Sunnyside

This show had some good skits and some bad ones, cast was decent, the man in the hole was just a big waste.

Sunnyside has captured the spirit of Second City TV, but continued the progression to bring a fresh new comedy from Canada. Using the sketch comedy / improve formula, the troop has developed a quirky town where gentrification has put soccer mom's in the same coffee shop as crack whores, feral ponies are the main town nuisance and the internet has not yet breached the town-line (however there is a manhole where you can call down one question per day and get a reply from the familiar voice of Norm MacDonald).

Each of the six actors create a variety of characters (a la Second City) any of which would stand alone against the thin creations of today's Saturday Night Live. The characters continue through out the series and it's easy to grow fond of their peculiarities. Police woman Rookie Kerri (who says "this just got serious" when her mom gets shot in the first episode) and Meth Georgette who has never said a word so far in the series, are two of my favorites.

In a Toronto neighbourhood nestled from the lake front next to High Park, this show presents a fresh and at times dream-state-esque comedic experience. Whether the fine folks who actually live in Sunnyside act anything like this brilliant exaggeration is best left to viewers' imaginations. No doubt, more than a fair share of people will identify with these characters (at least at some point in their lives?). It definitely feels different than the typical Canadian Content comedy of times gone by. Quick, unexpected, and often jaded sequences focus a lens of self- reflection (and just plain sarcastic fun) on otherwise typical Torontonian human interactions. The show reminds me vaguely of SCTV and also David Wain (particularly Wainy Days). The British show Snuff Box is also quite similar in terms of timing, unexpected twists and raw off-colour style. It's quite surreal to see linkage to an actual Toronto neighbourhood, complete with authentic references. Perhaps the show will catch on and will become known for helping Toronto lighten up and collectively laugh a little at ourselves.

It's a Toronto sketchy neighbourhood by way of Winnipeg where its filmed, but the real state of Sunnyside is the kind of slightly absurdist, deft and odd comedy that we used to get from Kids in the Hall. Every episode has a loose structure on which to hang recurring characters and bits, most of which are never too long and some of which are screamingly funny. A long time ago I remember being told about Monty Python, if you don't like what's going on, wait ten seconds. Sunnyside's a bit like that. Fantastic character work, engaging premises and never less than satisfying. It warms my jaded blackened, manhole-sized heart.

One of the basic reasons to watch comedy TV shows is to make you laugh. The many bland, formulaic American sitcoms that pollute our airwaves rarely do this. That's why Sunnyside was such a pleasant surprise – it's genuinely quirky and genuinely funny. A sketch comedy show with recurring characters set in the "Sunnyside" neighbourhood in a seedy section of the middle of Toronto, it's part of the absurdist, surreal tradition of British TV comedy (Monty Python, Big Train, The Mighty Boosh and Spaced) that's also seen in bit and bites in Canadian sketch comedy (SCTV, The Frantics, and Kids in the Hall, especially the laconic cops played by Bruce McCullough and Mark McKinney, replicated in this series). The other thing that Sunnyside borrows from this tradition is the idea of the world turned upside down – instead of celebrating the lifestyles the successful middle class, if not of the rich and famous (e.g. Charlie Sheen's sitcoms) – it's the phony aesthetes, the down and out and the working poor who make us laugh. They're all over the place in Sunnyside: the pretentious barista Shaytan, the skanky women fishing for money in a sewer, the woman who crashes an art exhibit to get free wine. There's also some social satire, as in the sketch of the man who is so reliant on Siri and his iPhone that he winds up on his back in an alley being robbed. And the surrealism is at times gut-bustingly funny, as in the episode "Australia", the title of which doesn't make sense until the last line – "It's like they've never seen an Australia moon!" If you prefer "Mom" or "Mike and Molly" or "Modern Family" to this show, we don't live in the same mental universe.