I’ve not got much time for an introduction to this, so just a quick summary for this 1958 episode of ITV’s Armchair Theatre, The Criminals, in which a bunch of respectable men at the New Year’s Eve party of a small construction company are forced to take part in a bank robbery by a ruthless crook (Stanley Baker, the star of Zulu) who has intimate knowledge of their private lives. Co-written by noted Doctor Who writer Malcolm Hulke, it also starred Peter Swanwick (The Prisoner) and Allan Cuthbertson (Edge of Darkness) with a minor appearance by Angus Lennie.
It’s this week’s Wednesday Play and you can watch it below – as always, if you like it, please buy it!
In Canada: Tuesdays, 9pm ET, CBC In the UK: Available on Netflix
Every time a new Canadian comedy comes along, like some demented TV-watching dog hopefully expecting the return of its owners, I look up, wag my tail and grin.
“Maybe this is it. Maybe this is the one. Maybe this is the funny one.”
Now, it’s not like these are totally unfounded hopes. After all, Satisfaction was a moderately funny comedy that could have been even better with a cast that knew how to act.
But that was something of a needle in an Insecurity/Seed/Working The Engels/18 To Life/Men With Brooms/Hiccups haystack. Because on the whole, Canadian sitcoms, particularly those on the CBC, suck like Dracula in a dorm room after 10 years on a diet of sparkling water and crackers.
Nevertheless, my tail started awaggling away when I heard that Schitt’s Creek was coming. Look at the risky title! Even before it aired, Canadians were umming and ahhing about that: “When grown adults think the height of witticism is some sort of wordplay on crudity I tend to yawn.” This was going to be daring, by Canadian standards.
But more so, look at the cast: Eugene Levy from American Pie, Catherine O’Hara from SCTV and Home Alone as a rich couple who buy a small, dead-end rural town joke, but end up having to move there when all their assets are seized by the tax inspectors. It’ll be the new Arrested Development, won’t it?
And the reviews! Look at the reviews: “CBC may end up getting the last laugh by having the strongest homegrown sitcom this country has had since, well, that show about not much going on that just recently made a movie.”
That’s right! Schitt’s Creek might be the strongest home grown sitcom since… that other thing he’s talking about that’s probably Corner Gas!
Look out. Here it comes. Here it comes!
Oh crap. It’s rubbish. That’s me fooled again, then.
Time to move. New Year has brought many digital wonders with it, not the least of which is a shiny new Wonder Woman comic, Wonder Woman ’77, that features the unmistakable visages of Lynda Carter and Lyle Waggoner in some all-new 1970s-set weekly adventures. I’ll be looking at the first issue of that after the jump and wondering if this is the TV series in comic form or something slightly different.
On top of that, alternative-reality, punching Wonder Woman has just woken up in Injustice: Gods Among Us Year Three and the formerly missing in action Sensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman has also returned, but in a change of schedule, it’s now out on Tuesdays.
All of which means that Tuesdays and Thursdays – with Wednesdays for Wonder Woman, Superman/Wonder Woman, Justice League and any other comics featuring our heroine – are chockablock with Wonder Woman comics, which makes a Tuesday ‘Weekly Wonder Woman’ look a bit silly. So from this week, WWW is moving to Fridays – in fact, you’ll be getting another one of these this Friday to take in today’s releases (which I haven’t read yet).
