Warm-hearted sitcom that's sweeping all before it
As ‘Schitt's Creek’ cleans up at the Emmys, Ed Power explains the secrets of its extraordinary success
As cult sitcom Schitt’s Creek was showered with awards at Sunday’s Emmys, the cast sat together glowing with delight.
They were able to do so — while wearing masks and socially distancing — because they were in Canada, which is deemed to have responded to the pandemic more efficiently than the US.
With American nominees forced to huddle before their lonely Zoom cameras, it was a reminder of the outsider status of Schitt’s Creek and also that they do things their own way north of the US border.
That same sense of playing by a slightly different rules-set is discernible in Schitt’s Creek itself. It struck an Emmys clean sweep by winning nine gongs and claiming all the major comedy categories.
The extraordinary thing is that Schitt’s Creek has achieved this success while largely defying comedy convention.
On paper it is true that it sounds like just another fishout-of-water chucklefest. It tells the story of the megabucks Rose family, who are defrauded out of their fortune. Forced to start over, they are reduced to living out of a motel in the punning one-horse town after which the show is named.
An American network would no doubt have taken these raw ingredients and rustled up something devilishly cruel.
The Roses would be upbraided for their greed and crassness, the townsfolk mocked as unsophisticated yokels.
Schitt’s Creek, however, resists such obvious temptations. Video store magnate Johnny Rose (Eugene Levy), former actress wife Moira (Catherine O’Hara) and their kids David (Dan Levy — Eugene’s son and the creator of Schitt’s Creek) and Alexis (Annie Murphy) are fully rounded humans.
They are capable of selfishness but warmth and kindness too. They are also in the rich sitcom tradition of outsiders trying to fit in, like spiritual cousins of Alan Partridge, David Brent and even the Vicar of Dibley.
The same generosity of spirit characterises the portrayal of the townsfolk. These include Chris Elliott as Roland Schitt, the grizzled mayor, and Emily Hampshire as Stevie Budd, the clerk at the motel to which the Roses have been exiled.
Schitt’s Creek celebrates diversity too — David is a pansexual who marries a man — but without making a song and dance about it, as a US comedy might.
Schitt’s Creek could similarly teach British comedy a few things about cherishing and celebrating diversity without hitting the audience over the head with laboured messaging.
With David and characters such as real-estate agent Ray Butani (portrayed by Canadian-Indian actor Rizwan Manji) and international playboy Emir (Turkish-Canadian actor Ennis Esmer), difference is presented as part of the rich fabric of life.
This is in contrast with UK comedies such as Brassic or Kate & Koji that seem to approach representation across the spectrum as a glaring and slightly alarming novelty.
The feel-good glow extends to behind the scenes. Dan Levy had grown up in the shadow of his father — a giant of Canadian show business — and was struggling to break into the industry. He eventually landed a job presenting an MTV Canada aftershow segment for reality hit The Hills.
This gave him a profile locally and the confidence to suggest that he and his father go into comedy together. “The idea for Schitt’s Creek really came out of one of those brainstorming sessions that I had one day in a cafe,” he told Variety magazine last April ahead of the broadest of the series’ sixth and final season (the cast have refused to rule out a seventh run).
The Levys tried to sell Schitt’s Creek to major American networks such as ABC. Nobody was interested. And so they took the concept back to the relative backwater of Canadian television and state-run service, CBC.
It was an instant hit there, and then achieved international success when Netflix snapped it up in 2017. And as outsiders, the Levys were able to maintain their independence and stay true to their belief that Schitt’s Creek should be about human drama first, comedy second.
“The set-up was always that this family would realise that money is not the be all and end all,” Dan Levy said. “The goal was [that] this family will realise the value of love.”
He and his father have succeeded beyond their wildest expectations. Schitt’s Creek is funny, but it also conveys the message that it’s the people with whom we share our lives that matter the most.