Netflix has ordered an untitled SCTV reunion special featuring one of entertainment’s most versatile sketch comedy troupes, with Martin Scorsese to direct. Scorsese will reunite former SCTV co-stars Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short and Dave Thomas in front of a live audience for An Afternoon with SCTV on May 13 in Toronto, to be hosted by Jimmy Kimmel.
The reunion will anchor the documentary about the cult TV spinoff of Canada’s Second City to be shot over three days next month in Toronto, with Andrew Alexander, John Brunton and Lindsay Cox producing.
Scorsese, with 12 Oscar nominations and a directing win for The Departed (2006), held long conversations with SCTV alum about their character-driven TV satire series that ran from 1976 to 1984 as he developed his documentary about the famed comedy troupe, most of whom were Canadian artists.
These included Levy as smarmy comic Bobby Bittman and broadcaster Earl Camembert, the late John Candy as smooth-talking Johnny LaRue, the late Harold Ramis as game show host Moe Green, Martin as leopard-clad programming boss Edith Prickley, O’Hara as platinum blonde singer Lola Heatherton, Dave Thomas as drama critic Bill Needles, Rick Moranis as one of the 5 Neat Guys and Joe Flaherty as station manager Guy Cabellero.
Canadian-born comic and actor Martin Short brought many of his SCTV characters to his eventual star turn on Saturday Night Live.
Most of the original SCTV cast moved from the Canadian touchstone comedy to successful careers in Hollywood movies and TV shows. SCTV got its start in Toronto in 1976, a year after Saturday Night Live debuted stateside, as a satire of TV programming conveyed as a broadcast day from a low-budget TV station in the fictional town of Melonville, with backstage machinations included.
