Made in Canada

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Made in Canada may also mean Country of origin.

Made in Canada is a Canadian television sitcom / single camera comedy, which aired on the CBC from 1998 to 2003. In the United States, France, Australia and Latin America, the show was syndicated as The Industry.

The series, a satire of film and television production, revolved around Pyramid Productions, a viper's nest of creative incompetence, savage greed and hysterical backbiting in which Richard Strong (Rick Mercer) tried to navigate his way to the top of the corporate ladder. The firm's CEO was Alan Roy (Peter Keleghan), a charismatic but intellectually questionable womanizer who often succeeded more by accident than skill. Accountant Veronica Miller (Leah Pinsent), corporate weasel Victor Sela (Dan Lett) and secretary Wanda (Jackie Torrens) rounded out the main office staff, whose schemes and misadventures in getting their jobs done each day provided the dramatic focus of the series.

In 1998, two real-life Canadian film and television studios, Alliance Communications and Atlantis Communications, merged into the modern Alliance Atlantis. This merger was parodied on Made in Canada, when Pyramid merged with a company called Prodigy and became known as Pyramid Prodigy. (Ironically, Alliance Atlantis later purchased Salter Street Films, the producers of Made in Canada.)

The company's projects also provided storylines for the series, as the staff of Pyramid tried to manage the inevitable complications provided by the casts and crews of their film and television productions. The company's cash cows were two series, The Sword of Damacles (sic), a parody of mythological adventure series such as Xena: Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, and Beaver Creek, a parody of Canadian period dramas such as Anne of Green Gables and Road to Avonlea.

Megan Follows, the real-life star of Anne of Green Gables, appeared in one episode as Mandy Forward, the former "Adele of Beaver Creek", who returned for a reunion movie and discovered that after her previous Beaver Creek reunion movie, Alan had kept the sets up for two more weeks in order to produce an Adele of Beaver Creek porn knockoff.

The show's third and fourth seasons won the Gemini Award for Best Comedy Series. Its final episode also received a Gemini for Best Ensemble Performance in a Comedy Program or Series in 2004. The show's theme song, "Blow at High Dough", is performed by The Tragically Hip.

The series was both produced by and a parody of Salter Street Films and Island Edge Inc, and Pyramid's logo is very similar to that of Salter Street parent company Alliance Atlantis.

Each episode started with Mercer going on a short rant to the audience (breaking the fourth wall) about some facet of the entertainment industry that related to the plot of show that followed. At the end of almost every episode one character would look into the camera and say (breaking the fourth wall again) either "I think that went well." or "This is not good." (in one episode, both were said), but sometimes a different phrase was said.

Mercer ended the show's planned five year run in 2003, and can now be seen hosting Rick Mercer Report on CBC. Prior to creating Made in Canada, Mercer was a popular fixture on another Salter Street series This Hour Has 22 Minutes. (He juggled both series until 2001, when he left 22 Minutes permanently.)

Keleghan can also be seen in The Newsroom, another CBC production as well as having a long running recurring role on The Red Green Show as the eccentric Ranger Gord. Alex Carter (Michael Rushton/Damacles) can now be seen as a detective on the popular CBS drama CSI.

The first season (six episodes) of Made in Canada has been released on DVD, although none of the other seasons have yet followed.

Advanced Search
Included Web Search Engines


Safe Search

close

Top Matching Results

Occasionally Search.com will highlight specialized results that are based on the context of your query. Examples of specialized results include specific links to news, images, or video.

Top Matching Results may highlight information from other Search.com pages, content from the CNET Network of sites, or third party content. The listings are based purely on relevance. Search.com does not receive payment for listings in this section but our partners that provide this data may get paid for listing these products.

Sponsored Links

This section contains paid listings which have been purchased by companies that want to have their sites appear for specific search terms and related content. These listings are administered, sorted and maintained by a third party and are not endorsed by Search.com.

Search Results

Search.com sends your search query to several search engines at one time and integrates the results into one list which has been sorted by relevance using Search.com's proprietary algorithm. You can customize the list of search engines included in your metasearch from the preferences.

The search engines that are used in your metasearch may allow companies to pay to have their Web sites included within the results. To view the Paid Inclusion policy for a specific search engine, please visit their Web site. Search.com does not accept payment or share revenue with any search engine partner for listings in this section.