Canadian TV networks and the search for your funny bone

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In an Ottawa lab, two government agents are submitting a piece of pizza to rigorous computerized testing - until one of them gives up and just eats the day-old slice. Its tandoori flavour can mean only one thing: It's the Bombay Burn from Sanjay's Real Italian. The pair rush over to the pizzeria and attempt to extract information from an obstructionist employee by threatening to kill her with a plastic pizza protector.

The CBC is hoping you will find this funny. It's a scene from InSecurity, the new Canadian sitcom that launches Jan. 4. The spy and crime shows that it mocks - CSI, 24 and The Border - are ubiquitous, but the TV spy spoof has rarely put in an appearance since the days of Get Smart back in the 1960s.

No matter: Sitcoms are hot these days - the U.S. show The Big Bang Theory is currently the most-watched series in Canada - and Canadian TV producers are ranging far and wide in their search for funny ideas.

"We wanted to shake it up a bit; it's not as classic as Corner Gas," says Virginia Thompson, an executive producer on both that long-running former CTV series and InSecurity.

While the public broadcaster satirizes Canada's international inferiority complex this winter, CTV will be launching a second season for two idiosyncratic sitcoms featuring Corner Gas alumni: Fred Ewanuik's Dan for Mayor, about a bartender who runs for office; and Brent Butt's Hiccups, in which the comedian plays therapist to Nancy Robertson's Millie, a children's author with anger-management issues.

Meanwhile, the bleakly funny Less Than Kind, about a struggling family in Winnipeg's north end, will be incorporating the death of actor Maury Chaykin into its unflinching plots when it returns to HBO Canada later in 2011.

Showcase is also working on several unorthodox half-hour comedies scheduled to premiere next summer, including an untitled sitcom in which Jason and Ryan Belleville play brothers running a comic-book store; and Single White Spenny, a new show for scatological comic Spencer Rice, partly inspired by the improvisational style of Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm.

There's a paradox, however, about all this inventiveness: There is strong evidence that what really works in sitcoms are highly conservative formulas. Just look at the perennially popular U.S. series Two and a Half Men, now in its eighth season: If it weren't for the sexually explicit jokes, the domestic comedy about two mismatched brothers, with its two-level living-room set and its laugh track, could have been shot in the sixties.

Similarly, the best-rated Canadian sitcom of recent years was the gentle Corner Gas, which went off the air in 2009 after six seasons poking fun at life from the vantage point of a village full of lovable characters. After boffo premieres, neither of its replacements have been able to touch its million-plus ratings. Despite Canada's wealth of comic talent and love of self-parody, Canadians' affection for Canadian sitcoms is sporadic.

"There just aren't that many shows made in Canada. CBC does a lot of political satire and sketch comedy," notes Kevin White, a co-creator and executive producer of both InSecurity and Dan for Mayor, who also worked on Corner Gas. He struggles to name a hit Canadian sitcom in between King of Kensington in the 1970s and Corner Gas. "I really would like to think we can get a foothold with some show. I don't know if Dan or Hiccups or InSecurity will have a long life, but I hope one of them does."

If so, it will be bucking TV trends - at least American ones. Successful American sitcoms in recent years have returned to a style pioneered in the fifties, when they were first filmed in front of live audiences using multiple cameras, the same way a talk show is shot. Chuck Lorre, co-creator and an executive producer on both Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory, is famous for his use of the multiple-camera style.

The most recent entries in the genre are this season's newbies Mike and Molly and $#*! My Dad Says, their style easily recognizable for tightly controlled geography and a laugh track, which may or may not have been produced by recording that live audience. The more interesting examples take that style and use it to explore fresh characters, such as the geeky physicists on The Big Bang Theory and the overweight couple of Mike and Molly (which Lorre also produces). "It's sort of live theatre mixed with TV," observes Mary Darling, CEO at WestWind Pictures, which produces the CBC sitcom Little Mosque on the Prairie.

Although Canadian comedy has strong roots in standup and sketch, which might seem to lead naturally to such small televised comic plays, most Canadian sitcoms are still filmed using the single-camera technique. The high style used for drama, it permits shooting on location and eschews canned laughter. The agents on InSecurity can take it to the parking lot and the street; Hiccups, which features a bifurcated geography split between the offices of Milly's publisher and Stan-the-therapist's apartment, can bring the two characters together on a park bench or in an outdoor café.

"My preference is single camera because of your flexibility in the creative process," says Butt, executive producer and star of Corner Gas and Hiccups. "With multiple cameras, it's like you are doing a play. With single camera, you can shape it in the editing suite ... I am a big fan of the editing process."

Butt adds that Canada lacks the infrastructure for the multicamera sitcom: While location shots are expensive, it takes a larger investment up front to build all the sets for a multicam sitcom.

Others figure Canada's reluctance to return to multicamera work also has something to do with Canadian tastes. Kirstine Stewart, the CBC vice-president and general manager of English television, argues that Canadian sitcoms distinguish themselves with more leisurely and complex storytelling - and the public broadcaster should reflect this.

"We are more into letting the stories unfold," she says. "We have done a few traditional multicamera but they didn't feel any different from what you get off a U.S. network."

Still, Stewart is currently considering a pilot of a multicamera sitcom featuring standup comic Gerry Dee, as well as a single-camera one by Drowsy Chaperone co-creator Bob Martin, a two-hander about a man and his therapist. And Darling at WestWind would be very interested in trying that tight, traditional style - if only there were more Canadian crews who had experience with it.

"I keep saying, 'Why aren't we doing that?' " Darling says. "We are really interested. It brings the live-theatre experience to the audience, and the energy. It's great for the cast."

Still, the producers warn there is no perfect recipe for TV hits. White cites the wise television executive who once said: "If I knew what worked, I would put that on."