We have lift off - Canadian television comedy

Comedy is a major Canadian export. Sometimes it seems like most of the comics in Hollywood are Canadian. Having apparently saturated the U.S. market, and not content to think globally, Canadian comedy is seeking other markets. Far out.

American astronaut Dr Mike Foale enjoys The New Red Green Show, starring Steve Smith, Rick Green, Pat McKenna and several of their huntin' and fishin' buddies from the Possum Lodge. Smith's Hamilton-based S&S Productions received a request in April from NASA for several episodes of the show. It seems Dr. Foale wanted to take them along on his trip to the Mir space station last month. (Foale usually watches Red and the gang on the PBS station in Houston.) Anxious to help the space programme, S&S forwarded 24 episodes to mission control.

Steve Smith plays the laconic, but inventive Red Green, Rick Green is the madcap Bill and Pat McKenna is Red's nerdy nephew Harold. McKenna also stars in Traders, and is "the funniest guy in Canada," according to Rick Green.

I asked Green about his science connections. "I wanted to communicate and dispel the prejudice that people have against science, that it's cold, that it's not human, that it's complicated, that it's deliberately obtuse and obscure," says Green. "If there is a connection between physics and comedy it's that it is about reversing the frame of reference and changing, upsetting apple carts and seeing beyond the surface of things and looking inside. Nothing is the way it seems."

Green didn't want to work in a lab, however. "I was the class clown," he admits. Armed with a science degree, Green spent four years entertaining the public with laser and cryogenics demonstrations at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto, which leads me to believe there's good reason for Red Green's popularity with astronaut types. Didn't Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry have himself cryogenically frozen and blasted into space?

Moving on from science demos, I learned that Green's next career stop was The Frantics and seven years of radio comedy with Paul Chato, Dan Redican and Peter Wildman. The same personnel collaborated on the Four on the Floor TV series. When the Frantics split up in 1988, Green did several radio series with Wildman including the ACTRA-winner Those People Across the Street. Then Green's path veered back towards entertaining with science, as he hosted and wrote Prisoners of Gravity, a hip but thoroughly knowledgeable look at comic books and science fiction. Prisoners with Commander Rick at the controls ran for five years on TVO, and still has cult status with North American sci-fi aficionados.

Not content to write and perform on one programme, Green was already helping Steve Smith write The Red Green Show, which had its debut on Hamilton's CHCH-TV. (The show later moved to CTV/YTV; then Global. In October, earthbound Canadians can watch it's seventh season on CBC.)

"Astronauts will get the hidden sophistication," says Green, who also directs, adding that those who dismiss the show as "low-brow" have not watched a whole episode. "It works on two or three levels," he says, pointing out their monologues on body piercing, homosexuality and tolerance. "The show is deliberately trying to break all the rules," he says. "We can say anything we want." The ingenious Handyman Corner segments of the show would definitely appeal to an astronaut. For example, Red once cut a patio table in pieces and turned it into a windsurfer, complete with sail.

Hugely popular with North American audiences, the Red Green fan club has over 80,000 members. Many are women from all walks of life, says Green. This is because the show is really tough on men. Green calls it a "show about the idiocy of men." Fans will be interested to know that Smith and Green have used the popular book, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus as a reference work when writing the show. Hmmm.... Mars... Venus. Is this another inter-planetary connection?

What does the plaid-clad Red think of the show's premiere in outer space? Green reports that Red is shocked, but says "we've been working in a vacuum for years." Green adds knowingly that astronauts, when offered their choice of drinks, chose Tang over real orange juice. What the Russian astronauts will make of the Red Green brand of anarchy, heaven knows. Meanwhile, keep your stick on the ice.

COPYRIGHT 1997 Performing Arts and Entertainment in Canada
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group