On Frozen Blog

Many of our readers won’t be familiar with the irreverent Canadian export ‘The Trailer Park Boys,’ now in its sixth season of production on the cable outlet Showcase. And that’s a shame, because as TV programs go — even late-night cable ones — this show has no peer. Recently OFB had an opportunity to enjoy a DVD showing of its autumn big-screen debut.

Some background: The show premiered in Canada in 2001. The program, over the course of its five seasons, has been shot entirely in Nova Scotia, much of it near Sidney Crosby’s hometown. It chronicles the foibles and criminal enterprises of three Canadian ex-cons in their modest residential community, Sunnyvale Trailer Park.

It’s conspicuously low budget, often outrageous, always irreverent. The protagonists — who are most definitely antagonists of law-abiding Canada — are Bubbles, Ricky, and Julian, and they are ever pursued by the park’s scatalogically-tongued manager, Mr. Lahey, who poorly conceals his same-sex affair with the shirtless-in-all-weather Randy.

‘The Cosby Show’ it’s not.

It airs in Ireland, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and much of southern Europe, but oddly nowhere in the U.S. despite being seemingly perfect for a cable outlet like Showtime or HBO. The f-bomb frequency is reminiscent of Eddie Murphy’s ‘Raw’ performance (but no moreso than ‘The Sopranos’), and its frequent drug-themed shows would surely rankle many American viewers, but the show seems ideally suited to a pay-cable U.S. network. Very late at night.

Two astute attendees and regular OFB readers at the movie screening, Chris and Adrienne, pointed out its parallels to the very funny ‘My Name Is Earl‘ (minus the good karma), another show that had network executives scratching their heads but now has audiences laughing uproariously. And TPB preceded ‘Earl’ by about four years.

So, on to the movie. In a word: hysterical. A plot summary may not be relevant per se, but it’s worth noting the film’s hockey-related aspects. For example, after being thrown in the brig for a ridiculously botched ATM robbery, the boys start a ball hockey team in jail.

However, the inmates’ team begins outperforming the warden’s, so the warden arranges for Ricky — the inmates’ star goalie — and Julian to get an early release from prison. (Perhaps like Sidney Crosby thought he was receiving before the Pens’ recent arena agreement with Pittsburgh pols.)

Our favorite hockey moment was “the clearing stick.” Ricky lives in a car in Sunnyvale (so that he doesn’t have to pay trailer park lot fees). Whenever he and his misfits want to drive the car, Ricky breaks out a hockey stick to clear the hood & roof of his living staples — a great visual to which this description does not do justice.

We wholeheartedly encourage you to see it, as soon as you can, multiple times. It’d be a pleasant if too brief diversion from another hockey-less spring here. The film is not yet for sale in the U.S. but is available from Canadian resellers. ‘TPB’ the movie won’t make anyone forget ‘Slapshot’ or ‘Animal House,’ but as a slice of cutting edge entertainment from Canada, it’s great if guilt-inducing fun. We can only hope that this hysterical flick finds its way to the U.S. market soon, or, in the words of Mr. Leahy, “the sh*t winds are gonna blow.”