Canada for Americans in the Canadian TV Comedy Series Trailer Park Boys

Trailer Park Boys is a long-running Canadian TV comedy set in and around the fictional Sunnyvale Trailer Park outside Halifax, Nova Scotia. The main heroes of its sprawling ensemble cast are Ricky and Julian, a pair of hard-drinking, pot growing petty crooks and their... interesting friend Bubbles. A camera crew follows them around, mockumentary style, as they get drunk, steal stuff, do battle with the even more drunk trailer park supervisor Mr. Lahey and his... interesting friend Randy, develop unlikely and grandiose schemes to make that one big score and retire rich, and eventually end up back in jail again. It's... interesting.

Canadians have a complicated relationship with Canadian TV. They hate it. There's an endless supply of glitzy American TV pouring across the border packed with production values and big name stars. Canadians generally slam home-grown TV as being dull and cheap by comparison. This often surprises American visitors who can find Canadian TV subtly different from what they're used to and a refreshing change of pace.

But Trailer Park Boys seems to be one area where everyone's in agreement. The show has run for seven seasons so far on Canadian cable network Showcase, and has usually been the network's highest-rated Canadian program. It even generated a spinoff movie in 2006, although the film doesn't appear to have made much of a splash.

Director and creator Mike Clattenburg has said that the idea behind Trailer Park Boys was to make a mirror version of COPS as seen from the crooks' point of view. And that's basically what the show is. The seasons usually begin with Ricky and Julian getting out of jail, full of big plans and swearing they're never going back. And they end with everything flaming out in glorious style, and Ricky and Julian going back to jail. (Sometimes the creators will mix this up and send someone else to jail.) They usually make the best of this, with Ricky boasting that the pot's better in jail anyway and Julian looking forward to catching up on his reading.

While they're out, Ricky lives in his battered old car and tries to get back with Lucy, the mother of his daughter Trinity. Julian, the brains of the outfit, comes up with various criminal schemes. (Perhaps the most famous of these was the pot-growing operation they called "Freedom 35" after a Canadian bank's popular "Freedom 55" retirement account.) Bubbles lives in a shed and takes care of the trailer park's cats and serves as the group's moral conscience. White rapper J-Roc and his crew pursue hip hop (or occasionally porn) stardom. And Mr. Lahey, the alcoholic ex-cop trailer park supervisor and his pot-bellied, eternally shirtless "longtime companion" Randy conspire to drive Ricky and Julian out of the park - whereupon Lahey seems to believe Sunnyvale will suddenly become a peaceable and prosperous wonderland.

Why on Earth would Canadians embrace these characters? Especially when they usually greet Canadian TV shows with hoots of derision? It's not like Trailer Park Boys is any less cheap than other Canadian TV. Far from it. In the first seasons they didn't even have a set, but shot in actual trailer parks with bemused residents wandering around the edges of the frame. And its episodes are hardly the sort of mile a minute plot machines of an American show like CSI: Miami. An episode of Trailer Park Boys is usually just as likely to meander around and get lost as any other Canadian show. Though it will be a little funnier about it.

My personal theory about why Canadians love Trailer Park Boys is that it plays into their love of self-deprecation. The last major home-grown creation Canadians embraced this way was Bob and Doug McKenzie. And there are definite similarities. Like Bob and Doug, the Trailer Park Boys are dumb, lowbrow, drunk and proud of it. They're not exactly the image you'd think Canada would want to project to the world - yet for all their criminality and social dysfunction, they're really kind of sweet and harmless. They might steal your barbecue grill, but they're not killers. Even when they do cause trouble, it's mostly for themselves.

So Trailer Park Boys proves to be a surprising window into the Canadian soul. But it's also a hoot of a goofbally comedy. (And if you find yourself having to defend yourself for watching something so lowbrow, be sure to use that window into the Canadian soul line. It works wonders.)