The Royal Canadian Air Farce, one of Canada’s longest-running comedy troupes, is wrapping up its weekly television show next season.

The sketch comedy show will produce nine shows in the fall, then end with a New Years Eve special.

It made its CBC Radio debut in December 1973, producing more than 600 radio broadcasts over 24 years. After brief stints on television in the 1980s, Air Farce took up its permanent place on the CBC-TV roster in 1993. It ran on radio and television for four seasons before moving exclusively to TV in 1997. In 2007, the show returned to a live format with Air Farce Live.

The Ottawa Citizen has taken a length swipe at CBC satirist Rick Mercer.

Fellow Newfoundland comic and former 22 Minutes colleague Mary Walsh suggested to Maclean’s last month that Mercer has stopped being satirical, that he appears to have decided getting people outraged is no longer a smart thing to do in a conservative climate.

Mercer’s departure from that role is a sad spectacle. It is sad because political satire is such a rare and precious thing, especially at a time when there are so few satirists and so much that is satirizable. Satirists on top of their craft — think Juvenal in ancient Rome, think Jon Stewart in the U.S. — do not get cosy with their subjects, do not worry about ruffling political celebrity feathers.

In his prime, Mercer used to ruffle feathers relentlessly. But his Rick Mercer Report is no longer a sharp jab into the pomposity and self-delusion of politicians, having evolved into a celebration of The Star’s camaraderie with the pompous and self-deluded. The boyo with the rant no longer seems interested in keeping the celebs from running away with themselves. In fact, he provides the track and the shoes. Any sharp jabs he’s still capable of are reserved for non-politicians and non-celebrities who criticize him.

You can read the full article here.

What do you think of CBC’s television satire shows like the Rick Mercer Report, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, and The Royal Canadian Air Farce. Have they been losing their edge?

The Royal Canadian Air Farce will celebrate its landmark 300th episode on CBC Television with an hour-long special this Friday at 8:00 p.m. It’s the first time in the show’s history that an episode will be telecast live in real time. A peek at the show’s lineup shows looks at lottery wins by store-owners, marijuana grow-ups, Conrad Black’s travails, and Al Gore’s environmental concerns.

Blog reaction:
Miss604.com: “We watched an amusing clip this morning, courtesy of Inside The CBC. This does in fact prove that the CBC can be funny… sometimes.”

While the union many of Canada’s TV actors has told its members not to report for work today, programs like the Rick Mercer Report and the Royal Canadian Air Farce, will not be disrupted by a strike because ACTRA and CBC have an interim agreement.
     Members gave its union an overwhelming 97.6 per cent strike mandate and a limited work stoppage has begun in four provinces.
     ”Across Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, our members are being told now that they cannot report for work, unless they’re working for producers who have been engaged with ACTRA on an interim agreement,” said an ACTRA official. ACTRA is set to strike in Quebec on Wednesday, with other provinces following from there.
     Jeff Brinton of the Canadian Film and Television Production Association has said producers would seek a judge’s order to force actors to perform in the event of a mass walkout.

Friday night is CBC-TV’s laugh night, even if it consists of repeats from earlier in the week. There’s 22 Minutes at 7:30 (Mark Critch at the Liberal Leadership Debate), Air Farce at 8:00 (Maher Arar gets YouTubed), and the Rick Mercer Report at 8:30 (skinny dipping with Bob Rae).

The funny stuff comes Saturday on CBC Radio One, with Man Woman and Child at 11:30 a.m. and The Debaters at 6:30 p.m.

For those of us not planning on staying in on Friday or Saturday (OK, those of you), what’s available online? I’ve always found CBC.ca to be a little lacking in the funny stuff, but it’s not entirely barren (though most of it isn’t housed on CBC.ca itself.)

The aforementioned Mercer has a very funny blog, which has become required reading.

The Liberal party and leadership is a bit of an obsession for Mercer – even the candidates that won’t swim with him naked. He takes a jab at party strategy in The Right Guy for the Job:

For those of us who enjoy Question Period for its pure theatrical value it’s nice to see that the Liberals finally hit their stride in the House of Commons. Until very recently, with big Bill Graham at the helm the Opposition was about as fierce and focused as a bag of kittens. Thankfully, over the break someone must have pulled Bill aside and told him what the job of the opposition is – to attack.

It’s not rocket science, it’s what the Tories did when they were in opposition and it got them the big prize. You waltz into question period, you hurl as many allegations as you can across the floor and sit back and see what sticks.

But the real punches come in his latest PhotoShop Challenge, which throws Liberal leadership “contender” Joe Volpe into the ring.

(Did you know that you can get odds and place bets on the Liberal leadership race? Pinnacle Sports puts the odds on a Volpe victory at 300/1. Perhaps this illustration by Andrej Sakic isn’t that far off….)

Interestingly, Mercer is shut out of the upcoming Canadian Comedy Awards, Oct. 25-28. Air Farcers Roger Abbott and Don Fergus are festival co-chairs, and the London, Ont. event will feature the full Royal Canadian Air Farce cast.

There are a goodly number of CBC shows nominated in the Television Category, including Air Farce, 22 Minutes, Hatching, Matching and Dispatching, The Newsroom and The Tournament. If you want them to win, you can vote for them on the CCA site.

Now seems like a good time to give a shout out to a hidden comedy gem on CBC.ca: Charlie Teljeur’s hockey cartoon, The Instigator.

Charlie has been doing a daily – daily! – sports cartoon online since 2000. I was expecting some wrath to come down following his provocative Tie & Belinda toon, but so far so good.

I was also hoping for some funny stuff on the George Stroumboulopoulos site, Strombo.com, which relaunched this week. But instead there’s a do-nothing ad for his radio show on CFRB and a few “too much information” blogbits, e.g.:

I love when teeth collide during kissing. The uppers and lowers locked in a quiet, yet purposeful, concentration is what drives me to her mouth.

Eeep. But I did enjoy his self-deprecating poke at himself on The One in last night’s The Hour.

If you do decide to check out his personal site, don’t get confused by the spelling of the URL.

As Ouimet points out, “Counterintuitively, it breaks the ou-ou-o-ou-o spelling rule, which would render it stroumbou.com.”

I accidentally typed “stromo” and got a site selling electric scooters.

And it simply can’t compare to my favourite site of all time: Zombo.com.

This site has been online, in the exact same form, since at least 1999 - the height of the dot-com bubble (which puts it in context.) For seven years now I’ve used it to give me a puerile laugh in dark times – put on some headphones and enjoy!

I found this photo today on Flickr…
     This is shot of a set used in the CBC comedy Royal Canadian Air Farce. (I assume it was taken by someone who was on the recent tour of the Toronto broadcast centre.)
     Apparently the donuts in this set have been there since September, preserved only by their own ingredients.

Photo by Stevo.