On this day in 1980, comics from The Second City were making their Edmonton debut.
According to the Edmonton Journal, the performances tested whether Edmonton could serve as the next expansion for the improv comedy mainstay, which started in Chicago before branching out to New York and Toronto. While the Edmonton theatre troupe never materialized, in less than a year, the city nonetheless played a starring role for The Second City, and the comedy world.
Second City Television, or SCTV, was a sketch comedy show that grew out of The Second City Toronto. First airing in 1976 on Global, the show featured several future comedy legends, including John Candy, Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Dave Thomas, and Harold Ramis. Framed as broadcasts from a tiny television station in the fictional town of Melonville, SCTV’s comedy was bold, avant-garde — and expensive to produce.
Global axed the show after two seasons due to high production costs. But SCTV wasn’t finished. Charles Allard, a wealthy Edmonton surgeon who owned the independent CITV station (which would later just become ITV) purchased it and moved production to Edmonton. Some of the cast dropped out (including O’Hara and Ramis), but Rick Moranis was added to the roster.
The move to Edmonton sparked a golden age for SCTV. The facilities at CITV were tiny, but advanced, leading to some ambitious comedic experiments. The city’s isolation and long, dark winters also meant the cast had little to do but throw themselves into their work. The cast spoke fondly of their time in the city, although producing a show out of Edmonton did cause some problems. It was hard to convince guests to make the trip in, and sometimes, when the Oilers were playing, they would lose their production crew.
During the Edmonton years, SCTV produced some of its best episodes and gained attention. The show was broadcast on CITV and CBC, and was eventually picked up by NBC, making it the first Canadian TV series to air on an American network. While SCTV didn’t get the same ratings as NBC’s Saturday Night Live, the Canadian show was critically beloved. Seen as the edgier, more cult comedy creation, it was lauded as the funniest TV show around in everything from The New Yorker to the L.A. Times. SCTV went on to win four Emmys and kickstarted the film careers of many of its stars.
Edmonton influenced some of the show’s comic sensibilities, too. Candy and Levy’s polka-playing Schmenge Brothers were inspired by Edmonton’s accordion master, Gaby Haas. Edmonton’s concrete, brutalist architecture proved to be a suitable Soviet Union stand-in for one of SCTV’s most memorable episodes, when its signal is overwhelmed by a similar station from the U.S.S.R. The Edmonton seasons also saw the creation of SCTV’s most famous characters, arch-Canadian brothers Bob and Doug McKenzie. The pair was created to maliciously comply with CBC’s demands for more Canadian content but became wildly popular with audiences on both sides of the border.
SCTV would only spend a year and a half in Edmonton before production was moved back to Toronto. But that short time left a mark. Many of the show’s cast went on to legendary careers in movies and TV. And even now, comedy writers and actors talk of SCTV’s scrappy, experimental sketches as a major source of inspiration. Today, Edmonton’s place in SCTV history can be seen downtown, where statues of beer-swilling Canadian icons Bob and Doug sit on a bench near Rogers Place.
This clipping was found on Vintage Edmonton, a daily look at Edmonton’s history from armchair archivist Rev Recluse of Vintage Edmonton.