DVD Watch: 'SCTV Network 90: Volume 1'

SCTV Network 90: Volume 1

This is a tough one. If you watched the show, you know. You look at the photo to the right, I tell you it's finally available on video after some 20 years, and what more is there to say? And if you never saw it ... well, words can't do it justice.

But here goes: SCTV is a fictional, low-rent TV network based in Melonville, Canada, and each episode is a hilarious mix of SCTV programming, along with the background story about the station. It's where The Great White North was on, and a bunch of other stuff like Count Floyd's Monster Chiller Horror Theatre, The Sammy Maudlin Show, and John Candy as Dr. Tongue, who showed 3-D movies like Dr. Tongue's 3D House of Stewardesses; and it's got Andrea Martin, Eugene Levy, and Catherine O'Hara, who went on to the Best in Show/Mighty Wind mockumentary troupe; and there's the crane shot in Polynesiantown, and the Barbra Streisand/Slim Whitman duet, and Pledge Week, and ... oh, so much more.

This five-DVD set includes the first nine episodes of the 90-minute series that aired on NBC in 1981, plus some illuminating extras: most notably a video history of Second City, from the seminal improv troupe at the University of Chicago (who knew that's where Ed Asner got his start?) through the Second City comedy club in Chicago and the Old Firehall in Toronto, to the birth of the SCTV network in 1976 at a provincial TV station in Edmonton, Alberta. (Sadly absent from this collection is the very great Martin Short, who joined the cast later. But never fear, Volume 2 is said to be already scheduled for release in October.)

One caveat: A lot of the humor here comes from satires of 25-year-old popular culture – which work less well if you don't get the references. My 12-year-old son, for instance, was merely perplexed by dead-on parodies of David Frost and Howard Cosell, or Merv Griffin as Andy Griffith. I'm rolling on the floor at Bob Hope in Woody Allen's Play It Again, Bob, and he's politely waiting for the McKenzie Brothers to come back. So, if you're not old enough to remember, say, The Love Boat and Fantasy Island, and didn't grow up on TV reruns, take my rave review with a grain of salt.