Canadian TV Bottom 5

This is a surprisingly short thread, bearing in mind the rich seam of horror that's out there.

All the above (even Wind At My Back) are wonderous compared to the newest shitty kid on the block, "Little Mosque On The Prairie". It's like the CBC issued a challenge to create something more unfunny than Red Green, more cloying than Wind At My Back and more corny than Air Farce. They succeeded. I lasted approximately 4 minutes. Beat that!

all those fucking makeover/lifestyle shows that miss the whole fucking point and are clearly just advertorials for assholes.

Is there a Top 5 of Canadian TV?

Passe-Partout
E-Talk Daily
Entertainment Tonight Canada
Canada AM
Definition

(that's the top 5)

I don't think I've ever seen any Canadian TV - apart from that "Kids in the Hall" thing

THE BEST

even better

The Carlton Showband (or whatever the fuck it was called. It was on CTV in the '70s)
Hymn Sing
The Tommy Hunter Show
The Beachcombers
Air Farce

Best:
Harrigan
The Hilarious House of Frightenstein
SCTV
Kids In The Hall
The Mad Dash

best
xpost

ok this is even better still!

There is so much shit to choose from...

- corner gas
- comedy inc.
- royal canadian air farce
- trailer park boys
- sons of butcher

tops

- Kids in the hall
- ren and stimpy (this totally counts)
- hockey night in canada (this also counts)
- bumper stumpers
- degrassi

oh shit, i think there was also a show call sketch.com which belongs with the worsts in the top 5. maybe drop trailer park boys because people like that for some reason. maybe i need to give it a chance (seems unlikely though)

worst: kevin spencer

OK, so "Kids in the Hall" is considered the best of Canadian TV? Crikey...

bottom:
- air farce (not funny)
- little mosque on the prairie (terrible concept, terrible waste of money, terrible show)
- the best years (new show that won't last out the summer, partly b/c i don't this it was meant to in the first place - but man is it bad teen tv)
- train 48
- yeah, all those home & garden fix-it shows of dubious value and content

top:
- kids in the hall
- degrassi
- twitch city (this was great!)
- sctv
- this hour has 22 minutes (sometimes)
- you can't do that on television
- fraggle rock (co-produced btwn canada, us and britain but co-written by canadian poets!)
- the friendly giant
- mr dressup

The fuck? Kids is classic, come one. Even my American friends think so. I'll argue that it may have been better than any period of SNL. Four On the Floor has been undeservedly neglected. Anyone like Codco? Air Farce really blows, I agree, though I loved it when it was on radio. I don't know it was just because I was younger.

I also have fond memories of: Street Cents and various old MuchMusic shows, esp CityLimits.

The "boy and girl detective" thing Poppy was calling out better not be Read All About It.

Tangent: I've been watching TV5 (from France) to try to avoid losing my French. Yesterday, they were playing a French Canadian programme but they played it WITH SUBTITLES. I'm pretty sure I've seen this before. What the fuck is the reason for this? I don't expect subtitles if I watch a programme from Scotland or Australia or something. The subtitles were almost direct transcriptions of the dialogue with a couple words changed here and there ("copine" instead of "blonde", etc.)

(It's hard to pick worst because I usually don't watch shows if I don't think they're that good. You Can't Do That... was appalling though. Chilly Lake is a bit lame.

I'll rep for The Hour as well.

Da Vinci's Inquest has been sadly absent from all top lists so far. I'm just mentioning it, too lazy to come up with 3 other bearable canadian tv shows (KITH being the other pick).

Worst:
1) Pitfall - a) If you won, you got $5000 but they had to cut that in half and they still couldn't pay all the winners. Hell they couldn't even pay a younger Alex Trebek for hosting it. Plus the elevators broke multiple times.
2) Check It Out - Get Smart in a supermarket without the spies or the humour.
3) Train 48. If the BBC's The office was wholesome and on a train and not funny and just about everything The Office isn't. But I still bet that the idea started with making a Canadian version of The Office that could air on CTV.
4) The Air Farce - they were funny on the radio, they even got a good laugh the first time they shot coleslaw at Robert Goulet. But that wasn't worth 14 years of that crap on my television.
5) Pick a Canadian talk show, I'll choose The Alan Thicke Show. I don't believe either of Howie Mandel's talk shows count as Canadian but I could be wrong.

Best:
1) Reboot - Season 3 was so far ahead of it's time. The Binome With No Name, Talent Night (season two I admit), Firewall, Trust No One and Nullzilla.
2) X Files before things got screwed up by David.
3) Kids In the Hall
4) Trailer Park Boys
5) Ironic Answer: King of Kensington, real answer: Hockey Night In Canada

Honourable mentions (I haven't seen season 2 yet) Battlestar Galactica, This Hour Has 22 Minutes/Codco.

And another mention to This Is Wonderland for being more hit then miss, featuring the less annoying panhandlers in Nathan Phillips Square (no sticker lady or shaky lady) in their bumper shots and basing a character an continuing storyline on Kevin.

All these are on either HGTV or the Food Network:

Worst

Buy Me - Only necessary to watch if you want to find out how not to sell your home.

Cook Like A Chef - Ghastly set, complex food, on at 4 in the morning for some unknown reason.

Eat, Shrink and Be Merry - How to make food that is purportedly bad for you in a healthier way, with plenty of blind taste tests and WACKY fun.

The Junk Brothers - Two brothers pick up large wooden objects left on the curb, go back to the garage and transform them into supposedly 'cool' objects that are then returned to the same houses. Not as fun as it sounds.

That Food, This Wine - aka the Lipgloss Wine Porn Show. Lots of close-ups of shiny lips drinking from shiny glasses, as 'easy' food is prepared and matched with wine in some alternate universe that could only be Alberta. Just beats out Fixing Dinner, wherein Sandi Richard shows a family who don't have a clue on how to cook the joys of dumping meats in store-bought sauces.

Best

Food Jammers - Food enthusiasts make their own equipment to produce whatever food they want. Extremely cool, and has the best soundtrack on tv, period.

Green Force - A small but determined bunch of landscape/gardener types overhaul unused/ugly/dangerous spaces - literally bringing life and plants and color to the world. Every city in the world should have its own Green Force. Last week they redid the play area in a school for disabled children and it made me cry. So so excellent.

Holmes on Homes - A contractor and his team right horrible wrongs. Watch it enough and you will know how to spot any problem anywhere in a house, and what the cause is. Stephen Harper, if he was smart, would have his picture taken with Mike Holmes, but he didn't. HA.

Restaurant Makeover - Not perfect, but once again, more of this thing should be happening - restaurants have their decor and menus gone over, in a week's time. The chefs are blunt (but not like Gordon Ramsay), the designers are under a ridiculous deadline, but they always pull it off. Even if the restaurants don't always completely go with the change, they always look better.

The Surreal Gourmet - Bob Blumer & his Toastermobile roam around making food based on a theme according to where he is and who he is cooking for - excellent for technique, inspiration, humor and fun.

Best (in no particular order):

1)Read All About It
2)Kids In The Hall
3)Degrassi (from "Kids of..." to "Degrassi High")
4)The Trailer Park Boys
5)Street Legal

Honourable mentions: Rocket Robin Hood, Today's Special, City Limits, Fashion Television, The New Music, Mike and Mike's Excellent X-Canada Adventures and The Passionate eye.

I wish we got more Canadian TV here. Corner Gas is AWESOME and I have got to find it on DVD cause I missed a lot of the episodes. Perfectly dry, laid back humour.

The Newsroom was Canadian too wasn't it?

-Five channels of late-night bikinis and smooth jazz.

corner gas is painful

-Five channels of late-night bikinis and smooth jazz.

Best AND worst. I like the one where they shoot each other with water pistols.

also, repping for The Hour as Best or Worst. I find George S'ous unbearable smarmy and nigh unwatchable. I never thought I'd miss Avi Lewis.
Where's the love for Passe-Partout?
I've been watching A LOT of Slice lately, because I'm a sucker for repranding. X-Weighted is a delight.

That "petite patate portant un type de top" or whatever would have been more impressive if ALL French phrases didn't turn out like that.

My love of Corner Gas is both expected and well known around here.

My issue with Restaurant Makeover is the fake conflict they have each episode. The first season at least had Igor stifling a laugh each time he had to come up with some reason why they couldn't do something on time. Also had Kurt Swinghammer as local 'famous artist' @ The Oasis was bizarre. Also bizarre was seeing Island Delites at Eglinton and Weston on the show.

I hear there showing the Battle Bacon on Iron Chef this weekend.

OMG I thought of another "best" - WOK WITH YAN - how could I forget!?

Some days I can look past Wikipedia's shortcomings, like the days I find a list of Yan's aprons. Keep on Woking In The Free World is probably my favorite.

woooook
Wokking My Baby Back Home
Men at Wok
Wok Around the Clock
Wok the Heck
You Are Wok You Eat
Wok Goes Up Must Come Down
All Wokked Up
Watch For Falling Woks
Wok up a Sweat
Wok goes in must come out
Wok On The Wild Side
The Days of Wok and Roses
New Kid on the Wok
Over Wok, Under Pay
On a clear day, you can wok forever
Luke Skywokker
50 Ways to Wok Your Dog
Wok's New Pussycat?
Wokkey Night in Canada
All Wok And No Play Makes Yan a Dull Boy
Keep On Wokking In the Free World
Wokking In Memphis
Wok King Tall
Don't Wok The Boat
Giant steps are what you take Wokking on the Moon
Wok Like a Man
The Incredible Wok
Raiders of the Lost Wok

I likethe Wikipedia list of cooking shows from Canada. It reminded me of the existence of "Barely Cooking"-- the show where the cooks where nothing but an apron. Can you imagine frying bacon? Son of a bitch...

Yet it has no entry for Just Like Mom, which was part cooking show part children's game show.

yeah that was a good show
i have an old Wok with Yan paperback recipe book!

i like that rundown of hgtv/food network shows. i wish i could watch some of the good ones but at the same time i am glad i never had cable and now have no tv (oh but i watch the shit outta cable tv when over at anyone's place where there is cable). hgtv and food network should have more shows on their websites is what i'm saying really.

Is this the same Yan as in Yan Can Cook? And if so: Seriously, he was Canadian!?

No, they're different guys. Martin Yan was the host of Yan Can Cook. He's American. Stephen Yan hosted Wok with Yan and he is Canadian.

Seriously

OK, my Canadadar isn't quite that bad then.

who was the 1st Yan is what I want to know!