Second City Television

Second City Television, or SCTV, was a Canadian television sketch comedy show offshoot from the Toronto troupe of The Second City. It ran from 1976 to 1984.

Premise

The basic premise of SCTV is that it is the television station for the city of Melonville. Rather than broadcast the usual TV rerun fare, the business, run by the greedy Guy Caballero (Joe Flaherty) who sits in a wheelchair only for respect, puts on a bizarre and humorously incompetent range of cheap local programming. This can range from a soap opera called "The Days of The Week", to game shows like "Shoot The Stars", in which celebrities are literally shot at like targets in a shooting gallery, to full blown movie spoofs like "Play it Again, Bob" in which Woody Allen (Moranis) tries to get Bob Hope (Thomas) to star in his next film. In-house media melodrama was also satirised with characters like Candy's vain, bloated variety star Johnny La Rue, Thomas' acerbic critic Bill Needle and Martin's flamboyant, leopard-skin clad station manager Mrs. Edith Prickley.

Related Topics:
Soap opera - Woody Allen - Bob Hope

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See also UHF (movie), which used a similar premise to SCTV, but without the sketch comedy.

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