| On CBC's The Seán Cullen Show, the title figure is a cheerful, unflappable everyman presiding over a TV world populated by some bizarre characters.
There's a Scottish Jesus with a flowing red beard who pounds back pints of ale, a gothed-up German dominatrix plotting to rule the world and a 1950s TV mother figure with a serious anger management problem.
With regulars like that, you can tell that The Seán Cullen Show is a truly original attempt to capture the Canadian comedy audience. This past September, CTV tried to crack the market by debuting The Holmes Show, a conventional sketch comedy series headlined by Canadian comedic actress Jessica Holmes. Months later, The Holmes Show has been continually jerked in and out of the CTV lineup and has failed to catch on with most viewers. In other words, it’s doubtful The Holmes Show will ever become the pop culture phenomenon that past Canadian comedies SCTV and The Kids in the Hall became.
Of course, when then they debuted (SCTV in 1976 and The Kids in the Hall in 1989), nobody knew these series would deliver the classic characters and sketches that kept them on the air and in the minds of Canadians long after their production runs ended. One thing we did know when The Kids in the Hall and SCTV started is that they were different from anything else on the airwaves.
Uniqueness is definitely something that The Seán Cullen Show has going for it. A veteran stage performer, both on his own and with the comedy band Corky and the Juice Pigs, Cullen resisted attempts by TV executives to place him in a contemporary variety show. What he did instead was reach back into TV history for inspiration.
"(The show) is basically based on shows like the Jack Benny show, where he had a studio audience and would talk directly to them and there would be a story within a story," Cullen explains. He made changes to the basic Benny format to come up with what he describes as a newly revamped version of variety, with more contemporary references and lots of crazy characters.
"I wanted something where I could do everything I wanted to do and everything I do in my live show," he says.
Whether the initial six-episode run of the show will perform well enough to secure its future remains to be seen – but Cullen has already come a long way in just getting his show to air.
"There's not a lot of money in Canada to make television," he explains. "That was our biggest challenge, to make the show for the money we had. I think we really succeeded there."
Of course, no series can survive long without a loyal audience, and Cullen is aware that landing regular viewers is a must. "With any kind of comedy show, you hope that your voice is something that people want to hear. I wanted to make a show that was accessible to a wide variety of people, but still had an edgy, quirky feel to it."
The CBC currently airs three long-running comedies: This Hour Has 22 Minutes, The Red Green Show and Royal Canadian Air Farce (the latter two air prior to Cullen's show on Friday evenings). Add the success of these current programs to the past accomplishments of SCTV and The Kids in the Hall, and The Seán Cullen Show has a lot to live up to if wants to be considered classic Canadian comedy.
But Cullen doesn't feel a lot of pressure. "I just think we do what we do," he says. "We're quite different from all those other shows. If anything we have the most in common with The Kids in the Hall in that we don't do a lot of topical humour and we don't do a lot of stuff on what's up in the news."
Generally, he sees Canada's comedy traditions as a plus.
"There's a legacy of comedy in Canada that's very rich. I think Canadians just love comedy. So hopefully everyone will love this show."
Initially, that doesn't seem be the case. According to the Toronto Sun, the January 17 debut episode of The Seán Cullen Show scored only 345,000 viewers. That's down 600,000 from what Air Farce was doing in that same time slot a few months ago. Unless numbers grow, Cullen's present offering may join The Holmes Show as Canadian comedy casualties instead of formidable contributors to our national legacy of laughs. |
