Retro Canadian TV Kicks Ass, Eh!

Ahead Of Our Time & Really Good Shows From The Great White North

There’s a lot of talk about US television and British TV. Honestly, although I grew up on US television in the 70s and 80s and loved it, I prefer British TV. Why? Because it was (and is) more realistic.

I remember giggling at the poor downtrodden folks on British shows. They weren’t stick thin, they didn’t have perfect teeth. They weren’t all blonde. They looked like real people that you met every day. it was nice to see people that looked like actual people on TV. Oh, and the acting was far superior to any American show I’d seen.

But, being a rebellious little beaver, I shunned the good old fashioned Canadian content. Canadian content, you say? Yeah. back in the day, there was a body called the CRTC (Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission) that mandated TV stations in the nation of the maple leaf had to air a certain amount of Canadian produced content. A lot of it was crap.

Seriously, a lot of it was awful. But a lot of it was brilliant! I preface this by saying I don’t need to hear how great Andromeda or Schitt’s Creek was. I’m looking back, way, way back into the retro vault for some gems from my youth.

The Beachcombers: I HATED this show as a kid! It was Must-See TV in my house during its entire run from 1972–to 1990. I never actually watched it. I just knew it was Canadian and my parents watched it. That was enough.

Fast forward a few years and, wouldn’t you know it, the show was actually good? More than good. Bruno Gerussi and the gang gave masterful performances.

The show centred around Gerussi, a Greek-Canadian and his Indigenous partner Jesse, who logged up and down the Vancouver coast. There were a ton of great characters, including Relic, who made me giggle.

The Beachcombers is an icon of Canadian television and deserves to be. It’s pretty damn good:

Degrassi Jr. High/Degrassi High: Move over 90210 because edgy teen drama actually started north of the border.

In 1979, Linda Schyler started a little show in Toronto called Kids of Degrassi Street. Those kids went from an elementary school to a junior high (middle school in current parlance) and then onto high school. The show just kind of evolved alongside the kids.

There was no makeup or wardrobe department. These were real kids, wearing their real stuff and acting their little asses off.

Degrassi, both Jr. and Sr. High dealt with the real things us 80s kids were dealing with without the sugar coating of Growing Pains or The Cosby Show.

Wheels’ parents were killed by a drunk driver and he had to move in with his grandmother. Inter-racial dating, child abuse, AIDS, bullying…they had it. Jeepers H. Crackers, Spike got pregnant in Jr. high, her water broke at the 8th-grade prom and she kept the baby!

You may not get how huge that was back then, but it was. To see real kids dealing with real issues was huge for us. We didn’t want neat happy endings in 30 minutes. We didn’t want a sermon. We wanted understanding. We wanted to see people that struggled with the things we did and Degrassi did that.

Time Of Your Life: Uggg, this one was so bad it was brilliant! The acting was wooden. The filming sucked. But somehow, it came off as authentic. I was hooked. When I say bad, I’m not kidding, it was so poorly done they had to have done it on purpose.

The show was basically a bunch of kids in Montreal and it was supposed to be a soap opera. It was often dark and gritty, which I loved. It dealt with all the issues, addiction, rape, abortion, suicide, cults, and sex. It was 90210 before the fancy zip code and with none of the glitz.

Again, it was a show showing a coming of age population the real, down and dirty truth of life as a teenager in the late 80s. And truth was what we were looking for.

Watch at your own risk, the acting is so bad, you can’t look away. It’s like a trainwreck. So, so bad, yet so, so good.

North of 60: No bad, all good. Not even all good, all fucking amazing. This show, about a Canadian Indigenous band in the north navigating life in an alcohol-free town, is one of the best things to have ever been on the small screen ever. Full stop. Period. Fight me.

It’s brilliantly written. It’s brilliantly acted by Tina Keeper, Dakota House, Tom Jackson and the late great Jimi Herman and Gordon Tootoosis, among others. It’s funny, it’s dramatic. it’s just really good. There’s seriously not a bad episode.

And I’m still championing a reboot. It ran from 1992–to 1998, produced several movies and I still haven’t had enough. I even wrote a story about how I think a reboot should go:

Give North of 60 a shot. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll feel something and that’s the hallmark of good writing, feeling.

Kids In The Hall: Come on, did you really think we were getting out of here without mentioning the very best sketch TV show ever in life? SNL pales in comparison. In Living Colour was great. But before the Wayans family took over our screens, there were The Kids In The Hall.

This ragtag band of 5 boys showed up on our screens in 1988. Scott Thompson was openly and flamboyantly (exaggeratedly so, but still) gay as hell at a time you’d never seen that on TV. The guys dressed up as women. They took on all the sacred cows.

They were hilarious. They were irreverent. They were brave. They were ahead of their time and they were totally underrated as far as I’m concerned. I laughed so hard with these guys.

Here’s one of my favourite clips. I’m not even sure why. Maybe it reflects the mundane nature of 80s/90s suburban life, but I’m on the lookout for that salty ham:

And don’t fret, the boys are back! May 13, they’re going to be back with a reboot and I’m super excited!

Neon Rider: This show, featuring Winston Recket was brilliant! It showcased the late, great Mr Recket as Michael Terry, a disaffected psychologist that opens a ranch for wayward youngsters.

Through tough love, common sense, a bit of street smarts and a boatload of understanding, the Canadian version of Michael Landon, guided these youngsters to a better life. Canadian Michael Landon you ask? Yeah, I said it. He was ruggedly handsome with that on-screen soft persona that made you want to love him.

I was a pretty good kid, but the idea of becoming a baddie and going to Neon Ranch for some really strict discipline, yeah, I was down with that…hehehe. Sorry, I digress…Where was I?

Oh, yeah, good show. The writing and acting were brilliant. The storylines were good. And its 6 year run from 1989–1995 wasn’t nearly enough for me.

Honourable Mentions: There are a few shows I grew up with that I have to give a shout out to even though they don’t land on my list. The Littlest Hobo always made me smile. As did Mr Dressup. Oh and The Trailer Park Boys.

And who could forget Blue Nuit, which aired late nights on TQS, one of the television stations in Quebec. It was basically softcore porn. Not basically, that’s exactly what it was. How they got away with that in 1987 is beyond me, but they did and we were all there for it!

Check out some retro Canadian TV. We’ve been doing great stuff up here for ages. But you never knew it because we don’t like to brag. ;)