Underplayed Gems

Jimmy MacDonald's Canada

Jimmy MacDonald's Canada poster
Country
Canada
Length
1 season, 8 episodes
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this series is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

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How it feels

This series is a mockumentary about a fictional 1960s Canadian public affairs host named Jimmy MacDonald. He suffered a breakdown on air, fled to northern Canada, and his lost episodes were supposedly just discovered. The show blends real CBC news clips with modern comedic commentary.

mockumentaryquirkynostalgicself-referentialsatiricalretrodeadpanarchival feel

What happens

Jimmy MacDonald's Canada: The Lost Episodes is an eight-episode Canadian television series that aired on CBC Television in the summer of 2005. The show is a mockumentary, set partially to real news clips from the CBC News archives, purporting to be a lost Canadian public affairs series of the mid-1960s hosted by the fictional Jimmy MacDonald (Richard Waugh) with additional commentary from a woman's point of view by Marg Margison (Teresa Pavlinek). The premise is that MacDonald had a breakdown while on the air and fled to northern Canada, taking all of the filmed episodes with him. His plane crashed and he was presumed dead, and the premise is these films have recently been found. The character of Jimmy MacDonald was created as a combination of several real-life Canadian television figures of the 1960s, including Norman DePoe, Larry Henderson and J. Frank Willis. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

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