Unravelling duct tape behind Red Green

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This article was published 20/09/2009 (6212 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s safe to say that if you had been searching for understated, cerebral chuckles, you probably would have given The Red Green Show a pass.

So how is it that a sitcom about a rube handyman in Northern Ontario became the second most popular sitcom in Canadian television history?

Much insight is provided in We’re All in This Together: The Red Green Story, airing Sunday at 10 p.m. on the Comedy Network. The Red Green Show was long on goofy — with gusts to juvenile — hijinks. But it did something right, for the series ran real long: 311 episodes, from 1991 to 2006, on CBC — 76 shows fewer than the reigning Canadian sitcom champ, The Beachcombers.

First thing that you ought to know is that series star and co-creator Steve Smith is not to be mistaken for his TV alter ego, Red Green, a man for whom duct tape is the solution to everything from leaky faucets to falling roofs to crumbling federalism.

Smith is a very savvy fellow. Unlike most egghead writers, actors, directors and producers in this land, he has his finger firmly on the pulse of this country’s masses. And as much as some of us may prefer sophisticated political humour à la Rick Mercer, it is quite evident that punditry takes a back seat to possums for many more in this land. That is, Possum Lodge in Possum Lake, where Red Green hosts the TV show Handyman Corner and seeks shortcuts in fixing stuff — most of which entails duct tape.

The show was initially created as a parody of The Red Fisher Show, a series geared to the outdoorsy set (whose host is not to be confused for the Montreal Gazette hockey chronicler).

But while the Red Green character was the glue, the key to the success of the series was the support hosers, er, players like: Harold Green (Patrick McKenna), Red’s dim-bulb nephew; Dalton (Bob Bainborough), the proprietor of Humphrey’s Everything Store; Mike (Wayne Robson), an amiable criminal on parole; Winston Rothschild III (Jeff Lumby), the owner of Rothschild’s Sewage and Septic Sucking Services; and Bill (Rick Green), co-creator of The Red Green Show and star of the fictional Adventures with Bill segment within it.

And such was the appeal of the show that established Canadian thesps like Gordon Pinsent and Graham Greene prevailed upon Smith to find them roles.

Pinsent played Hap Shaughnessy, Possum Lake’s water-taxi captain with a penchant for tall tales. Greene showed up as Edgar Montrose, the Possum Lodge explosives expert who felt that the “native guy” Kicking Bird should have gotten the Oscar in Dances With Wolves. (Greene played Kicking Bird in the flick.) Montrose’s mantra — which could apply to just about anyone else at Possum Lodge: “If it ain’t broke, you ain’t trying.”

“I actually begged Steve to get me on the show,” Greene concedes in We’re All in This Together. And it’s a safe bet that Greene doesn’t have to do too much begging to get acting gigs.

In this doc, Smith recalls going to his neighbourhood Hamilton TV station in 1989 and asking for “enough money to create something, but not enough that the station would care what it was.” A brilliant tactic in retrospect.

“The money side was never an issue,” Smith says. “It was about a bunch of people getting together to do something really funny.”

All the same, in his wildest dreams, Smith had never anticipated the series would take off the way it did, then spawn a feature film — Duct Tape Forever — plus DVDs and even a Red Green newspaper-advice column. “It’s a miracle,” he says. “It doesn’t usually happen where a joint effort like this pays off this well.”

But Smith does have a clue why the show resonated with so many. It not only talked to folks in a manner they could relate to, but it also touched funny-bones (of urbanites and ruralites). Be it a segment called The Winter of Our Discount Tent or the uncertainties of middle-age relief: “At our age, you just never know if the call of nature is going to be a shout, a whine or a whisper.”

On the subject of whines, there were plenty from his diehard fans when Smith decided to call it a series more than three years ago. He could have easily continued. “But I just worried about disappointing people. First them, then me.”

It’s called integrity. And Smith, unlike most in the biz, doesn’t really require any duct tape to have it stick to him.

— Canwest News Service

TV PREVIEW

We’re All in This Together: The Red Green Story

Comedy Network

Sunday, 10 p.m.