Directed by Jason Hehir

SCTV was one of those shows I discovered when I was a preteen, probably through late-night reruns and sleepovers when we were staying up much later than we were allowed to so we could watch those dangerous TV shows.

I can’t remember exactly when or where I first watched it, but I know it had a lasting influence on my sense of humor. I think a lot of my appreciation for the bizarre, the goofy, and the downright ridiculous can be traced back to this show.

There’s always been something about SCTV that made it feel like you were part of a strange little clique. If you knew the show and found it funny, you shared a kind of language of comedy that not everyone understood. Saturday Night Live had its share of great characters and performers with a much broader following, but SCTV had a wonderfully strange sensibility that made it feel like something entirely its own.

This documentary does a nice job exploring where that sensibility came from. It takes us through the show’s origins, its unusual production history, and the difficulties of keeping it on the air. It was often made on a shoestring budget, with a cast and creative team who seemed completely consumed by the work. There were stretches when the cast was practically living together, spending their days and nights writing and finding new ways to make each other laugh. You get a real sense of how dedicated they were to making this kind of comedy.

One of the more interesting things the documentary explores is the freedom that came with not having a studio audience. They weren’t getting immediate feedback from a room full of people, which meant they could follow their own instincts and make whatever strange, silly, or unconventional comedy they wanted. But there was a downside, too. They had no idea whether any of it was actually landing with viewers. There’s a terrific moment when they talk about attending the Emmys and hearing an audience laugh at clips from the show. Andrea Martin describes how emotional that was, having spent so many years making comedy without ever hearing that kind of response. It must have been quite a feeling to finally know that people were getting it.

The documentary also reminded me just how much talent came out of this show. When I think of SCTV, John Candy and Martin Short are probably the first names that come to mind. But watching this retrospective, you realize how much everyone contributed and how many of these performers went on to have remarkable careers. Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Andrea Martin, Rick Moranis, Joe Flaherty, Dave Thomas — these were all incredibly talented people who continued popping up in movies and television for decades.

I also appreciated that the documentary didn’t try to turn SCTV into a greatest-hits collection. That’s a difficult thing to do with a show like this. If Saturday Night Live is like the Eagles, with a collection of songs that almost everyone can agree belong on a greatest-hits album, SCTV is more like the Grateful Dead. Its appeal is spread across so many different characters, sketches, and performances that everyone probably has their own favorites. It’s a little harder to pin down, and I think that’s part of what made the show special.

At just under 90 minutes, the documentary moves along nicely, mixing interviews, behind-the-scenes stories, and plenty of clips without getting bogged down in any one area. It gives you a good sense of the people who made the show, what they found funny, and the unusual circumstances that allowed it to exist. More importantly, it made me want to go back and watch SCTV again.

This is a great little piece of comedy history. SCTV helped shape a generation of performers and, in its own strange way, shaped the sense of humor of people like me who discovered it late at night as kids. I’m glad someone took the time to preserve its story.

Verdict: Excellent