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This Radar feature comes from our friends at Toro Magazine, the site that has exactly "What Men Need To Know". |
It's not hard to equate comedy troupes with rock ‘n’ roll bands -- they both come with a history of performance, rabid fandom and courtship from a comparatively square corporate base. With those come arguments over, respectively, who in the group is responsible for what, the inevitability of declining quality and the difference between making it and selling out.
All of those have haunted Kids in the Hall since their fallout from the 1996 Brian Candy film, which was, for all intents and purposes, a failed Hollywood project. Though reruns and their 2000 and 2008 live tours earned back a lot of goodwill, the eight-episode series Death Comes to Town is undoubtedly their comeback “album.”
Inside the physically cramped space of Toronto’s Rivoli lounge -- chosen for its birthing of the troupe’s performing career rather than logistics -- TORO caught an advanced screening of the show’s pilot, and oddly enough for a group returning with many years of supporting roles in crappy movies, a few pounds and less substantial reason to resurrect what has become a kind of brand name for the CBC, it doesn’t disappoint.
Considering everything in the way, it’s surprising how strong DCTT feels on first viewing, and how easily it allows the Kids to rework old ideas -- the police department stereotypes memorably played by Bruce McCulloch and Mark McKinney return, with more familiar characters possibly to come -- and move into darker territory. The plot might even be darker than the medicine and mental illness mockery of Brain Candy, and must have rankled a few execs at the network; McKinney plays Death as an over-the-hill biker who snorts souls like cocaine and arrives in the fictional backwards town of Shuckton, Ontario (complete with a “Town Abortionist” played by Dave Foley), to do away with Mayor Bowman (McCulloch again) and other shady characters.
It’s too early to say where this plot will lead (the Kids have billed it as a “murder mystery,” though we know whodunnit already, and Death hardly counts as a culprit) or if they will be able to maintain what will end up as the longest continuous story in their history. It is clear that this new material hasn’t been corrupted by years of sycophancy and elite contacts. Our soon-to-be-former mayor, David Miller, was in attendance at the screening, but what he thought of Bowman, if anything, I can’t say. The eight-episode Death Comes to Town airs Tuesdays on the CBC starting January 12.
