SCTV: Behind the Scenes

Sarah Robertson is an associate editor of the Canadian Book Review
Annual.

SCTV was a fortuitous meshing of brilliant comic energies that ran, in
various incarnations, between 1976 and 1984. Dave Thomas’s
well-produced and candid telling of the SCTV story is supplemented by
the recollections of the show’s producers, directors, backstage
personnel, and surviving cast members (Eugene Levy and Andrea Martin are
conspicuous exceptions); by a running trivia quiz and complete listing
of sketches; and by a generous selection of photographs, including some
200 images pulled from videotapes of the show.

The book chronicles the genesis of notable SCTV characters and
sketches, the company’s transition from stage to television, the
relationship between writing and performing, the evolution of SCTV from
a producer-controlled show to a cast-controlled show, the ongoing
budgetary constraints and swings between creative flow and burnout, and
the inevitable winding down. One chapter provides an interesting
comparison of SCTV and Saturday Night Live; another is devoted to
memories of John Candy. The perfunctory treatment of show’s final two
seasons, when Martin Short reigned supreme, is perhaps explained by the
fact that Thomas had left the show by that time.

As characterized in these pages, the SCTV cast members were highly
competitive with one another and prone to envy (the unexpected eruption
of the McKenzie Brothers phenomenon was a particular sore point), but at
the same time remarkably united when it came to battling producers for
creative control. Thomas accords generous praise to his colleagues and
is refreshingly frank about his own hair-trigger temper, which prompted
him on one occasion to hurl a chair through a window.

A sense of melancholy hangs over the book’s final chapters, as
various contributors reflect on life after SCTV. The reunion some had
anticipated happened not on the television screen but at John Candy’s
funeral. In a book marked by sharply divergent opinions and
perspectives, there is unanimous agreement that SCTV was a creative
zenith—unappreciated at the time—for all who participated in it.
Appropriately, the book ends with this comment by Joe Flaherty: “We
will never have that chance again. We will never get that kind of a shot
at it.”