Goodbye Red Green
Apr. 7th, 2006 09:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ltmurnauhttp://www.cbc.ca/story/arts/national/2006/04/07/red-green-finale.html
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Don your plaid for the final 'Red Green Show'
Last Updated Fri, 07 Apr 2006 11:08:32 EDT
CBC Arts
Fans of The Red Green Show will have to say goodbye to Possum Lodge Friday night when the final episode of the hit Canadian series airs on CBC, ending a 15-year run.
The show, shot before a live audience in Toronto, attracts about one million viewers a week. Many members of the audience wear plaid shirts and carry a roll of duct tape to fit in with the Possum Lodge atmosphere. A fan club boasts about 100,000 members.
"The whole success of the series has been a surprise to me and we have a lot of highlights," Smith said in an interview with CBC Radio. "We got a phone call from NASA saying one of the astronauts was going to the MIR space station and he said he couldn't survive four months without The Red Green Show, so we had to provide them with tapes of our episodes."
The show created a host of memorable characters, including Red Green's straight man and nephew, Harold, played by Patrick McKenna, and the light-fingered Mike Hamar, played by Wayne Robson.
The final show will tape up some loose ends: Harold will get married at the lodge with Red as Minister. Red will also demonstrate creative uses of a pasta maker and build a perpetual motion machine.
Duct tape has always been part of the schtick, but its bond with the show was a calculated marketing move.
"I really wanted to brand the show somehow and we all sat around and the conclusion we came to was we were going to brand it with duct tape," he said. "We wanted people to think of Red Green when they saw duct tape and vice versa."
Since then, there have been duct-tape cars, bras, and bagpipes. And many, many references to the fix-all on the show, including in the final episode.
Red Green started off as a character Smith invented for Smith and Smith, a sketch comedy show he co-produced with his wife, for a local station in Hamilton, Ont. It was a parody of the Canadian outdoors show The Red Fisher Show and Possum Lodge a knock-off of Fisher's Scuttlebutt Lodge.
"I was really making fun of Red Fisher.... I called him the man who thought that nothing would bore you," Smith said. "He thought it was his job to fill the half hour, it was your job to make it interesting. And I thought, 'Oh boy, that's something I can do.' I took his character and started fooling around."
Smith launched The Red Green Show in Hamilton in 1991. After two seasons, it was cancelled. Smith says it turned out to be the best thing that could have happened.
"I was getting a thousand letters a day from people I didn't know and these are Canadians trying to support a Canadian show; trying to keep a Canadian show on the air."
Smith got another Canadian broadcast deal, and then another, before settling in at CBC in 1997. And in the U.S., five PBS stations picked up The Red Green Show. That number eventually soared to more than 100 and the show remains a favourite during the U.S. public broadcaster's pledge drives.
Smith picked McKenna to play Red Green's nephew Harold, after seeing him perform a sketch about a nervous Grade 3 student at The Second City in Toronto.
"A three-minute sketch turned into a 15-year career," McKenna recalled.
Smith says he thinks the show has lasted this long because, unlike other comic characters, the guys at Possum Lodge are gentle and optimistic.
"They may not be the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but they're always trying something. They haven't lost hope; there's no despair."
Smith, a resident of Hamilton, plans to continue writing and running S&S Productions, which produces The Red Green Show.
Smith has been a working comedian and a musician since the mid-1960s and says, after 300 episodes, he won't miss the show. He became a member of the Order of Canada in February.
***
Ave atque vale.
***
Don your plaid for the final 'Red Green Show'
Last Updated Fri, 07 Apr 2006 11:08:32 EDT
CBC Arts
Fans of The Red Green Show will have to say goodbye to Possum Lodge Friday night when the final episode of the hit Canadian series airs on CBC, ending a 15-year run.
The show, shot before a live audience in Toronto, attracts about one million viewers a week. Many members of the audience wear plaid shirts and carry a roll of duct tape to fit in with the Possum Lodge atmosphere. A fan club boasts about 100,000 members.
"The whole success of the series has been a surprise to me and we have a lot of highlights," Smith said in an interview with CBC Radio. "We got a phone call from NASA saying one of the astronauts was going to the MIR space station and he said he couldn't survive four months without The Red Green Show, so we had to provide them with tapes of our episodes."
The show created a host of memorable characters, including Red Green's straight man and nephew, Harold, played by Patrick McKenna, and the light-fingered Mike Hamar, played by Wayne Robson.
The final show will tape up some loose ends: Harold will get married at the lodge with Red as Minister. Red will also demonstrate creative uses of a pasta maker and build a perpetual motion machine.
Duct tape has always been part of the schtick, but its bond with the show was a calculated marketing move.
"I really wanted to brand the show somehow and we all sat around and the conclusion we came to was we were going to brand it with duct tape," he said. "We wanted people to think of Red Green when they saw duct tape and vice versa."
Since then, there have been duct-tape cars, bras, and bagpipes. And many, many references to the fix-all on the show, including in the final episode.
Red Green started off as a character Smith invented for Smith and Smith, a sketch comedy show he co-produced with his wife, for a local station in Hamilton, Ont. It was a parody of the Canadian outdoors show The Red Fisher Show and Possum Lodge a knock-off of Fisher's Scuttlebutt Lodge.
"I was really making fun of Red Fisher.... I called him the man who thought that nothing would bore you," Smith said. "He thought it was his job to fill the half hour, it was your job to make it interesting. And I thought, 'Oh boy, that's something I can do.' I took his character and started fooling around."
Smith launched The Red Green Show in Hamilton in 1991. After two seasons, it was cancelled. Smith says it turned out to be the best thing that could have happened.
"I was getting a thousand letters a day from people I didn't know and these are Canadians trying to support a Canadian show; trying to keep a Canadian show on the air."
Smith got another Canadian broadcast deal, and then another, before settling in at CBC in 1997. And in the U.S., five PBS stations picked up The Red Green Show. That number eventually soared to more than 100 and the show remains a favourite during the U.S. public broadcaster's pledge drives.
Smith picked McKenna to play Red Green's nephew Harold, after seeing him perform a sketch about a nervous Grade 3 student at The Second City in Toronto.
"A three-minute sketch turned into a 15-year career," McKenna recalled.
Smith says he thinks the show has lasted this long because, unlike other comic characters, the guys at Possum Lodge are gentle and optimistic.
"They may not be the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but they're always trying something. They haven't lost hope; there's no despair."
Smith, a resident of Hamilton, plans to continue writing and running S&S Productions, which produces The Red Green Show.
Smith has been a working comedian and a musician since the mid-1960s and says, after 300 episodes, he won't miss the show. He became a member of the Order of Canada in February.
***
Ave atque vale.
