Magazine brings Joe Flaherty back to Edmonton for SCTV retrospective

EDMONTON – Veteran funnyman Joe Flaherty is returning to Edmonton to help pay tribute to the classic sketch comedy show SCTV.

Flaherty, who played Count Floyd, intermittently disabled station owner Guy Caballero and talk-show host Sammy Maudlin, is hosting a retrospective of the series at Edmonton’s Garneau Theatre.

SCTV was largely filmed in Toronto throughout its run in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but for a time it was produced out of television studios in Edmonton.

Avenue Magazine, an arts, life and style publication, is playing host to the retrospective in order to raise cash for a monument to the series, which spawned stars such as John Candy, Martin Short, Catherine O’Hara and Andrea Martin.

Avenue Editor Steven Sandor says the fact that Edmonton was relatively remote actually helped the series.

He says it allowed them to push the envelope more and more.

“There was nobody in New York regularly checking on them to see what they were doing,” says Sandor.

“When you watch SCTV now, and take it in the context of 1982, a lot of the stuff that they were doing was really pushing the edge of what was on television at the time.”

(CHED)