Where Can You Watch the Landmark Sketch Comedy Series ‘SCTV’?
What To Know
- SCTV is a groundbreaking Canadian sketch comedy series that launched the careers of many comedy legends.
- Netflix picked up the series and a documentary.
Groundbreaking comedy series SCTV left a massive cultural dent on pop culture, reshaping the comedy landscape with its edgy humor and proving that razor-sharp satire didn’t need a New York address or the Saturday Night Live stage to change television.
The scrappy Canadian upstart became a launching pad for some of the most influential comic voices of the last half-century, blending dead-on media parody with character work. With its fearless send-ups of Hollywood, musicians, local TV, and celebrity culture, SCTV helped expand sketch comedy and paved the way for generations of performers who saw that smart, weird, and wildly specific could also be universal.
Greats such as John Candy, Catherine O’Hara, Rick Moranis, Eugene Levy, Martin Short, and Andrea Martin got their start on the influential show, creating characters and eventually a legacy that would shape comedy on television and film for decades.
Courtesy of Everett Collection
With the loss of Catherine O’Hara, longtime fans and new audiences looking for more of the late actress’s early work have been hunting down episodes of SCTV.
For years, SCTV has been notoriously difficult to watch in the United States, with no broadcast home or on-demand streaming option. That is set to change on September 1, when the classic sketch comedy series arrives on Netflix.
David Street/ TV Guide / courtesy Everett Collection
Why was it difficult to watch SCTV?
After the series was canceled, the episodes entered syndication. A company called Western International Communications Ltd. acquired the distribution rights in the 1990s, including the Cinemax run of the show, titled SCTV Channel. According to SCTV Guide, the show was then re-edited, combining sketches from across the show’s history into single installments, a move that made the series far more difficult to follow in its original chronological order.
To further complicate matters, unresolved music-rights issues have forced distributors to re-dub or remove certain sketches altogether. That has meant the loss of many segments built around musical parodies or contemporary hits, which once made up a substantial part of the series.
For a long while, there were no current box sets available for purchase, leaving fans to buy only older DVDs, most of which are incomplete or expensive.
Everett Collection
Where can you watch SCTV?
On September 1, the landmark series will find a home on Netflix, where all six seasons will be available for streaming.
There is also an official YouTube channel featuring clips from the original series, and for those who want to own it, DVDs are still available for purchase.
Are there any specials or documentaries on SCTV?
SCTV: The Greatest Show You’ve Never Heard Of will arrive on Netflix on October 30.
An Afternoon with SCTV was planned at one point. It was a comedy television special directed by Martin Scorsese that was going to reunite the cast of Second City Television. The special was filmed at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on May 13, 2018. However, in May 2021, the late Joe Flaherty (“Count Floyd”) revealed on Facebook that the special had been shelved. After the announcement, NME reported that Netflix has since said the special had not been shelved, but delayed. So perhaps a special is in the near future. Hopefully.
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