From Sean O’Neal of AV Club:
10 episodes that take you inside the weird world of The Kids In The Hall
When The Kids In The Hall first premièred on HBO in 1989, it carried with it the pedigree—and the onus—of Saturday Night Live’s Lorne Michaels. His executive-producer stamp on the Canadian comedy troupe’s introduction to America, combined with the sense of lawlessness granted by ad-free cable, set the expectation that Kids would be SNL’s more rambunctious cousin, the Toronto farm team that played a bit rougher than the broadcast big leagues. But audiences who tuned in expecting a slightly dirtier SNL—a skewering of the zeitgeist with more swears and nudity—were probably baffled to find a surrealist sketch series unlike anything U.S. viewers were then used to, particularly if they’d never caught Monty Python’s Flying Circus reruns on PBS. Continue reading.