tek's rating: ½

The Red Green Show, on CBC (Canada) / PBS (USA)
IMDb; official website; PBS; Retro Junk; TV Tropes; Wikia; Wikipedia

This... is a hard show to describe, or even categorize. I'm going with "quirky," but it could just as well be "comedy" or "variety" or "weird" or... I dunno. Anyway, it's set mostly at Possum Lodge, in Ontario, Canada. The head of the lodge is Red Green (played by Steve Smith), who apparently hosts a show, but I wouldn't quite call it a "show within a show," because... the show he hosts is the one we're watching. Except I have a sense that it also exists as a show within the fictional universe of the show itself. I'm not real clear on that, and I'm probably not explaining it well. But it's not important. Whatever, the show is about the lodge and its members, so you almost might as well ignore the fact that Red frequently addresses the home viewers. (Including his wife, Bernice, who we never see. We can assume it's a live show, since Red generally says to her that "I'm coming straight home after the show.") Um... technical direction for the show he hosts is provided by his nerdy nephew, Harold Green. He and his Uncle Red seem to have little if any respect for one another, since their personalities are so different. Harold is surely smarter and more sensible than Red or any of the other characters, but he's much more socially awkward. Anyway, I think all the characters would be better off if they heeded Harold's advice against all the incredibly foolish things they do, but then there'd be no show, and no comedy, so... whatever.

Um... there are lots of other characters, including a shopkeeper named Dalton Humphrey; a habitual felon named Mike Hamar (Wayne Robson); a guy named Winston Rothschild III, who owns a sewage & septic sucking service; a guy named Bill who only appears in the black & white segment "Adventures with Bill"; a very odd forest ranger named Ranger Gord; an explosives enthusiast named Edgar Montrose (Graham Greene); a habitual liar named Hap Shaughnessy (Gordon Pinsent); and... plenty of others. Anyway, partly the show consists of Red and Harold (and sometimes others) talking about some ridiculous activity everyone's taking part in, which we never see. Also there are various pre-recorded segments such as "Adventures with Bill" (in which Red and Bill have ridiculously dangerous mundane adventures), "Handyman Corner" (in which Red uses all kinds of junk to make ridiculous but potentially useful inventions), "Possum Lodge Word Game," "The Experts," and all sorts of other things. And at the end of every episode, we see the start of a lodge meeting. Oh, also I need to mention that Red is a great believer in "the handyman's secret weapon," duct tape. I'm leaving out so many details, but like I said... the show is hard to explain. The key word to bear in mind is "ridiculous." But also freaking awesome and hilarious.

Also there's a movie, Duct Tape Forever (IMDb; Wikipedia), in which the lodge is going to be shut down unless they raise money, after getting sued, so they build this bird-thing to enter in a duct tape contest and have to take a road trip to get it to the contest and this evil rich guy has some inept cops chasing them or whatever. Um... it's weird, yeah. But it's got some funny moments.... I wish I would have written a better review when I watched it, because now I don't remember it at all, and I don't know if I'll ever see it again.


quirky index