"SCTV: The Greatest Show You've Never Heard of" on Netflix

Let's ignore the title and assume that is meant for the masses, as opposed to anyone who is here at a site run by a podcast about Seventies and Eighties TV. I think even if we hadn't done an episode about the show, most of our listeners would know SCTV unless some other circumstance were present.

Let's also forget about whatever it was Martin Scorcese had done on this project, and let's thank Jimmy Kimmel for stepping in to oversee its completion. And let's posit that even if this is not the deepest documentary out there and even if it is mostly promotion or accompaniment for Netflix's acquisiton of the series, well, that's OK! We got the episodes (albeit in edited form), and we got this entertaining documentary that should "turn on" a lot of folks who have not heard of the program or maybe just haven't seen much of it.

It is fantastic entertainment. You get lots of clips, though some are all too fleeting, showing what made SCTV so funny. I can often do without celebrity talking heads, but they work pretty well in this one if you don't fume over the fact they may be bumping out more archival material or interviews with people from the actual production. Tom Hanks is thoughtful as always, and Bill Hader's delight at remembering some sketches is infectious.

The production is built around a reunion of some of the cast (Unfortunately, some were gone, and unexplainedly, Rick Moranis was not there) gathered to watch some old clips. It's nice watching them, and there are some quality moments. This is combined with separate interviews to let the cast tell the story of SCTV.

Any SCTV fan will enjoy this, I think, and it should be enough to make novices seek out the shows.

As a documentary, though, it's lacking. While there is some great info here, I was surprised at how much was missing. I am by no means an expert, but I knew enough to notice some gaps. Here is a basic list of things you don't get in the movie:

*Mention of the Cinemax run
*Mention of peripheral castmembers like Tony Rosato
*Mention of writers who weren't in the cast
*Mention of the vast majority of crew (the costumer and makeup artist do get big ups)

*Explanation of John Candy leaving the show twice
*Mention of musical guests
*For that matter, mention of guests, period--so no Bonar Bain, folks

In addition, I thought poor Joe Flaherty got shortchanged. We see him in a few archival interview clips, but his characters and contributions weren't as prominent. I think you can make a similar argument that Andrea Martin gets similar (lack of) consideration, but she has many contemporary interview moments that stand out.

Flaherty had a memorable moment with Milton Berle at the Emmys one year, one that inspired an actual sketch. Yet, much to my frustration, we see a visual of Flaherty accepting in a segment devoted to the show's Emmy win, but we don't get that story.

The doc does get into--maybe playing up more than is warranted?--tension between Moranis/Thomas and the rest of the cast as the two got a little big for their britches. It's an interesting thread.  It is nice to see Moranis' recollections, even if he is filmed apart from the others, but the doc almost repeats the phenomenon of he and Thomas being elevated at the expense of others.

These are legit issues, I think, but I recognize that director Jason Hehir may have had a tough task to try to salvage something out of whatever it was Scorcese had planned. This certainly warrants a bigger approach, and I bet a lot of the absences are due to the 90-minute runtime. I'm sure that runtime was dictated by Netflix and not by creative concerns. 

What we are left with is a cool hour and a half with laughs, nostalgia, and some emotion. It's not the tribute the series deserves, but it's very good for what it is.

Top Ten #431

1) Home Box Office: The premium of all premium pay cable services launched 55 years ago today with a screening of...Beastmaster. No, it was Sometimes a Great Notion. For more on the network's legacy and programming, check out our episode from earlier this year!

2) Gone with the Wind: 50 years ago tonight, NBC ran part 2 of its epic presentation of the legendary film. The event, part of NBC's "Big Event" series, set viewership records and led to a GWTW craze of sorts.

3) Three's Company: Castmates Joyce DeWitt and Richard Kline joined other celebs for a stage reading of the show's pilot to benefit the John Ritter Foundation. Hijinks ensued when Mr. Furley, listening just behind the curtain, thought he was overhearing a We've Got It Made reading.

4) Police Squad! Do I know why Netflix decided to add all 6 episodes of this 1982 cult sitcom? I do not. Am I going to complain? Nope! Between this and SCTV, Netflix is on a decent run lately. Hey, maybe they could honor recent documentary subject Martin Mull by adding Fernwood 2Night!

5) Webster: The Eighties cute-com is now on Prime Video, but half the episodes are missing, including the one I have wanted to see for years--the one where Web accidentally burns the place down.

6) The Mouse and the Motorcycle: Part 1 of an adaptation of the Beverly Cleary book debuted 40 years ago today on ABC Weekend Special.

7) Lucy and Ellen canned: In the news 40 years ago today, ABC had announced it canceled the new sitcoms of Lucille Ball and Ellen Burstyn and that the shows' would be pulled after another two airings. Burstyn's show is mostly forgotten; Ball's show is one many wish they could forget.

8) Happy birthday: Entertainment Tonight star Mary Hart turns 75 today, and Leif Garrett turns 65. Leif, of course, is best known for his role in the CHiPs episode "Roller Disco."

9) Dean Martin's Red Hot Scandals of 1926: 50 years ago tonight, NBC continued its night of nostalgia by going back 50 years in time with this Dean Martin special featuring Jonathan Winters, Abe Vigoda, and more. What, no Foster Brooks with a prohibition sketch?

10) Saturday Night Live: The show aired a rare pretaped episode this night in 1986 with guests Rosanna Arquette and Ric Ocasek. Two weeks earlier, Game 6 of the World Series ran long, causing the preemption and a taping instead of a live broadcast. The Jay Leno Show special had run in the 11:30 timeslot on November 1. NBC apparently won't let people upload the beginning of the episode, in which Ron Darling explains what happened, but here is a promo that aired several weeks earlier:

Top Ten #430

1) Susan Saint James: I don't like to get in the habit of "ranking" celebrity deaths, but I want to give special mention to St. James, who has been an integral part of two BOTNS episodes, including one on our most recent season, Kate and Allie (McMillan and Wife was the other). Hoist a "hoagie sandwich" to the TV star and color commentator at Wrestlemania II.

2) Halloween: You may have found some time to watch something scary this week. Halloween was never on the level of Christmas in instigating TV specials, but there is some good stuff out there!

3) Paid political programming: Forget about 2026 because 50 years ago tonight, we were building to a big presidential election, and candidates Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter each bought half-hour blocks in prime time. What interests me is how they did this: The shows aired back to back on ABC at 8, on NBC at 9, and on CBS at 10.

4) The Bionic Woman: The 1970s action series jumps into FETV 's lineup this week.

5) The Jay Leno Show: This night in 1986--yes, 1986--NBC preempted SNL with a special devoted to the rising comedian. David Letterman made an appearance as part of a running gag.

6) Daylight Savings Time: Those of us in the USA turned our clocks back an hour today. Once again, we encourage you to make great use of the extra hour by watching some classic TV. YOLO, am I right?

7) "The Monster of Walnut Grove": Little House on the Prairie got into the Halloween episode game with this one premiering 50 years ago tonight. Laura thinks she sees Nels decapitate Harriet, and this somehow is cause for concern rather than celebration. The episode has major credibility issues because everyone but Laura scoffs at the idea Nels would commit such a horrible crime. I mean, it IS Harriet.

8) National Cinnamon Day:

9) The New Zoo Revue: Greg Ehrbar's Pop Culture Classics podcast featured a charming pocast with series creators Doug and Emmy Jo.

10) R.I.P. Walter Koenig, Barbara Barrie, Patrick Stewart:

Happy Halloween!

From all of us at BOTNS to all of you, Happy Halloween! Here is an assortment of past episodes for your holiday listening pleasure:

In Season 1, we looked at In Search Of...'s "comprehensive" analysis of the Loch Ness Monster.

Our Season 4 exploration of Buck Rogers involved not just a vampire, but a SPACE VAMPIRE!

Later in Season 4, we talked about "Werewolf" on Barney Miller.

Early in Season 5, we had our first direct Halloween episode with a show about Halloween Is Grinch Night.

It may be a stretch, but we followed that one up with Dr. Strange, which does feature Halloween-adjacent elements like a cool purple costume, not to mention supernatural elements.

Also in Season 5, The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Mysteries met Dracula!

Who can forget our Season 8 combo of Poor Devil...

...followed by Tucker's Witch?

And then there was Darkroom!

And in season 9 we looked at The Munsters...

...and Mr. Roarke against Satan on Fantasy Island!

In season 10, we discussed another 'Werewolf" episode--Kolchak the Night Stalker!

In our most recent season (Battys still coming eventually!), we discuss the world of MAGIC with Doug Henning!

And one could certainly see some episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, also covered in our recent season, as appropriate for the occasion!

Solomon Grundy says, have a great weekend!

Win me over, Skydance: Warner Brothers shows you can put on HBOMaxParamountPlusWhatever

Recently we looked at 10 shows in the pre-merger Paramount vaults that would be cool to see on streaming. This new megacompany can win me over--well, maybe--if it dips into the Warners holdings post-merger and brings these shows out. 

Warner Brothers is an interesting case. It has released some real rarities on DVD through its Warner Archive label, it seems committed to utilizing its animation library (See the MeTV Toons partnership), and it released many shows on streaming with its Warner Archive Instant service.

Warner Brothers has licensed a lot of interesting material in recent years to modern streamers, like The New Dick Van Dyke Show, and it still "bothers" with DVD (77 Sunset Strip, long thought un-releasable due to music clearances, is on the way).. However, it also has a habit of licensing material out for a short period and then not doing anything with it for a while, like Welcome Back, Kotter.

Paramount is different in that it has apparently given up on using its library. On the other hand, Paramount Plus, though not the most sophisticated streamer out there, at least has an assortment of classic TV shows (Though it still irritates me that it exiles the likes of The Fugitive and Have Gun Will Travel to Pluto), but HBO Max's classic TV selection is practically nonexistent. 

So Warners is different, but there are still some nuggets to pull from the vaults and put on a real streaming service. Here are some of my picks:

Casablanca: This 1983 David Soul reimagining did get a DVD release, but I was too cheap to pay what I thought was a high price (I thought so because it was) from a boutique label, and now it's out of print. My most wanted TV show, period, might be the 1955 version with Charles McGraw, but I'm focusing on the BOTNS era here! Warners loves to exploit the classic film Casablanca, but the TV shows? Not so much.

Harry O: Warner Archive is great and has released a lot of TV over the years, especially in its pre-Blu-Ray era. I find it odd that The FBI, for example, is all over streaming, yet this atmospheric David Janssen private eye show is not. At least it's there on DVD, but it would be great to get this one on streaming.

Banyon: Speaking of private eyes, this one is Quinn Martin, Robert Forster, 30s L.A. 'Nuff said.

The People's Court: Judge Wapner was one of the iconic TV personalities of the Eighties, but the old shows are not easy to see.

Flatbush: I mentioned Makin' It in the previous post, so how about letting us see this notorious flop, also seemingly inspired in part by Saturday Night Fever? The Lorimar sitcom showed a group of recent high school grads, but the Italian-American stereotypes sparked complaints, and CBS yanked it after 3 airings.

Fred and Barney Meet the Thing: I'd settle for The Thing segments! This animated series on NBC combined modern-day Flintstones toons with new ones starring Ben Grimm.

Dallas and Alice: If only there were a 1980s nighttime Lorimar soap called Palace. Earlier I mentioned the tendency of Warners to license shows for brief periods of time. In each case here, that trend combined with the tendency of Prime Video to obtain shows for brief periods of time. So the full run of each long-running series was on Prime for a while, then disappeared and didn't come back. Oh, the shows are available on disc and can be purchased as digital downloads, but it's about time they came back to SVOD. I am surprised Tubi hasn't picked up either of these.

Top Ten #429:

1) Amelia Earhart: The famed aviatrix (I could just use "aviator," but where is the fun in that?) is back in the Top Ten because she's the subject of a TV movie that premiered on NBC 50 years ago tonight. Susan Clark was Amelia, Alex Karras was Fred Noonan, and Henry Polic II had a cameo as Charles Lindbergh. 

I'm kidding about the last two, but Clark did star in the movie.

2) Ebert and Siskel: The iconic pair will get a statue in Chicago in 2028.

Meanwhile, Michael Medved and Jeffrey Lyons are reportedly the subjects of some uncouth graffiti in a public restroom in the NYC subway system.

3) The Don Ho Show: In many markets, this syndicated daytime variety show premiered this day in 1976 with guest Roz Kelly.

4) TV movies: As we gear up for Halloween, Frank Santopadre's Fun for All Ages podcast premiered an episode looking at scary TV movies of yore. I have it on good authority that the discussion ranges wide enough for a Pray for the Wildcats mention!

5) 1986 World Series Game 6: Red Sox fans, please skip to the next item.

40 years ago tonight, the Mets beat the Sox to stay alive in the Series after a memorable groundball from Mookie Wilson got past Bill Buckner. The game went long, pre-empting a pretaped episode of Saturday night Live.

6) Tomorrow: 50 years ago tonight, Tom Snyder welcomed Edgar Bergen, Laurene Tuttle, Jim Backus, Frank Nelson, and Gale Gordon. My kind of roster!

7) Rock and Roll Evening News: On this weekend in 1986, Chuck Berry, Cheap Trick, Bobcat Goldthwait guested on the syndicated program.

8) NBA: The league returned to action this week. In a mere 9 months or so, we'll have a new champion!

9) Battle of the Network Stars: As Roku premieres a well-intentioned (I assume) version with "streamers" this weekend, let's remember the original!

10) R.I.P. Tom Skerritt:

Michael Gray:

Top Ten #428

1) Fish: The Top Ten comes to you a little later this week because we had to stop the presses and adjust for breaking news: Tubi has added FISH to its streaming library. Several episodes are missing, and for some reason it's presented as one single season instead of two, but, hey, at least, as the song goes, we got Fish for supper.

2) World Series: 40 years ago tonight, the Red Sox faced the Mets in Game 1 of a memorable World Series. There is no truth to the rumor that FanDuel is taking action on this.

3) Weekend Special: Liberty and the Littles: This 3-part sequel to the Here Come the Littles movie premiered 40 years ago on ABC and had the gang going to the Statue of Liberty. Statue Fever was everywhere in 1986!

4) Amelia Earhart: Yet another expedition is confident it will track down the missing aviatrix, who we discussed in this episode. I tell you what, if they do find her and she can tell everyone what happened to her, Mike and I will do an emergency pod.

(BTW, speaking of that In Search Of... episode, should we be devoting less resources to finding Earhart and more to finding Nessie?)

5) That's My Mama: The official Sony YouTube channel just uploaded a full episode, "Cousin Albert."

6) Phyllis: And speaking of Mama, Teddy Wilson guested on the episode of Phyllis that aired 50 years ago tonight. Also appearing: Val Bisoglio!

7) National Mashed Potato Day: Respect for those who celebrate, but HARD PASS from me.

8) Howard Shore: Happy 80th to the musical director of the original run of Saturday Night Live.

9) Better Off Dead: Cinemax showed this John Cusack cult classic this night in 1986, and The New York Times dismissed it with, "Better off not watching." Say what?

10) R.I.P. Bernie Orenstein: The writer and producer worked on many, many sitcoms, such as That Girl, Sanford and Son, What's Happening!! and Kate and Allie.

Michael Forest: The actor is perhaps best known for his prolific TV work in the Sixties, but he had a long career that included a stint on As the World Turns in the early Eighties.