at points, but it did suffer from being a bit all over the place, I can understand why audience reception was a bit lacking. Released digitally first then canceled after a single season, it's quite the shame, I enjoyed the series and really wish there was more, it seems like Clattenburg had some fun plans for its future. Would recommend for an unconventional laugh.

The CBC seems to be hooked on the "quirky and weird family" comedy genre. Schitts Creek and Crawford ate probably the best examples of this fixation.

The show is amusing enough, supported primarily by two experienced performers, Jill Hennessy and John Carroll Lynch. But search the credits for Jim Lovisek, the animal wrangler who achieves some amazingly effective work with what would normally be called "wildlife". The raccoons are almost as much a part of the cast as the actors, although I doubt that they have ACTRA memberships.

It's no "Citizen Kane", but I've certainly seen worse.

Crawford tells the story of a very quirky family. The father is ex-police and suffered a brain injury so now he can not talk and his brain misfires sometimes. The mother designs breakfast cereal. The kids are made up of a daughter a bit lost, one son who is balding at a young age and another who has been kicked out of his band and found he has a skill with Raccoon whispering. Mostly it seems to be about Don (the son who has been kicked out the band). He sets himself up as a humane raccoon catcher and moves in with a vet student who lives in the storeroom of a shop. This is very quirky but very funny. Its hard not to love all the characters. Its very gentle too. There is no real examinations of big issues, politics or token characters that tick boxes for TV stations. It really is just a nice program to watch. The first two episodes I found not so good but maybe you need to get to know the characters to really enjoy the show. The show is more amusing that big laugh out loud moments. Its very well acted and written.

Really though, if you want to just be entertained without having a message forced down your throat then watch this. The family don't try and get one over on each other. They don't always get on or be the best people they love each other the way families do. I really hope this makes it to a second season but its probably be unlikely. If it does then hopefully people will take notice and give it the attention it deserves.

This show does not always make sense but if you can enjoy the weirdness of it, and you think raccoons are funny, then i think you will really like it. It is not the same 'modern family' type stuff that you would expect. I really enjoyed the characters they seemed really well thought of and likable, not only designed for comedic purposes. I hope more episodes are coming.

The show has a lot of aspects to it that may come off as strange at first glance, but when combined with the over all feel of the show these oddities only add to it's wonderful humor and quirkiness. The characters are all very compelling and story lines and development was a delight to watch. I really hope to see more seasons in the future.