The Kids in the Hall: Death Comes To Town

Although age renders the comedy quintet's name a bit ironic, Canada's reunited Kids in the Hall have lost none of their edginess in this eight-part CBC miniseries in which the Kids—Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney, and Scott Thompson—assume nearly all of the roles. Death Comes to Town is a murder mystery set in a boondocks community called Shuckton, Ontario, where the unctuous mayor—recently disgraced by a losing bid to host the 2028 Olympics—turns up bludgeoned to death with a TV remote and stuffed into his own mailbox. Was the killer his alcoholic wife? His weather girl mistress? The drug-addled pretend-Indian? Or perhaps the victim's secret admirer, the (male) community coroner? The title is literal: meddling onlooker Death, a snaggle-toothed lowlife who once bungled a job in Shuckton, has come back to collect souls. Death particularly covets Ricky, a morbidly obese former hockey player whose homebound condition makes him the only Shucktonian who is not a suspect (instead, he becomes a self-styled sleuth on the case). Un-PC joke topics include necrophilia, abortion, alcoholism, mental retardation, dying pets, homosexuality, and cross-dressing, along with some very funny Great White North-centric content. DVD extras include audio commentaries, deleted and extended scenes, and bloopers. Highly recommended. (C. Cassady)