Comedy classics ‘Police Squad!’ and ‘SCTV’ return to glory on Netflix

Résumé détaillé

Both shows were outliers when they originally aired and struggled to find a network home. Now, they're both on Netflix.

The two funniest things on TV right now are not from right now. They’re both vintage outliers that their original networks didn’t really know what to do with. They showed that silliness could be hyper-intelligent, even inspired. And thanks to Netflix, they’re back in all their decades-old glory.

You can and should get lost in the laughter of “Police Squad!” and the documentary “SCTV: The Greatest Show You’ve Never Heard Of,” both emissaries from a late-’70s/early-’80s period of comedy that offer far more than mere nostalgia.

As “The Greatest Show” reminds us, the sketch comedy series “SCTV” played like “Saturday Night Live”’s eccentric, fun-loving cousin from up north, clearly Canadian and riotously funny to anyone who had ever turned on a TV. The premise was simple enough: Each episode represents a broadcast day of a TV station in the fictional town of Melonville. The cast was blindingly talented: John Candy, Catherine O’Hara, Eugene Levy, Martin Short, Andrea Martin, Joe Flaherty, Dave Thomas, and Harold Ramis formed a dynamic core that satirized anything and everything having to do with television.

Newton’s Jason Hehir filmed the documentary before O’Hara died earlier this year, and much of the film captures her, Levy, Short, Martin, and Thomas reminiscing over favorite clips. They, and we, have much to savor. There’s Moranis’s Dick Cavett, interviewing … Moranis’s Dick Cavett. There’s Levy as clueless, fatuous comedian Bobby Bittman, and O’Hara as a feisty, tangent-prone Katharine Hepburn. As an ensemble, the “SCTV” gang formed a single organism, connected by uncommon improv instincts and a contagious mandate: Have fun.

Things didn’t always go smoothly. Egos were bruised when a throwaway skit from Moranis and Thomas turned into the runaway McKenzie Brothers phenomenon; both actors express regret for their part in the schism. There’s also been a lot of loss in the SCTV family: Candy, Flaherty, O’Hara, and Ramis have all passed away.

“Police Squad!” burned much faster…

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