Three seasons of perfection
Slings and Arrows. It just may be that Slings and Arrows is the most perfect series ever televised. Clever, funny and wise, it makes shameless use of the fact that “all the word is a stage” but somehow never feels ridiculous, even when the actions of the cast are patently silly. Lead by Paul Gross, an actor who may actually be just as good as he thinks he is, the series is full of winking camp and rather mild social lambast, grounded by performers who are having a good time being people who play characters, rather than characters who play actors.
The first season features a pre-Notebook Rachel McAdams, playing Kate, a woman so huge-eyed, fresh faced and freakishly adorable that you should resent her just for breathing, but who of course is SO freakishly adorable that you can only give her fond lopsided smiles whenever she’s on screen. Seriously, her cuteness is epic, and you absolutely believe her bubbly excitement and/or graceful sweet temper in any given scene. She is contrasted with the magnificent Martha Burns (married, I believe, to Paul Gross), who plays Ellen Fanshaw, the aging diva. She somehow manages to balance all of Ellen’s flaws – and there are many – into a whole person. Her Ellen, while self-involved and childishly vindictive, has a vulnerability that calls on your better nature. You find that you want to protect her from the world and from herself, as Burns always manages to keep Ellen fragile rather than brittle.
Darren Nichols (Don McKellar) is the favored fool of the show, a lavishly egotistical director who swans around with scarves looped around his neck, dressed in leather pants. He is the foil for Paul Gross’s Geoffrey Tennant, a brilliant but afflicted man charged with the care and handling of the New Burbage Shakespeare Festival. He is famed for having a psychotic break on stage and haring off into the night, a gibbering madman. Now, seven years later, Geoffrey comes back to the festival to bury his old director and face his demons – not to spoil you, but it takes him three seasons to do it, and his main demon, his old director Oliver Wells, harries him in person from beyond the grave.
Before Slings and Arrows, Mark McKinney had always been my least-favorite Kid in the Hall. Then I found out that he wrote the show with Susan Coyne (who I’d never heard of before, and who I now think is absolutely the bee’s knees; her Anna Conroy is my absolute favorite but for Darren Nichols, who must win by virtue of his love of musical theatre and corduroy jackets with puffed sleeves) and he has now become my favorite Kid, vaulting over Dave Foley, who seems bitter and weirdly leering these days. McKinney plays the generally well-intentioned but weak-souled Richard Smith-Jones, a man who rises and falls time and time again in three seasons.
There’s plenty to love in the series, which reflects callow youth (Hamlet, Season 1), the follies of manhood (Macbeth, Season 2) and the tragedies of age (King Lear, Season 3). A sweetness of spirit takes the edge off of every bared fang, and that’s a big part of why I’ve watched and re-watched this show. The main reason, though, is the writing: witty, fun and quotable as all get out.
My delightful and much adored friend Kat sent me Season 1 out of the blue a few years ago, sure that I would like it, and I’m pretty sure you will, too, so give it a go!
You have a limited amount of time, so why spend it reading about things that suck or are only kind of okay? Favorite thing EVER is not a review site. We're unrepentant fans, and this is the stuff we love. Hope you like gushing, because we're about to embarrass ourselves.
Everybody cries when they get stabbed! There’s no shame in that.
Mark McKinney was always my favorite ever Kid in the Hall. Alyx and I still quote Chicken Lady, which dates us terribly.
Unfortunately my all time fave skit of his isn’t on You Tube, so I can’t prove that he’s worthy of your devotion.
Ok, I’m convinced — it’s time to watch Slings and Arrows.
If you want to communicate something with the proletariat, cover it in sequins and make it sing.
I LOVE THIS SHOW.
Hee, Matt says, “Deal with that!” now.