Slings & Arrows
June 12th, 2007
After Twitch City, another outstanding TV show from Canada. Set at a provincial theater, Slings & Arrows is populated with all the stock types: the borderline-mad artistic director, the sell-out manager, the nosy American board member eager to put on Mamma Mia!, the aging diva, the budding ingénue (Rachel McAdams). Don McKellar makes an appearance as a hilarious conceptual artiste. Imbued by a snappy script with growing complexity and a rich back story, the characters are both hilarious and lovable at the same time. The Hamlet theme is elegantly woven through the entire season–director Geoffrey Tenant (Paul Gross) regularly chats with his predecessor’s ghost–and by the time opening night rolls around, all the actor jokes are redeemed by an honest-to-god glimpse at the magic of making theater. Remarkable.
Slings and Arrows, Season 1. Peter Wellington, 2003. ****
YouTube has what looks like entire seasons, cut up into ten-minute pieces. Here’s the opening of episode one:
Twitch City
April 13th, 2007
Most people seem to know Molly Parker from Deadwood, but to us she’ll always be the stripping drummer in that movie Paul Auster disowned. In this late nineties TV series set in a dinky Toronto apartment, she’s the hapless girlfriend of Curtis, a cereal-munching talk show addict shut-in played by Don McKellar, who also co-wrote the show. Twitch City undermines the wholesome Friends sitcom formula with a serious slacker attitude; the first episode revolves around who has to go out and buy the cat food. Curtis is refreshingly selfish and cynical, and much of the plot rests on the increasingly absurd parade of roommates who pass through, including a bunch of neo-Nazis, a sprawling Portuguese family, and a gang of criminals storing psychedelic cookies. In the midst of the satirical hip, there are flashes of real sweetness between Parker and McKellar. Like the Rex Reilly show Curtis tapes and rewatches compulsively, Twitch City is wicked addictive. All 13 episodes are out on DVD.
Twitch City. Bruce McDonald, ****
