TVSquad

Just imagine how much fun Harper's Island could have been if it had been written by and starred The Kids in the Hall. If you live in Canada, you don't have to imagine it, because the Kids are creating just that.

Death Comes to Town is to be an eight-part comedy where the Kids (Scott Thompson, Dave Foley, Mark McKinney, Bruce McCulloch and Kevin McDonald) will each play multiple roles, possibly including some of the characters made famous on The Kids in the Hall sketch comedy show. I'm hoping the murderer kills people by crushing their heads.

As a special Sketch Comedy Saturday treat, I will forgo the lengthy, typed-out, text version of me humming the Kids In The Hall theme song and get right down to business. This is one of those shows that are now considered classic sketch comedy (and Canadian comedy), so I feel silly for even having to profile them, but I am constantly surprised by the number of people whose eyes glaze over when I ask them if they've ever heard of the Kids. So ... Have you heard of the Kids?

The news that The Kids in the Hall are working on a new Canadian TV miniseries should make comedy nerds everywhere happy. I know I'm excited, even though it might be a while until it airs in the U.S. (I'm kicking myself for not moving to Canada like I said I would after the 2004 presidential election.)

Mr. Dave Foley told the Canadian Press that all the original Kids (Foley, Bruce McCullough, Mark McKinney, Scott Thompson and Kevin McDonald) are writing an eight-ep miniseries for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the home of their original sketch comedy show. It sounds like their recent reunion tour went pretty well. The five-member troupe will star in the series, which Foley says won't be a sketch comedy, but will involve a number of comic characters.

Do you know what a dilithium crystal is? Ever use the term "cosplay" when discussing your weekend plans? Own more than two non-Star Wars action figures? If you answered "Affirmative!" to any of these questions, then you'll be staying home this Friday night, because you're a nerd. It's cool. That means you'll be able to catch this week's ep of Stargate Atlantis, with guest stars Dave Foley, Bill Nye the Science Guy and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. All nerds, by the way.

Kids in the Hall vet Foley plays a professional rival of Dr. McKay (David Hewlett), who invents an anti-global warming device that, instead of ending global warming, almost kills everybody at a swanky party, including Nye and DeGrasse Tyson. Not intrigued? Gateworld says there might be a scene with Jewel Staite stuck in a giant freezer. I know. It's a good show.

(S01E04) Okay, this was the best episode of In Plain Sight to date. Action-packed and filled with character revelations, if this is where In Plain Sight is going, it's going to definitely make it beyond this premiere season.

The set up has Marshall and Mary taking custody of a seemingly innocuous, diabetic, asthmatic accountant/arranger for a hit man named Lola. He's been caught in an FBI sting and will go WITSEC in exchange for "delivering" Lola.

Expertly played by Dave Foley (News Radio), he's just enough of an unctuous ass to make him amusing. When Mary throws him to the ground and pounces on him, he says, "Could you get off of me, you're not exactly petite."

The role was very much like Charles Grodin, a mob accountant, in the movie Midnight Run, with Robert DeNiro as the bounty hunter forced to take him cross country. (If you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor and rent it; it's great!)

(S03E02) Originally aired on September 25, 1996.

First off, can we all agree that none of the episodes in the fifth, Phil Hartman-less season of NewsRadio aren't even in the running for one of the best of the series?

OK, once we start with that, it's still ridiculously hard to pick an episode that stands out. So many episodes from the first three seasons (and several in the fourth) could easily fit into this category. So I'm not even going to attempt to pick one episode to talk about. Thanks for reading, and have a good day.

Oh, alright, if you insist. I'll go with "Review," from the third season.

Sometimes, when it's too rainy outside to go anywhere and the air is full of a sense of doom and gloom, all you want is to just hole up indoors and watch hours and hours and hours of nonstop Canadian sketch comedy and cross-dressing. Hey, I can't possibly be the only one that feels that way, because otherwise, the Kids in the Hall complete series megaset wouldn't have been made. I had a full rainy week to lounge around with this lovely collection and we got to know each other pretty well. It's a real sweetheart, to be sure... A real cross-dressing, head-crushing, fact-sharing, cabbage-headin' sweetheart.

When I wrapped up my interview with Bruce McCulloch -- executive producer of ABC's Carpoolers and a member of the legendary comedy troupe Kids In The Hall -- I asked him if there was anything else he might be working on. "Yeah, I'm going to have a heart attack next March, and I wanted people to know about that," he joked. For a guy who has worn a lot of hats in his career, nothing has kept him busier than being the boss.

Carpoolers, a single-camera comedy premiering on ABC tonight at 8:30 PM ET, is about four guys who use their carpool to explore what's going on in each other's lives. The show is McCulloch's brainchild, which means he's involved with everything from the writing to how many donuts will be on the craft services table. Yet he still has time to write and perform his own surreal works, as well as perform occasionally with the Kids, who have been together for almost a quarter-century.

I got a chance to speak to McCulloch last week, and we talked about what it's like to premiere after the season's most lambasted new show (Cavemen), what parts of himself he sees in each of his main characters, what it's like to work with Fred Goss and Jerry O'Connell (who spoke to our friends at AOL last week), and why the Kids have managed to stay together for so long. Highlights are after the jump, as well as an audio embed of the interview (35 minutes).

Man, how I miss this show.

Someone who attended the Kids in the Hall reunion performance at the Just for Laughs festival posted the encore on YouTube, and I've placed it below for your viewing pleasure. Some of the dialogue is difficult to make out, but fans shouldn't have any trouble figuring out what's going on. Mark McKinney reprises his role as the "headcrusher" guy, that wormy fella who loved to vanquish those he disliked by closing one eye and pretending to crush their heads between his thumb and forefinger. In the segment below, he kills off the other cast members (Scott Thompson, Bruce McCullough, Dave Foley and Kevin McDonald) for their poor career choices post- Kids in the Hall. In a final bit of inspired meta comedy, McKinney turns his wrath on himself.

OK, now most of you have to get your minds out of the gutter. Notice how that headline is phrased. It's not "Dave Foley can't sleep with Maura Tierney," as is I'm making statements about who Dave Foley can and cannot sleep with. It's "Dave Foley Can't Sleep (with Maura Tierney)," because it's the name of a web-only show that Foley has over at Super Deluxe.com called "Dave Foley Can't Sleep." Got that? Good.

In this episode, Dave Foley can't sleep (ha!) and leaves his bed (that's his real wife, by the way) and goes over to his computer to see which of his friends is online late at night. It just so happens that his former NewsRadio co-hort Maura Tierney is online, and they chat via webcam about dogs, drinking, and divorce. Video after the jump!

Harland Williams was the only funny thing about Monday night's episode of Thank God You're Here. And he was so damn funny that my abs got a workout as I laughed my way through his entire improved scene. Unlike the other players, who waited to see what the stage actors had planned for them, Harland walked into the scene and took control.

Harland got a little dirty near the end (improv ain't funny 'less it's dirty, folks) and NBC censored him several times. In fact, the very end of his scene had a joke completely edited out because the censors apparently couldn't make it fly by just bleeping him. Did anyone else find it interesting that the censors left in references to drugs, but edited out the sexual references?

The edited portion of his scene is in this video. And the uncensored version of another part of his scene is here. Both videos are also after the jump.

I think it can be universally agreed that the fifth season of NewsRadio - the final season - was by far the worst season of the series. Not only was Phil Hartman killed during the hiatus, but another cast member (Jon Lovitz) came on board and just didn't fit in to what the rest of the group had built over the previous four seasons.

The season kicks off with the "Bill Moves On" episode, where the gang has just returned from Bill's funeral (he died of a heart attack), and everyone mocks Dave's 2 hour eulogy. Matthew doesn't really believe Bill is dead, everyone thinks Lisa is drunk, and Catherine (Khandi Alexander) returns to the show for one episode. This is one of the better episodes of the last season, because it's important to the show's history and (as is revealed on one of the commentaries), they didn't really rehearse it or do any run throughs. It was hard enough getting through it once on tape night. The tears you see are real. It ends with everyone taking an item off Bill's desk to remember him. Jimmy takes the whole desk. A nice tribute.

The career trajectories of the former Kids in the Hall have been fascinating to behold. Dave Foley went from a starring turn in News Radio to a funny, but strange co-hosting gig on Celebrity Poker Showdown. Mark McKinney appeared briefly on SNL and now sits around the writer's room of Studio 60 hoping Aaron Sorkin will throw him a bone and actually let him write something. Kevin McDonald turns up in bit parts everywhere and keeps a steady gig as the voice of Lilo and Stitch's alien life form Pleakley. Scott Thompson visits Conan every once in awhile, but my favorite Bruce McCulloch's post-Kids appearances have been few and far between. McCulloch served a brief stint as a SNL writer and wrote and directed the forgettable film Dog Park.

NBC has ordered six episodes of celebrity improv competition Thank God You're Here. The series, which was originally produced in Australia, is being described as Whose Line is it Anyway? meets Let's Make a Deal. Celebrity guests will choose one of several doors to open. Behind each door, a comedy sketch they know nothing about is being performed. Whether they stumble into an operating room, a motorcycle race or an undersea adventure, they'll be greeted by the line, "Thank God you're here!" From that point, the celeb is on his or her own. Their performances will be judged by Kids in the Hall alum Dave Foley and host David Alan Grier.

NBC Entertainment president Kevin Reilly started his network's portion of the TCA press tour by announcing full-season renewals for four shows: My Name Is Earl, Heroes, Law & Order: SVU, and The Office. This means all four shows will be back for new seasons in the fall. Reilly called those shows, and a number of others, "tent posts" that he thinks will bring the network back to a much stronger position than it has been in recent years.

In other news, Reilly announced the pickup of a new improv pilot called Thank God You're Here, where improv comics will don a costume unknown to them, enter a scene, and attempt to improvise through it. It will be hosted by David Alan Grier, and the improv comic's skills will be "judged" by Dave Foley. Where does the name of the show come from? Well, when the comic enters with his costume on, the other comics in the scene will say, "Thank God You're Here!" Clever, ain't it?

More on the executive session later today.