Last night I was finally able to begin watching the first volume of SCTV. It is by now common knowledge that Shout! Factory and/or Andrew Alexander made the decision to issue the 1981 “Network/90” NBC/CBC series first (this kind of decision is not entirely without precedent: when A&E began releasing episodes of The Saint they did so with the 1966 colour series and are only now in the process of issuing episodes from the first series from 1962.) Even so, a lot of the material is vintage anyway since the jump to American network television necessitated using, as the liner notes diplomatically put it, “repurposed” material from SCTV’s first three series (and hilariously taking the piss out of themselves for doing so from the very first wraparound).

Even though I hadn’t seen the NBC premiere since its original airdate I noticed some of the alterations made necessary by music clearances. (sctvguide.ca has a fairly comprehensive list of these edits.) As mentioned previously, you get to see the original NBC opening credit sequence, which was sadly abandoned within a few weeks for a rather uncomfortable set of out-of-character walk-ons (which Catherine O’Hara and Andrea Martin make great fun of during one of the bonus features).

Matt says Tony claims a striking resemblance between Johnny Depp’s Willy Wonka from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and our own Brian Alter.

Depp:

Alter:

I’m not sure I see it.

At last, it looks like January.

This week I’ve been rereading The Confessions of a Hoaxer—my local library had it when I was very young, and by courtesy of interlibrary loan I am reading it again for the first time in years. Alan Abel is one of the few people I’ve ever envied for his choice of career. His daughter Jenny has produced and directed a documentary, Abel Raises Cain, premiering at the Slamdance Film Festival in a few weeks.

The weekend before Christmas we screened the new DVD edition of The Night Stalker/The Night Strangler. I was too young to have seen the films when they originally aired on ABC, which is just as well considering how timeless they both seem now… I have to note, like everyone else does when mentioning The Night Stalker, that Kolchak’s DNA is synced with Fox Mulder’s.