One of our favorite shows of all time returns for an encore run this weekend, so rev up the DVR to catch it from the very start.
Starring Paul Gross (“Due South”) and Mark McKinney (“Kids in the Hall”), “Slings & Arrows” is so unique and so delightful, we can hardly find words to describe it. But here are a few we found in reviewing its original Sundance Channel run:
Funny, romantic, biting, sweet, perceptive and often thrilling, "Slings and Arrows" is an exuberant salute to life, the theater and, not least, the television medium that brings us this rapier wit for six delectable hours, ending much too soon.
Blame Canada for the bracing portrayal of a nonprofit theater company beset by outrageous fortune, including but not limited to: the walking/talking/advice-giving ghost of its egotistical founder, the ever-odder "rebranding" exertions of its geeky business manager, and the oft-demonstrated probable insanity of its dashing director.
When we say TV doesn't get more adult, we don't mean naughty words (though there are many). We mean the intelligence of the approach and the deft shifts in comic/tragic tone.
This paean to the theater also takes on modern marketing, governance and more, but only tangentially to a cast of quirky characters so authentic you can practically smell them.
“Slings & Arrows” now airs Saturday at 3 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. on Sundance Channel.
[In photo: Paul Gross, Don McKellar, Mark McKinney.]