The beloved Canadian sketch comedy show, "The Kids in the Hall," has returned to us via Amazon Prime, picking up right where it left off twenty-seven years ago. Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald, Bruce McCulloch, Mark McKinney, and Scott Thompson are back, resurrecting many old characters, the original sketch format and title sequence, and the same sense of absurdity and irreverence that made the original one of my favorite comedy series ever. To underline that this is a continuation of the old show, they start off by unearthing the five stars, who you might remember were buried in a shallow grave in the last episode of "The Kids in the Hall" back in 1995.
Being on Amazon comes with some advantages. There are next to no content restrictions, so we see full frontal male nudity within the first ten minutes of the premiere episode, pretty much just to show off that they can. Vulgarity is abundant, profanity is in full swing, and there's one particularly gory sketch involving a bust of Shakespeare that provides all the blood and guts you could ask for. And yet, the Kids don't abuse this newfound freedom. Their comedy was always about embracing the surreal and the weird, and the new series delivers plenty in that vein. We get alcoholic superheroes, a doctor who boasts of dropping newborns in less than half of his deliveries, and a Zoom meeting that devolves into an orgy in record time.
Everyone's older and grayer now, but nobody has slowed down much, or lost any of their willingness to cross-dress at the drop of a hat. While I wish that some of my favorite recurring characters could have come back, like Maudre and Jocelyn (and Rudy), this season is only eight episodes, and there was only room for so many of them. Buddy Cole and the Headcrusher return, of course, along with Francesca Fiore and Bruno Puntz Jones terrorizing a nervous couples counselor. Fans should be happy that these appearances are all perfectly up to par with the previous ones. I appreciate that there have been a few necessary cultural updates of various points of reference, but Gavin, Danny Husk, and the Cathies are pretty much the same as ever. Well, except Don the Lorne Michaels stand-in, who has improved with age.
And the Kids don't need to lean on their old successes, because the new material is great. Sketches like "Ambumblance" and "Shakespeare's Bust" are as funny as anything they've ever done. A morbid "Doomsday DJ" sketch shows off their continuing penchant for the dark and avante-garde. I'm not surprised at all that "The Kids in the Hall" humor has aged so well. The group never relied much on pop culture commentary, preferring to to target a wider spectrum of human foibles and idiosyncrasies. They were also very progressive for their time, especially in regards to gender, age, and sexuality. The show is a little slower paced now, but it still has the ability to shock and surprise and drop the mike with regularity.
One new bit is that each episode features a brief appearance by a "Kids in the Hall" fan - really celebrity cameos from the likes of Mark Hamill and Will Forte playing a variety of fannish weirdos. There are also a few other familiar faces who pop up in these episodes, mostly very blink-and-you-miss-em. One exception is Eddie Izzard as a confused repairman who ends up enjoying a "hot-hot" bath with Kevin McDonald. I don't think the celebrity participation really adds much to "Kids in the Hall," but they don't hurt anything either, and it's nice to see the wider comedy community loves these guys as much as I do.
My only real complaint is that once I finished all the new episodes, I immediately wanted more. Amazon was nice enough to offer a new "Kids in the Hall" documentary along with the revived show, which is definitely worth checking out too. I ended up down a rabbit hole of their older content as a result, one of the most worthwhile nostalgia trips I've been on in a long time. I sincerely hope this revival sticks, because the Kids clearly have a lot more laughs to share.
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