Reasons to Love Toronto Now: because Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara are the Schitt

Reasons to Love Toronto Now: because Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara are the Schitt

(Image: courtesy of CBC)
(Image: courtesy of CBC)

It’s been a long time since the CBC has had a genuine, spit-out-your-smoothie hit on its hands. This year, however, the network released Schitt’s Creek, a fresh, acerbic sitcom made must-see by the small-screen reunion of Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy. The SCTV alums star as Moira and Johnny Rose, one-per-centers who lose their fortune and are forced to relocate to the titular backwater, which Johnny once bought as a joke. The Roses and their spoiled adult kids—played by newcomer Annie Murphy and Levy’s real-life son and eyebrow twin, Dan—must contend with poverty, the decrepit motel they now call home and endless ribbing from the quirky townspeople. Moira, a pill-popping ex–soap opera star with an endless supply of wigs, owes something to Arrested Development’s Lucille Bluth, but the character is leavened by O’Hara’s seductive goofiness. Levy, meanwhile, gives his perplexed patriarch a subtle fortitude. Even in a golden age of comedic TV duos (the Broad City girls, Key and Peele), O’Hara and Levy are still the undisputed king and queen.