While it can be argued that there are a great many areas of weakness within the Canadian film and television industry there are two areas where my beloved northern home are clear international leaders: Stories about incest and short form comedy. You want family dysfunction? We've got LOTS of that. And sketch comedy? Yep, we got that, too.
This is, after all, the land of SCTV and The Kids In The Hall. We are the land that gave America John Candy and Rick Moranis and Martin Short and Catherine O'Hara and Mike Myers and Jim Carrey and Andrea Martin and Samantha Bee and literally a host of others.
And perhaps it is this rich history of sketch comedy that led the CBC - our generally stodgy public broadcaster - to throw their support behind the ComedyCoup, an audience focused comedy accelerator designed to identify the best and brightest young talents and help them bring a pilot to the screen. And they have done just that with the freshly aired Humantown.
The tale of a young goblin coming to live amongst humanity, Humantown was directed by Portal To Hell's Vivieno Caldinelli and features former Kid In The Hall Scott Thompson alongside the core group of young talents. And now that the pilot has hit television the CBC has posted the entire thing online for free with the general premise being that if enough people watch it and enough buzz builds around it the show will go to a full series.