Those 'Kids in the Hall' are still off the wall
Scott Thompson, Dave Foley, Mark McKinney and Kevin McDonald as Shuckton's action new team in IFC's " Kids in the Hall: Death Comes to Town " . Credit: Michael Gibson/IFC. Credit: Michael Gibson/IFC. /
COMEDY MINISERIES "Kids in the Hall: Death Comes to Town"
WHAT IT'S ABOUT Black-wearing, bulge-bellied, one-toothed Death rides his bicycle made of bones into the Canadian hamlet of Shuckton, and attacks its strange citizens from the comfort of his No Tell Motel room.
Most Americans still aren't familiar with The Kids in the Hall, the cult-fave Canadian comedy troupe whose surreal sketchfests played HBO and CBS late-night from 1989 to 1994. Getting to know them now will probably feel like watching Monty Python for the first time: What the heck is this?
The troupe's five guys play women characters, too. In this rambling reunion mystery of eight half-hours, they star as practically all the townspeople grinning bolo-wearing mayor and drunken wife (but not their "special son," Rampop), immobile obese guy, dingbat pizza delivery lady, "town abortionist" ("free kitten with every procedure"), acquisitive forensics expert, lethargic police partners and an entire news team (including weather girl) scrambling to cover the seamy story of silly deaths.
Like the Kids' most memorably off-the-wall sketches, "Death Comes to Town" plays like some free-association game, with a plot thread to keep it connected. Stolen manhole covers morph into decades-old hockey locker room flashbacks, which give way to "His Girl Friday" unreeling on town TV sets.
The varied characters are the trip. They're played by Dave Foley ("NewsRadio"), Mark McKinney ("Slings and Arrows"), Scott Thompson ("The Larry Sanders Show"), Kevin McDonald ("That '70s Show") and Bruce McCulloch with such warmth and conviction that even the looniest among them feels real, and relatable. Outright insane behaviors come off as adorable personality quirks.
And then, of course, there's Death (McKinney, who also plays a fine news bimbo and distracted cop), who's got his own issues. He's no Max von Sydow from "The Seventh Seal," elegantly playing chess, but is instead a decrepit, decomposing drooler.
BOTTOM LINE You've gotta go with the flow. Some viewers will take to the meandering pace, nonlinear lunacy and peculiar people. Some won't. But Kids fans are in for fresh fun.
GRADE A-
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