Is TV full of garbage...or just misunderstood?
SHOW: Yvon of the Yukon
YEAR: 1999
DETAILS: The premise of this animated series: a French sea captain and explorer named Yvon Ducharme set out from France sometime in the past, and not knowing how to read a map, became lost. He ended up in Arctic waters north of Canada, was knocked off his ship—and became frozen in a black of ice. He remained frozen in that block of ice...for three hundred years...then he was freed. How? A dog from a passing dogsled peed on the ice block, causing it to thaw. Yvon then goes on to try to conquer the fictional Inuit town of Upyer Mukluk, Yukon, in the name of France’s “King Louie.” Amazingly, the show lasted three seasons.
SHOW: The Starlost
YEAR: 1973
DETAILS: This CTV series was created by acclaimed American science-fiction author Harlan Ellison. Premise: Earth is going to be destroyed, so humans build a gargantuan space craft—200 miles long and 50 miles wide—to escape. The ship has several seperate and huge biospheres where people of different cultures live. Something goes wrong, the crew is killed, and the biospheres are locked down. Centuries later, the people in the biospheres don’t even known they’re on a spaceship—but a young man discovers the truth—and is branded a heretic. It sounds promising, but the budget didn’t match the ambition. The special effects camera created for the show didn’t work, and the sets looked like something from a high school play. Ellison quit the project before the first episode aired, and demanded that his name be taken off the credits. In the end just sixteen episodes were made.
SHOW: Party Game
YEAR: Produced locally at a small TV station in Hamilton, Party Game was a game show broadcast nationally from 1970 to 1981.
DETAILS: And how did the contestants compete to win fabulous cash and prizes? Charades—they played the tedious party game of Charades. One team, the “Challengers,” consisted of a contestant and two minor celebrity guest stars, played the “Home Team,” with series regulars/B-list celebrities Jack Duffy, Billy Van, and Dinah Christie. Bonus: If viewers sent in a Charades suggestion used on the air, Party Game sent them a small cash prize. (And although it was made by a Hamilton station, it was taped, on the cheap, in a room at a Toronto hotel.)
“The Butterfly” is a goaltending move where the player drops to the ice, splaying his legs like a butterfly.
SHOW: Kevin Spencer
YEAR: 1999–2005
DETAILS: The cartoon revolves around the Spencer family, mostly around troubled 14-year-old Kevin. The show’s theme song says it all, really: “Kevin Spencer/you better not cross his path/Kevin Spencer/he’s a chain-smoking alcoholic sociopath.” That’s not all—Kevin is also addicted to cough syrup (as are his equally alcoholic and chain-smoking parents). Kevin has anger issues, commits violence, gets into trouble, and isn’t very smart. His only friend is Allen the Magic Goose, who is imaginary, and who talks Kevin into doing bad things. Needless to say, Kevin Spencer was very controversial; the first season episode “The New Mr. Franklin,” was aired once—then banned from Canadian TV forever, because, among other reasons, “excessively graphic scenes such as those involving the theft and use, as a plaything, a severed human head from an accident site.”
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D’OH! A DEER! A FEMALE DEER
In July 2013, Alexandra Beraru was driving down a highway north of Calgary when she struck a large female mule deer. She immediately pulled over, and she and her passenger found a tiny fawn, no bigger than a small dog, standing in the road. They initially thought it must have been with the doe they’d hit, and they had simply not seen it, but then they noticed something: “We were like, ‘why is it still slimy?’” Beraru told reporters later. They then noticed the deer they had struck: it was dead in the ditch, and its stomach had been ripped open. That’s when they realized that the deer had given birth to the fawn, as it were, upon being hit by the car. The fawn was taken to a wildlife center, where it was given to a new mother to be raised
A “Calgary Redeye” is a combination of beer and tomato juice.