“SCTV” was a brilliant sketch comedy show which went through a variety of cast changes, format changes, length changes and so forth. Most people need a gateway drug to get them to remember the series.
“You remember Bob and Doug McKensie right?”
“The guys in the movie Strange Brew?”
“Yeah.”
“You remember Ed Grimley right?”
“The guy on Saturday Night Live”?
“Yeah.”
Both of those characters and many more were created by the cast and writers of SCTV. The show offered spoofs covering every aspect of televiaion. Sitcoms, commercials, game shows, newscasts, political ads and on and on.
Here is a classic sketch. If you’re not laughing at at least one gag in this sketch, you may need professional help.
You will notice the music at the beginning of the sketch is from an Earth, Wind and Fire song. We’ll come back to that later.
SCTV has three basic eras: The half-hour era (1976-1981). The NBC “network 90” era (1981-1983). And the Cinemax era (1983-1984). I imagine most SCTV fans would say the NBC era was best. I sure would. The classic cast: Joe Flaherty, John Candy, Catherine O’Hara, Dave Thomas, Rick Moranis, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin and Martin Short. With pop-outs and pop-ins here and there.
The NBC series had episode-long storylines like the “Godfather” parody, the “strike” episode which found the fictional network having to borrow programming from the Canadian Broadcasting network and more. The NBC episodes had a running soap opera take-off called “The Days Of The Week” and many other recurring sketches.
I’m telling you all this about the NBC episodes for a reason. Remember that “Battle Of The PBS Stars” sketch I posted up the page a bit? Look at this:
Note that the Earth Wind and Fire song has been replaced with some sort of generic production music track. “SCTV”, you see, is now on Netflix. Which I was very excited about for approximately 30 seconds.
In my line of work I am intimately familiar with the concept of “music replacements.” It goes like this. The client says, “Boy, this radio commercial sure would sound great if we used “We Will Rock You” by Queen. Then I, Buzz Killington, say “I’m sorry, Mr. Client. If we use that song in a commercial, every single member of Queen–the living ones, the dead ones, the one who got kicked out–will sue you, and us, for what I lovingly call crazy stupid money.”
And then I log on to our commercial production music library for a track that sounds vaguely like Queen’s “We Will Rock You.” Usually you search for codewords like “70s classic rock” or some such.
In the case of “SCTV” or any other movie or TV show that wants to use a copyrighted song, they see how much it’s gonna cost them. If they can afford it, they get the rights. if they can’t afford them, or just think they’re asking too damn much, it’s break-out the generic track. “SCTV” used a LOT of music throughout the entire series run. So when you watch SCTV on Netflix, you’re going to hear a mess of generally cruddy production music.
Unless…..you’re a smart cookie who stands by that rallying call: PHYSICAL MEDIA FOREVER!!!!!
In 2004, Shout Factory rolled the first of its series of “SCTV” DVD boxsets. Within two years every single episode form the NBC run was in my hot little hands. And guess what? 90% or more of the DVDs have NO MUSIC REPLACEMENTS. There’s a Zeppelin song they couldn’t get, for any price, and there’s a Christmas song they couldn’t get. And that’s it. How about them apples!
One final note: I did watch some SCTV on Netflix….the final season of the show, which aired on Cinemax, has been unavailable in any way for years and years. So I watched that season, music changes and all. The truth is, it’s the weakest of the run. The cast was cut down to four (Flaherty, Levy, Short and Martin). There are a couple of really long movie skits that aren’t so hot. There’s a weird kids show set at a bar. I get the feeling they were ready to pack it in. For one thing, the last episode of that season was a clip show…some clips that aired a week or two ago.
But you know what? SCTV is great even when it’s so-so. Here’s my favorite sketch from that final season. A lot of these cast members were Canadian…..and all too willing to spoof the great white north….
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