Made in Canada
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| Made in Canada | |
|---|---|
| Format | Sitcom |
| Starring | Rick Mercer, Peter Keleghan, Leah Pinsent, Dan Lett |
| Country of origin |  Canada |
| No. of episodes | 65 |
| Production | |
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | CBC Television |
| Original run | 1998 – 2003 |
| External links | |
| IMDb profile | |
Made in Canada may also mean Country of origin.
Made in Canada is a Canadian television situation comedy which aired on the CBC from 1998 to 2003. In the United States, France, Australia and Latin America, the show was syndicated as The Industry. It was produced using a single camera setup.
The series, a satire of film and television production, revolved around Pyramid Productions, a viper's nest of creative incompetence, savage greed and hysterical backbiting in which Richard Strong (Rick Mercer) tried to navigate his way to the top of the corporate ladder. The firm's CEO was Alan Roy (Peter Keleghan), a charismatic but intellectually questionable womanizer who often succeeded more by accident than skill. Accountant Veronica Miller (Leah Pinsent), corporate weasel Victor Sela (Dan Lett) and secretary Wanda (Jackie Torrens) rounded out the main office staff, whose schemes and misadventures in getting their jobs done each day provided the dramatic focus of the series.
In 1998, two real-life Canadian film and television studios, Alliance Communications and Atlantis Communications, merged into the modern Alliance Atlantis. This merger was parodied on Made in Canada, when Pyramid merged with a company called Prodigy and became known as Pyramid Prodigy. (Ironically, Alliance Atlantis later purchased Salter Street Films, the producers of Made in Canada.)
The company's projects also provided storylines for the series, as the staff of Pyramid tried to manage the inevitable complications provided by the casts and crews of their film and television productions. The company's cash cows were two series, The Sword of Damacles (sic), a parody of mythological adventure series such as Xena: Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, and Beaver Creek, a parody of Canadian period dramas such as Anne of Green Gables and Road to Avonlea.
Megan Follows, the real-life star of Anne of Green Gables, appeared in one episode as Mandy Forward, the former "Adele of Beaver Creek", who returned for a reunion movie and discovered that after her previous Beaver Creek reunion movie, Alan had kept the sets up for two more weeks in order to produce an Adele of Beaver Creek porn knockoff.
The show's third and fourth seasons won the Gemini Award for Best Comedy Series. Its final episode also received a Gemini for Best Ensemble Performance in a Comedy Program or Series in 2004. The program used The Tragically Hip's "Blow at High Dough" as its theme song.
The series was both produced by and a parody of Salter Street Films and Island Edge Inc, and Pyramid's logo is very similar to that of Salter Street parent company Alliance Atlantis.
Episodes generally began with a short monologue to the audience by Mercer (breaking the fourth wall) about some facet of the entertainment industry that related to the plot of show that followed. At the end of almost every episode one character would look into the camera and say (again breaking the fourth wall) either, "I think that went well," or, "This is not good," (in one episode, both were said), or sometimes some other brief statement.
[edit] After Made in Canada
Mercer ended the show's planned five year run in 2003, and can now be seen hosting Rick Mercer Report on CBC. Prior to creating Made in Canada, Mercer was a popular fixture on another Salter Street series This Hour Has 22 Minutes. (He juggled both series until 2001, when he left 22 Minutes permanently.)
Keleghan can also be seen in The Newsroom, another CBC production as well as having a long running recurring role on The Red Green Show as the eccentric Ranger Gord. Alex Carter (Michael Rushton/Damacles) can now be seen as a detective on the popular CBS drama CSI.
The first season (six episodes) of Made in Canada has been released on DVD, although none of the other seasons have yet followed.
