How Bizarre: Canadian sitcom blazed a blue trail

Name and describe the 1980s Canadian sketch comedy show with early career appearances by a few future stars and one terrible daredevil.

If you said Bizarre, you are correct.

CTV produced it after American station ABC passed on it after airing the pilot in 1979. A censored version of the show aired on CTV from 1980 to 1986, while the unbridled episodes aired on U.S. network Showtime.

Hosted by comedian John Byner, the show featured Bob Einstein, who developed it along with Winnipeg-born actor, writer and producer Allan Blye (both worked on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour), according to Broadcasting-History.ca.

It blazed new trails in terms of its risque content, its self-awareness and its related near-complete dispensing of the fourth wall. In fact, Byner, who frequently addressed the live studio audience directly, and Einstein, who walked on camera in a suit and interrupted sketches that weren’t funny, made the constantly breaking and nudge-winking troupe of today’s Saturday Night Live look like Judi Dench reading Lady Macbeth.

Blue material was a hallmark of the show. This included, but was far from limited to, Bizarre acting as “a vehicle for attractive female Toronto models to become big Hollywood stars, by baring their breasts on the (cable version of the) show,” according to NostalgiaCentral.com. Dench was not among them.

Meanwhile, IMDB confirms a young Mike Myers — as he did on other Canadian classics such as King of Kensington, Range Ryder and the Calgary Kid, and The Littlest Hobo — appeared on Bizarre. He played Byner’s nephew, “Timmy Byner” in a single episode.

Howie Mandel, Steve Allen, Red Foxx, Tom Harvey, Dave Thomas and Dave Broadfoot made appearances. Luba Goy, who went on to join Broadfoot on Royal Canadian Air Farce, is credited with appearing on seven Bizarre episodes from 1981 to 1983.

The show was fertile ground for Einstein, who like Clark Kent dispensing with a pair of glasses, donned a motorcycle helmet and became Super Dave Osborne, the snake-bitten Evil Knievel tribute act.

Super Dave’s inevitably tragic stunts were introduced and described by former sportscaster Mike Walden, an endless fount of both baritone enthusiasm and ostensibly genuine concern for his masticated colleague.

The Super Dave show ran for five family friendly seasons starting in 1987 — but like a good mushroom, it was first grown in something much dirtier.

Examples of both classic Canadian shows can be found on YouBoob. Tube. On the internet.

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