Royal Canadian Air Farce premiered on CBC Radio on December 9, 1973. The cast consisted of comedians Roger Abbott, Don Ferguson, Lewba Goy, John Morgan, and Dave Broadfoot, who left Air Farce in 1985. Week after week, the show would do satirical sendups of politicians, as well as sketches about everyday life. In 1993, the comedy troupe began doing their show on CBC television, moving to television exclusively in the fall of 1997.
I first discovered Air Farce on the radio in 1994 and found it really funny. I'd listen at 10:30 on Saturday mornings on Cbc Stereo and again Sunday afternoons
at one on Cbc Radio.
I also watched the TV show from around when it first premiered, but I can't be sure when exactly.
Air Farce was good until the 97/98 season when they started being on TV only. Then the show got really dull and stupid. I think it was the late
John Morgan's fault. With his accent, he couldn't do very good impressions of most of the people he was impersonating. Then there was the stupid Mike
from Canmore sketch. That was originally supposed to be a one -trick pony on the radio show: some guy who calls a talk show and just says, "Hello ... I'm
Mike ... from Canmore." I didn't mind hearing it once, but when they started showing it week after week, it got annoying.
Then John Morgan retired and the show immediately got better. The additions of Craig Lozon, Allen Park, Jessica Holmes, and Penelope Coren raised the show
to heights it hadn't seen since probably its early days. One sketch in particular, with Jessica as a frustrated mother and Penelope as a little girl who looks at the world with a sense of wonder was very well acted and most enjoyable.
On the final episode, it seemed like they just wanted to get out of there.
The cast really hasn’t done much since the show ended.
Personally, I would like to see Air Farce come back with every living cast member, including the people who were never on the show but worked with the original cast in Air Farce’s previous incarnation, The Jest Society For Canada. That cast would include: Patrick Conlon, Gay Claitman, Martin Bronstein, Dave Broadfoot, and
the cast that was on the show itself. I would like to see it continue on until the last member is dead.
Episodes of Royal Canadian Air Farce can be purchased from ITunes.
Correction: Martin Bronstein was actually a member of the original radio cast as well.
After reading Roger and Don's book on "Air Farce", I understand why the show was the way it was. However, I still think having a majority of your sketches be news programs so you can look at the audience as you did on radio doesn't work well for television for two reasons.
First, a sketch comedy show needs to have a mixture of topical and nontopical sketches for the simple reason that, as someone once said, if you turn off the news for six months and then turn it back on, it'll be the same thing as six months ago.
Second, by the time the TV show premiered, the cast weren't right for the demographic that would be most interested in topical humour. They were middle-agedTorontonians. "This Hour Has 22 Minutes" and "Double Xposure" (the radio show, not the abomination that ran on CTV for a season and a half after the show left CBC) worked better because they were done by younger people (in the case of "22 Minutes) and childless, urban types (in the case of "Double Xposure") and played to the Newfoundland and Western Canadian sense of alienation respectively.
Also, If Lewba couldn't do news jokes, how come Brenda the Bingo Lady ran for so long instead of being killed off after a few sketches?
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