SCTV Second City Television

Second City Television




SCTV was so fun to watch enjoyed all episodes.
Second City Television (SCTV) was a Canadian
television sketch comedy show offshoot from
Toronto's The Second City troupe that ran
between 1976 and 1984. The basic premise of
SCTV is that it is an independent television
station in the city of Melonville, in an
unknown state or province. Rather than
broadcasting the usual TV rerun fare, the
station produces a bizarre and humorously
incompetent range of cheap local programming.
This can range from a soap opera called
"The Days of the Week", to game shows like
"Shoot At The Stars", in which celebrities
are literally shot at like targets in a
shooting gallery, to full blown movie spoofs
like "Play it Again, Bob" in which Woody
Allen (Rick Moranis) tries to get Bob Hope
(Dave Thomas) to star in his next film.
In-house media melodrama was also satirised
with characters like John Candy's vain,
bloated variety star Johnny La Rue, Dave
Thomas' acerbic critic Bill Needle, Joe
Flaherty's wheelchair-bound program manager
Guy Caballero, and Andrea Martin's flamboyant,
leopard-skin clad station manager Mrs. Edith
Prickley.SCTV was initially produced starting
in 1976 at the Toronto studios of the Global
Television Network, then a small regional
network of stations in Southern Ontario. The
original SCTV cast consisted of John Candy,
Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin,
Catherine O'Hara, Ramis and Dave Thomas. All
also served as writers on the show, although
Martin and O'Hara did not receive writing
credits on the very earliest episodes.
For the second season (1978/79), SCTV became
a weekly series on Global, and was
seen in syndication throughout Canada and
parts of the United States. After episode 3
of the second season, Ramis was no longer in
the cast but continued to receive credit as
the show's head writer.