The Kids in The Hall: they’re definitely back better

returns they are often better received for the nostalgia they carry attached than their quality, but there is always someone coming to show that this is not an indestructible rule. And that’s what Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney and Scott Thompson did in the return of the mythological The Children in the Hall.

“Some say they tried the movie because they had an alliance with the devil, others it is to launder money on drugs”, Said the first character to appear in this return, while selling VHS’s Brain Candythe film they made in 1996.

Selling the tape for a dollar recovers the investment, breaks the curse and “The kids” will be excavated from the common grave in which they are buried in the last chapter of 1995. This is how the sixth season begins, but not before making a joke about gender equality, is that the only female characters in the series are almost always transvestites.

Who was and the men

The Children in the Hall was a group of five Canadian comedians who began working together in theater in 1984, until another Canadian, Lorne Michaels -creator of Saturday Night Live-, made a special for them in 1988 for HBO and CBS which would eventually became a series of sketches (in Argentina it can be seen on HBO Olé and on I-Sat).

It has been in the air for five seasons between 1989 and 1995 -during the season the seasons were 20 episodes long-, and the following year they said goodbye to the film. Although they went on several tours and in 2010 they starred in a miniseries, only now have they returned with their classic program, again with Michaels as producer.

For those who haven’t seen them, it can be said that “The Kids” is a kind of Monty Python ¿90 model, or extrapolated to Argentina as a Cha Cha Cha in the direction of Damian Szifron.

In fact, in 1998 an attempt to do something similar to delicatessen, the cycle done by Cuatro Cabezas (Guebel-Pergolini) with Horacio Fontova, Diego Capusotto, Fabio Alberti and Damián Dreizik, among others. But despite the names and good bills, it didn’t work.

Linked to the ’90s

If the Canadians go back, no one knows more than them that the show is tied to the 90s as Tamagotchi and 1: 1, and they take advantage of it with jokes and references.

The opening, for example, preserves the music, is tracked from the original and has the same image texture. The main big change, of course, is realization, and being only eight chapters of 25 minutesthe budget bet is more noticeable.

Some of his characters have returned remembering old times like: Paul Bellini, Queen Elizabeth II, The police, AT & Love employees, Buddy and -don’t miss- Mr. Tyzik, who tried to crush people’s heads from afar with his index finger and thumb. Despite this, they are far from nostalgic and anyone can enjoy them without seeing any of the above.

The new sketches show them as before: absurd, clever, surreal and provocativewithout escaping any subject: from gender to racism, through religion, death and “cultural appropriation”, which is in vogue today.

Like anything that ages well, don’t know if this comeback was very good because they were brilliant or because everyone who followed didn’t get close to them; maybe both. Children in the Hall has reappeared intact and of high quality, proving that it can be even better.

wd