I like “What If?” questions. I like considering the ponderables of what might have happened if one thing in history went differently. Here’s a “what if” for you: what if Lorne Michaels wasn’t Canadian; would we ever know who The Kids in the Hall were? Would they ever get a show on American TV or would they still be doing shows at The Rivoli on Queen Street in Toronto, Ontario?
Typically, in scenarios like these, I usually go with the opposite of what happened in real life. Not here. It might have taken The Kids in the Hall longer to make it to the U.S., but they would have made it here eventually. They are just that darn good.
The Kids in the Hall got their start in the early 1980s. Dave Foley and Kevin McDonald were performing under that name in Toronto, with Luciano Casimiri as a third. Across the country in Calgary. Bruce McCulloch and Mark McKinney were in a competitive improv group called The Audience with Norm Hiscock, Garry Campbell and Frank Van Keeken,
In 1984, McCulloch and McKinney relocated to Toronto and joined Foley and McDonald in Kids in the Hall. McKinney met Scott Thompson in January of 1985 and invited him to join the group, and the line-up we know, and love, was set.
The group worked together only a few months before SNL came calling. Talent scouts brought McKinney and McCulloch to New York to be writers on Lorne Michaels’ difficult first season back as producer in 1985 to 1986. It was around this time Michaels saw the entire troupe perform and made plans to get the Kids their own show.
That show arrived in 1988. in pilot form, on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Canada and Home Box Office in the United States. The next year, The Kids in the Hall series began.
You can argue that KITH owed more Monty Python than Saturday Night Live. Their comedy had a strong element of silliness to it that the Pythons shared. But they weren’t exclusively silly. Their sketches ranged from goofy to meaningful to metacommentary to poignant. At their peak powers, they were a well oil-machine that could not fail.
And then there is the cross-dressing, another trait they share with the Pythons. Drag has been a part of comedy for centuries, but the Kids did it differently. Python’s made drag part of the joke, being loud and brassy and over the top. The Kids used drag to build characters. Their females were treated with respect, as much as their male characters. They played them not as a joke, but because they needed someone to play female characters. You could make the argument they wouldn’t have to do that if they added women into the troupe, but I’d counter that would ruin the chemistry of the group. They would occasionally use female actors in some sketches, however.
You can find the first five seasons on Peacock,. You can’t really go wrong with choosing any episode to play. If you start at the beginning, and work through the series chronologically, you could see how the grow as comedians. But if you want an example of the Kids firing on all cylinders, I’d recommend the third episode of season two. It is solid all the way through, but ends with “Phone” which was, until recently, my favorite KITH sketch.
In 1993, The Kids In the Hall moved from HBO to CBS Friday nights after The Late Show with David Letterman, where stayed for two more seasons before leaving the air. In 1996, they moved onto making a feature film: The Kids in The Hall: Brain Candy. It features group of mostly all original characters in a story about a drug that cures depression. The received mixed reviews and was a box office bomb.
My issues with the film were that while the Kids’ sketches were genius at a couple minutes at a time. They didn’t seem to know how to make it last over a 90-minute film. They fared better with their 2010 miniseries Death Comes to Town. Unveiling over 8 episodes, the story, about the living embodiment of death visiting a small Ontario town whose mayor was killed, had more time to develop and the characters became better defined.
In 2020, it was announced that The Kids would be returning to filming a sixth season of its sketch comedy series to air on Amazon Prime. You would not be wrong in thinking that some of the magic would be gone after 25 years. But it wasn’t. They might be older, but they have not lost a step. The new series is as funny, if not funnier than the HBO/CBS version. It also features my new favorite sketches from the group: Doomsday DJ from the third episode. It’s a series of sketches framing the rest of the sketches in the show. Dave Foley plays the last disc jockey in a post-apocalyptic future. I would not do it justice if I tried to describe it. I’ll only say it is a master stroke of worldbuilding and a must see.
There has been no word on a seventh season, and as we get further away from the sixth season’s 2022 air date, the likelihood there will be one gets smaller and smaller. Which is a shame. The Kids in the Hall seem to be stronger than ever before. We all deserve more sketches from them.
