This article originally appeared in our Info Edmonton Fall/Winter Guide. Read the full digital issue (including a tour of local SCTV landmarks!) for the best in arts, culture, dining, shopping, and more.
Bob and Doug McKenzie, Count Floyd, Edith Prickley, the Shmenge Brothers—if you don’t know these symbols of Canadian pop culture history yet, you should. These characters and many more were at the heart of SCTV, the beloved Canadian sketch comedy show that ran from 1976 to 1984 and helped launch the careers of some of the biggest stars in comedy, including Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, John Candy, Martin Short, Dave Thomas, Rick Moranis, and Andrea Martin. And for one-and-a-half influential years, it was making its mark right here in Edmonton.
Based in the fictional town of Melonville, the show employed a unique “show-within-a-show” format, chronicling the happenings of a struggling TV station and its stars. Ironically, SCTV’s short tenure in Alberta—from 1979 to 1980—was what saved it from real-life cancellation and launched it to
new heights. SCTV’s origins lie in the Second City Theatre, the world-famous improv troupe that began in Chicago in 1959. When several stars like John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd left the troupe to join Saturday Night Live, Second City opened a Toronto location in 1973 and premiered their own sketch
comedy show, SCTV, in 1976. The sketches were often designed with elaborate costumes and sets, driving up production costs, so the show lasted only two seasons. Producers Andrew Alexander and Len Stuart (the latter of which was himself from Edmonton) spent a year trying to find another backer, finally striking a deal with Charles Allard and Doug Holtby of Allarcom, owners of ITV—but only if the show moved out west to Edmonton. The 44 episodes from the Edmonton seasons aired on CBC and select networks throughout the USA, gaining the show both popularity and notoriety.
For the actors, their newly adopted home became a source of inspiration for many of their most memorable characters and sketches. Candy and Levy’s perennially cheerful, polka-playing Shmenge Brothers were based on Gaby Haas, known as “Canada’s Mr. Polka,” the Czechoslovakian-born host of several radio and television shows airing out of Edmonton from the 1940s to the 1980s. Edmonton’s large Ukrainian community meant that episodes such as “CCCP1,” in which a Russian TV station takes over the network’s satellite feed, had ready-made backdrops waiting for filming.
When the CBC insisted that the two extra minutes given on Canadian networks must feature content exclusively for Canadians, Moranis and Thomas crafted perhaps the most famous characters on the show: the beer-guzzling, bacon-frying, utterly Canadian McKenzie brothers. The largely improvised, rebelliously over-compliant segments, called “The Great White North,” began in the third season and
featured the most stereotypically Canadian content the comedians could think of. Despite the sketch’s sarcastic origins, it quickly became a phenomenon, inspiring everything from the 1983 film Strange Brew to an animated spinoff, Bob & Doug, in 2009—and eventually the iconic statue in downtown Edmonton in 2020 (pg 22).
The cast and writers had relative freedom to create what they wanted, leading to more unique and iconic programming that may not have been otherwise possible and thus paving their way to pop culture history. Allard’s financial backing opened the doors for multiple sets and over-the-top costumes, and they even built an entire Viking ship for “The Vikings and The Beekeepers,” in which marauding Vikings attack the English with swarms of bees. There were still uniquely Edmontonian constraints to deal with, of course; for instance, ITV’s film cameras were often hard to come by during Oilers games.
The improved production values and sketches meant that SCTV’s time in Edmonton would be short-lived. With more funds and greater interest coming in from US syndication, the show was called back to Toronto partway through its fourth season in 1982, where it would remain until going off the air in 1984. Still, Edmonton held a special place in SCTV history: one of the first sketches they filmed after returning to Toronto, a parody of “Goin’ Down The Road” called “Garth and Gord and Fiona and Alice,” ends with the main characters heading back west to Edmonton, underscored by Gordon Lightfoot’s “Alberta Bound.” It was a fitting final goodbye to the city that had saved SCTV—and changed the course of Canadian comedy as we know it.
