What’s the Secret Sauce Behind Canadian Comedy?
Canadians get a lot of credit for being funny. From sketch to sit-coms we have a knack for making people laugh. While there’s no one recipe for funny, there are some specifically Canadian ingredients that are spread liberally throughout our wittiest shows.
Can you feel it?
There’s a lot of anger out there.
Canadians are feeling peeved, vexed, annoyed.
Much of that wrath is directed at our neighbours to the south and a particular American president.
One way to deal with the stress of tariffs, annexation and whatever else the universe is throwing at us is to turn off the bad news and turn on a TV comedy.
Laughter may not be the best medicine, but it is something Canadians turn to, and is something we are very good at creating.
How do we do it?
We’re a small nation of 40-million people who hail from diverse cultural backgrounds. We live spread out across a huge nation, from remote communities to big cities. And for the past 70 years we’ve gone head-to-head with big-budget American comedies.
Spend a few minutes channel surfing and you’ll come across any number of stellar Canadian comedies — Letterkenny, Small Achievable Goals, Schitt’s Creek, North of North, Kim’s Convenience, Shoresy, to name just a few.
The types of comedy, performers and subject matter vary but they all make us laugh.
So, what is the common denominator?
It’s our sense of community, or rather communities.
Communities Ferment Funny
There are shows that celebrate life in small towns where everyone knows each other — and each other’s business. No character escapes scrutiny, but then again no one is ostracized. It’s about connectedness served up as a smorgasbord of comedic dishes.
The fish-out-of-water Rose family finds a home in Schitt’s Creek. Hockey players, farmers and Mennonites unite using crude wordplay in Letterkenny, and there’s nothing but clever ribbing among the Dog River townsfolk of Corner Gas.
And our comedies dive deep into multiculturalism. Unlike many American TV comedies, Canadian shows embrace our cultural diversity, playfully tackling stereotypes and exposing them for laughs.
It’s been part of our media landscape for decades.
Da Kink in My Hair, set in a hair salon in the heart of Toronto’s Caribbean-Canadian community, broke ground in 2007 as the first Canadian comedy created by and starring Black women.
Little Mosque on the Prairie enlightened viewers about the Muslim faith.
Kim’s Convenience found humour by juxtaposing traditional Korean and modern Canadian cultures while opening a window into the immigrant experience as shopkeepers Appa (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) and Umma (Jean Yoon) dealt with life in a new nation.
When the characters spoke with Korean accents some critics took exception, thinking it was used to garner cheap laughs. But in 2016 Lee told MacLean’s, “The accent — the accent isn’t the joke. It’s part of who he is, but it isn’t the joke…. Appa is not just a voice. He’s not a stereotype. A stereotype is the end of a character.”
These shows paved the way for some of today’s most innovative Canadian comedies. Queer culture is celebrated and skewered in I Hate People, People Hate Me. An unhappy Inuk mother looks to reinvent herself in North of North. We follow the hilarious misadventures of a Punjabi Sikh millennial and wannabe influencer in Late Bloomer. Two young First Nations women make all the wrong decisions on their way to adulthood in Don’t Even.
Differing Tastes in Canada and the U.S.?
It’s fascinating to compare Canadian versus American comedy.
While so many of our comedies centre around specific communities, American shows find their humour in the workplace. The Office, Parks and Recreation, Superstore, 30 Rock, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Party Down and Abbott Elementary come to mind.
Of course we see characters outside of work on those shows, but most of the laughs bubble up from workplace mishaps, relationships and pressures.
Perhaps it’s because the tenets of American society — the drive to succeed, acquiring status and wealth — are so deeply ingrained in their culture that creators consider the workplace a wellspring of comedy.
Sketch Comedy is a Staple
When Canadians want to make fun of the workplace we turn to sketch comedy and, not to brag — that would be very unCanadian — but our sketch comedy is world class.
SCTV, first broadcast in 1976, set the standard for sketch shows and its influence reverberates today. Set in a fictitious TV station in the fictitious town of Melonville, SCTV parodied all things TV, including the pain of working for a low-budget network. The show’s young cast went on to become comedy legends, including Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, John Candy, Rick Moranis and Harold Ramis.
SCTV’s legacy inspired Kids in the Hall’s troupe of Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Scott Thompson, Kevin McDonald and Mark McKinney. The men took great delight in lampooning office work, whether it was in the recurring “Secretaries” skit (featuring Cathy with a C and Kathy with a K), or mocking businessmen (sometimes by crushing their heads), nine-to-five life never looked sillier.
And a big shoutout to the Baroness Von Sketch Show’s all-female ensemble of Meredith MacNeill, Carolyn Taylor, Jennifer Whalen and Aurora Browne, who skewered the modern workplace with piercing feminist humour in sketches such as “Honesty Circle,” in which nervous office workers are encouraged to share their feelings in a “safe space,” and are then fired anyway.
Add a Dash of Compassion
It’s been said that one of Canada’s greatest exports is our goodwill, whether it be peacekeepers or comedians.
In a 2019 interview with the website Refinery 29, Catherine O’Hara said, “At the risk of self-regard, I'd say that we Canadians know how to make fun of ourselves without it being all about us. We laugh with the world with intelligence and compassion and, often, with a dark sense of humour.”
It is telling that O’Hara includes compassion in her definition.
If there is one thing the world needs now, it’s compassion. We can still poke fun at ourselves and others in these uncertain times, but let’s do so with the understanding that our shortcomings and missteps are what make us human and unite us beyond any borders.
