Twitch City | |
---|---|
Genre | Sitcom |
Starring | Don McKellar Molly Parker Daniel MacIvor Callum Keith Rennie Bruce McCulloch Mark McKinney |
Country of origin | Canada |
No. of seasons | 2 |
No. of episodes | 13 |
Production | |
Executive producers | Susan Cavan Armand Leo Bruce McDonald |
Running time | 30 min. |
Release | |
Original network | CBC Television |
Original release | January 19, 1998 – April 5, 2000 |
Twitch City is a Canadian sitcom produced by CBC Television, [1] which aired as two short runs in 1998 and 2000. [2] The series also aired in the United States on Bravo, and in Australia. The show's surreal humour was popular with critics. The show was never a mainstream ratings success in Canada, although it had a devoted cult following.
The show was directed by Bruce McDonald and produced by Shadow Shows and Accent Entertainment in association with the CBC. [1] Music was composed by Bob Wiseman.
Set in the Toronto, Ontario neighbourhood of Kensington Market, the series is about Curtis (Don McKellar), a television addict who refuses to leave his apartment, and his friends Nathan (Daniel MacIvor), Hope (Molly Parker) and Newbie (Callum Keith Rennie). [3] McKellar was also one of the show's creators. [1]
In the first episode, Nathan is sent to prison for killing a homeless man with a can of cat food. [1] The homeless man was played by Al Waxman, who had been the star of the 1970s sitcom King of Kensington , [1] although the producers claimed that they did not intend for the homeless man to be seen as the same character. [4] Nathan remained in prison throughout the run of the series; the first episode of the second season opened with an Oz parody in which he criticized the hip hop-inspired slam poetry of his cellmate. [5]
Throughout the series, Curtis and Hope's ongoing attempts to find a new roommate to replace Nathan provide one of the show's major plot threads. In one episode, Curtis rents Nathan's room to a mysterious businessman who uses it to store drugged cookies, while in another, Hope unwittingly rents it to two Neo-Nazis she mistakes for a gay couple. That episode includes a Nazi rally which features all four members of the rock band Sloan among the extras. At the end of the episode, the two Nazi roommates renounce Nazism and promptly kiss each other, vindicating Hope's judgement.
Bruce McCulloch and Mark McKinney (both from The Kids in the Hall ) also starred in the series as Rex Reilly, the Jerry Springer-like host of Curtis' favourite TV talk show. [3] McCulloch played Reilly in the first season, and McKinney played him in the second. The change in Reilly's appearance is explained in his autobiography, Tyrannosaurus Rex, which refers to his "on-air cranium transplant."
Guest stars on the series included Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom McCamus, Valerie Buhagiar, Charmion King, Kenneth Welsh, Hugh Dillon, Kim Mitchell, Stefan Brogren, John L'Ecuyer and Joyce DeWitt. DeWitt plays herself as a guest on The Rex Reilly Show, meeting lookalikes in an episode devoted to the theme "I Look Like Joyce DeWitt".
All thirteen episodes were released on DVD in 2006.
Most episodes of the series are titled for the theme of the Rex Reilly Show episode depicted in the script.
Episode Number | Title | Original airdate | Production code |
---|---|---|---|
1 | "I Slept With My Mother" | January 19, 1998 | 1-01 |
2 | "My Pet, My Hero" | January 26, 1998 | 1-02 |
3 | "I Look Like Joyce DeWitt" | February 2, 1998 | 1-03 |
4 | "People Who Fight Too Much" | February 23, 1998 | 1-04 |
5 | "I'm Fat and I'm Proud" | March 2, 1998 | 1-05 |
6 | "Killed by Cat Food" | March 9, 1998 | 1-06 |
Episode Number | Title | Original airdate | Production code |
---|---|---|---|
7 | "The Return of the Cat Food Killer" | March 15, 2000 | 2-01 |
8 | "Shinto Death Cults" | March 22, 2000 | 2-02 |
9 | "Klan Bake" | March 22, 2000 | 2-03 |
10 | "People Who Don't Care About Anything" | March 29, 2000 | 2-04 |
11 | "The Planet of the Cats" | March 29, 2000 | 2-05 |
12 | "The Life of Reilly" | April 5, 2000 | 2-06 |
13 | "Angels All Week" | April 5, 2000 | 2-07 |
The Kids in the Hall is a Canadian sketch comedy troupe formed in 1984, consisting of comedians Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney and Scott Thompson. Their eponymous television show ran from 1989 to 1995, on CBC, in Canada. It also appeared on CBS, HBO and Comedy Central, in the United States.
Three's Company is an American sitcom television series that aired for eight seasons on ABC from March 15, 1977, to September 18, 1984. It is based on the British sitcom Man About the House.
Joyce DeWitt is an American actress and comedian known for playing Janet Wood on the ABC sitcom Three's Company from 1977 to 1984.
Odd Job Jack is a Canadian adult animated sitcom starring Don McKellar, about one man's misadventures in temporary employment. Seen on and produced for The Comedy Network, a cable specialty channel, Adult Swim and MuchMusic in Latin America, 2x2 in Russia, Hulu in the United States, and MusiquePlus in the French speaking Canada. A total of 52 episodes were produced over four seasons.
Dave Foley is a Canadian-American actor, stand-up comedian, director, producer and writer. He is known as a co-founder of the comedy group The Kids in the Hall, who have appeared together in a number of television, stage and film productions, most notably the 1988–1995 TV sketch comedy show of the same name, as well as the 1996 film Brain Candy.
King of Kensington is a Canadian television sitcom which aired on CBC Television from 1975 to 1980.
Bruce Ian McCulloch is a Canadian actor, comedian, writer, musician and film director. McCulloch is perhaps best known for his work as a member of the comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall, including starring in the TV series of the same name. He was also a writer for Saturday Night Live. McCulloch has appeared on other series including Twitch City and Gilmore Girls. He directed the films Dog Park, Stealing Harvard and Superstar.
Life with Lucy is an American sitcom starring Lucille Ball that aired for one season on ABC from September 20 to November 15, 1986. It is the only Lucille Ball sitcom to not air on CBS and the very last sitcom she starred in before her death in 1989. Only 8 out of the 13 episodes produced were aired before ABC cancelled the series. Unlike Ball's previous sitcoms, Life with Lucy was a failure in the ratings and poorly received by critics and viewers alike.
Mark Douglas Brown McKinney is a Canadian actor and comedian. He is perhaps best known as a member of the sketch comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall, which includes starring in the 1989 to 1995 TV series The Kids in the Hall and 1996 feature film Brain Candy. He was a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1995 to 1997; and from 2003 to 2006, he co-created, wrote and starred in the series Slings & Arrows. He also appeared as Tom in FXX's Man Seeking Woman. From 2015 to 2021, he appeared as store manager Glenn Sturgis on NBC's Superstore.
Humour is an integral part of the Canadian identity. There are several traditions in Canadian humour in both English and French. While these traditions are distinct and at times very different, there are common themes that relate to Canadians' shared history and geopolitical situation in North America and the world. Though neither universally kind nor moderate, humorous Canadian literature has often been branded by author Dick Bourgeois-Doyle as "gentle satire," evoking the notion embedded in humorist Stephen Leacock's definition of humour as "the kindly contemplation of the incongruities of life and the artistic expression thereof."
3-South is an American adult animated sitcom created by Mark Hentemann for MTV. It originally aired for 10 episodes from November 7, 2002 to January 16, 2003.
Don McKellar is a Canadian actor, writer, playwright, and filmmaker. He was part of a loosely-affiliated group of filmmakers to emerge from Toronto known as the Toronto New Wave.
Terry Kinney is an American actor and theater director, and a founding member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, with Gary Sinise and Jeff Perry. Kinney is best known for his role as Tim McManus on HBO's prison drama Oz.
Woops! is an American postapocalyptic sitcom that aired on the Fox network from September 27 to December 6, 1992. The series was created by Gary Jacobs, and produced by Witt/Thomas Productions in association with Touchstone Television.
Robert Martin is a television and musical theatre actor and writer from Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Cavemen is an American sitcom that aired on ABC from October 2 to November 20, 2007. The show was developed by Joe Lawson, Josh Gordon and Will Speck, based on the GEICO Cavemen TV commercials, which were also written by Lawson. It was described by the network as a "unique buddy comedy that offers a clever twist on stereotypes and turns race relations on its head", and is set in San Diego, California. However, the show earned an extremely negative reception, becoming regarded as one of the worst television shows of all time.
The Kids in the Hall: Death Comes to Town is an eight-episode Canadian mini-series that aired on CBC Television on Tuesdays between January 12 and March 16, 2010. The show takes place in a fictional Ontario town called Shuckton where their mayor has been murdered. As the Shuckton residents cope with the loss, a new lawyer moves in to prosecute a suspect – though another resident, unsatisfied with the evidence, tries to find the real killer. At the same time, a character who is a personification of death waits at a motel room for the latest Shuckton residents to die.
Spun Out is a Canadian television sitcom created by Jeff Biederman, Brent Piaskoski and Brian K. Roberts for CTV. It premiered on March 6, 2014 and ended on October 3, 2015, with a total of 26 episodes over the course of two seasons.
The Paynes is an American television sitcom that premiered on January 16, 2018, on the Oprah Winfrey Network. The show was created, written, and directed by Tyler Perry and serves as a sequel to his previous series, Tyler Perry's House of Payne.
The Kids in the Hall is a Canadian sketch comedy TV series that aired for five seasons from 1988 to 1995, and a sixth revival season in 2022, starring the comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall. The troupe, consisting of comedians Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney, Bruce McCulloch, and Scott Thompson, appeared as almost all the characters throughout the series, both male and female, and also wrote most of the sketches.