Everything about Trailer Park Boys, eh?

In the news: Ratings and other lies

John Doyle of the Globe and Mail writes not specifically about Canadian television, but a reminder that ratings – especially here – can be deceptive:

Lies, damned lies, and viewership statistics
“My point, and I do have one today, is that statistics lie, just as people do. Nobody is going broke in the TV racket. Viewers are not abandoning TV in droves. They’re watching what they want, when they want or when they can get to it, just like me. And I’m not special. Ask anyone.”

From Denis McGrath at Dead Things on Sticks:

On Can-Comedy Shows Generally & Jeff Ltd In Particular: Why These Pretzels Aren’t Making Me Thirsty
“Yes, comedy is in decline everywhere, but in Canada it’s in decline for a very specific reason: The shows aren’t funny. I’ll give the standard caveats here: Corner Gas, Trailer Park Boys (where the writers are actually working in deep concert with the onscreen talent.) I have high hopes for the second season of Little Mosque.”

From the Montreal Gazette:

A hilarious, thorough look at the trailer park boys
“It will surprise no one to learn that the writing in the new Trailer Park Boys companion book is unlikely to win any national literary awards. But here’s something else that won’t shock anyone familiar with Canada’s most subversive cable television series. The book is flat-out hilarious.”

From the Toronto Star:

Homage to Sunnyvale: Having just begun its seventh season, Trailer Park Boys deserves better than the complete lack of wit of this fanzine effort
“For all its guns and dope and fights and swearing, there is something almost fragile about Trailer Park Boys (which is maybe a strange thing to say about a show that follows the raunchy misadventures of Ricky, Julian and Bubbles, a trio of trailer park dwellers, but it’s true.) The show works, like a lot of great comedy, because of the very balance it creates between sincerity and cynicism, gentleness and raunchiness (or “greasiness”), the way it straddles the proverbial fine line between stupid and clever.”

From John Doyle of the Globe and Mail:

Take heart, new TV episodes await you
“Have you tried Trailer Park Boys (Sundays, Showcase, 9 p.m.)? Oh now, don’t say you’re put off by the foul language and lowlife antics. You’ve heard swearing before. It’s going on all around you. Besides, this season, the Boys are on a new and decidedly wacky adventure. For heaven’s sake, don’t you people realize the sheer magnitude of Julian’s decision to deliver pizzas for a living! Do you not grasp the hilarity of a stoned Bubbles meeting his grade-school teacher while he’s the lookout man for a scam to steal meat from the supermarket? The Boys are funny and enchanting. As characters, they are alive, passionate, fully human and irrepressible. You think your life is hard? Get to know what it’s like to be so desperate that you rip the plumbing out of your own house to sell it for beer money. And have a sense of humour about it.”