The YouTube Files – Four On The Floor.

Four On The Floor (CBC, 1986)

This is another 80s comedy show that I don’t remember watching at the time, but once again, the description sounded interesting enough to me to want to find out more, and all of the editions are on YouTube. There haven’t been too many Canadian comedy shows imported to this country over the years, but this was one of them. One critic said that this was “hilariously funny”, well let’s hope so.

Four On The Floor really was a crazy, fast-moving sketch show that was written and performed by Paul, Rick, Dan, and Peter, a quartet who styled themselves as The Frantics. Some of the ideas featured were rather strange, and there were some songs as well (they did have a musical side, and they released the album “Boot To The Head”). There also seemed to be a lot of sketches about ice hockey.

Isn’t that the national sport of Canada? This could be why. One positive was that there were rather odd bumper things between the sketches featuring the heads of the cast members floating around for no particular reason, I always like that. There weren’t too many recurring characters or catchphrases, but someone who did turn up a lot was the rather unlikely superhero Mr Canoehead.

This was someone who, er, had a canoe on his head, but this didn’t stop him from always coming to the rescue. There were 13 editions of Four On The Floor in one series. Channel 4 clearly hoped that this would be a ratings winner, as when this was first shown in this country in 1988, about two years after this was shown in Canada, this was in the coveted Friday 9pm slot, where imported comedy usually featured.

But unfortunately it would seem that their style didn’t really click with most British viewers, because some of the later editions were shown in 1989 in the not-so coveted slot of around 1:30am. However, this did pave the way for another Canadian comedy group with a similar style to come through with their show The Kids In The Hall, which is better-known and longer-running, and I plan to review this one soon too.

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