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Netflix Doc Reappraises SCTV Ahead of Oct. 30 Release

The film collects reunion interviews and archival clips to show how the Toronto sketch show helped launch major comedy careers and shaped North American humor.

Martin Scorsese with SCTV cast members in 2018. (Photo: Cara Howe/Netflix)
Rick Moranis, Dave Thomas, John Candy, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Joe Flaherty, Andrea Martin
Flaherty moved on from SCTV with starring roles in the 1990s TV comedies Maniac Mansion and Police Academy: The Series. He also portrayed Harold Weir, father of Linda Cardellini and John Francis Daley’s characters, in Freaks and Geeks. On the big screen, Flaherty had a brief role as a heckler in the 1996 film Happy Gilmore. Like Duke, Flaherty offered his expertise at Humber College, serving as the artistic director and an artist in residence at the school’s comedy writing and performance program. He died in 2024, at age 82, following a brief illness.
Moranis joined the rank of big-screen stars with parts in Little Shop of Horrors and Spaceballs, and he starred in the Ghostbusters and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids franchises. Moranis took a step back from his screen career in the 1990s to care for his two children after the 1991 death of his wife, Ann Belsky, but he did get a Best Comedy Album Grammy nomination for his 2005 album The Agoraphobic Cowboy. Now he’s ending that onscreen hiatus with a reprise as Dark Helmet in Spaceballs: The New One, due for release in 2027. (“I really wasn’t retired. I was just negotiating,” he joked at Comic-Con this year.)

Overview

  • Netflix released the documentary trailer on Oct. 28 and the full film is set to begin streaming on Friday, October 30.
  • SCTV: The Greatest Show You’ve Never Heard Of uses new interviews, a Toronto reunion and archival footage to trace how Second City Television grew from a local troupe offshoot into a comedy incubator.
  • The film foregrounds surviving cast members such as Eugene Levy, Martin Short and Andrea Martin while also treating the project as a memorial to late stars including John Candy, Joe Flaherty and Catherine O’Hara.
  • Martin Scorsese once explored making new SCTV sketches with the cast and filmed a 2018 reunion but the plan stalled and the project was later retooled for Netflix with Jimmy Kimmel producing.
  • Coverage of the documentary ties SCTV’s legacy to concrete outcomes: alumni moved into hit films and shows, many teach or mentor younger performers, and Rick Moranis has announced a planned on‑screen return in Spaceballs: The New One in 2027.