Produced by Quincy Jones, the sketch comedy series was in the vein of Saturday Night Live and SCTV, and ran for 14 seasons.

In SCTV, this was the theme tune for Candy's recurring fictional character Johnny LaRue.

In 1982, the play was lampooned by the Canadian / U. S. TV comedy show SCTV.

Mimicry was one of Candy's talents, which he used often at SCTV.

These plots often featured Guy Caballero ( Joe Flaherty ), the cheap, tyrannical owner and president of SCTV, who was in a wheelchair only so that people would " respect " him ; weaselly, sweating station manager Maurice " Moe " Green ( Harold Ramis ), who was succeeded by flamboyant, leopard-skin clad station manager Mrs. Edith Prickley ( Andrea Martin ); vain variety star Johnny La Rue ( John Candy ); washed-up entertainers like singer Lola Heatherton ( Catherine O ' Hara ) and " funnyman " Bobby Bittman ( Eugene Levy ); news anchors Floyd Robertson ( Flaherty ) and Earl Camembert ( Levy ), talk-show host Sammy Maudlin ( Flaherty ), beer-addled brothers Bob and Doug McKenzie ( Moranis and Thomas ), plus many other characters, all played by the SCTV cast.

SCTV was initially produced in 1976 at the Toronto studios of the Global Television Network, then a small regional network of stations in Southern Ontario.

For the second season ( 1978 – 79 ), SCTV became a weekly series on Global, and was seen in syndication throughout Canada and parts of the United States.

The show was off the air for the 1979-80 season, but returned to production after producer Andrew Alexander and Allarcom-ITV Edmonton owner Charles Allard struck a deal to produce SCTV in ITV Studios in Edmonton, Alberta.

In 1981, SCTV was picked up as a 90-minute show by NBC as a mid-season replacement ( for The Midnight Special ).

Less than two months after Season 3 ended, SCTV was back on the air for Season 4, airing first as SCTV Network 90, then as SCTV Network, late Friday nights.

The last new SCTV episode for NBC was seen in March 1983.

Later shows built a tight theme, sometimes acting as a metaparody — such as the Emmy-winning " Moral Majority " episode where advertisers and special interest groups forced significant changes to SCTV's programming ; " Zontar ", a parody of the Larry Buchanan film Zontar, The Thing from Venus which featured an alien race seeking to kidnap SCTV's on-air talent for " a nine-show cycle plus three best-ofs " ( which was the actual deal NBC worked out with SCTV that season ); and an ambitious parody of The Godfather featuring an all-out network war over pay television between SCTV, CBS, NBC, ABC, and PBS-the last featured mafia-style hits on the sets of The Today Show, Three's Company, and The NFL Today as well as an extended sequence with guest star John Marley as an off-beat Leonard Bernstein, spoofing his Godfather role of Hollywood mogul Jack Woltz.

Short was added to the cast of Second City's television offshoot SCTV in 1982, debuting the Ed Grimley character in the skit " SCTV Movie of the Week: The Nutty Lab Assistant ".

Ramis was the original head writer of the television series SCTV ( in which he also performed ), and one of three screenwriters for the film National Lampoon's Animal House ( 1978 ).

During a short time in the early 1980s when SCTV was in between network deals, she was hired to replace Ann Risley when Saturday Night Live was being retooled in 1981.

Regular segments featured on the show included Brak's School Daze, Zorak's Horror Scopes, Poets ' Corner, Brak's Monday Ratings Report, The Top 5 Cartoon Countdown ( discontinued in 1997 after the show's slot on Saturday mornings was shortened from an hour to a half hour ), Vacation Spots Around the Universe ( pieced together from clips of Ultra 7 episodes ), Messages from Outer Space ( also pieced together from the aforementioned Ultra 7, and starring the nefarious Hot Dog Men ), Mailbag Day, readings from the Cartoon Planet Storybook, messages from Count Floyd ( Joe Flaherty's local Public-access television cable TV horror movie host from SCTV ; the segments were originally shown on Hanna-Barbera's The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley ), Learning to Talk Italian, Nuggets of Joy from Zorak, Zorak's Helpful Hints, and Cooking with Brak.

That same year, as a member of Toronto's branch of The Second City, he gained wide North American popularity, which grew when he became a cast member on the influential Toronto-based comedy-variety show Second City Television ( SCTV ).

In the next two years, Candy did a small cameo in Harold Ramis's National Lampoon's Vacation and appeared on Saturday Night Live twice ( hosting in 1983 ) while still appearing on SCTV.

The Sammy Maudlin Show on SCTV famously lampooned the late night talk show format, with John Candy in the role of William B. Williams, the sidekick or " second banana " to host Sammy Maudlin ( Joe Flaherty ).

:* Eugene Levy and Tony Rosato also performed a variation on this theme on the TV series SCTV, with the rock groups The Band, The Who, and Yes.

* William B. Williams, played by John Candy, the babbling, chuckling sycophant sidekick to Sammy Maudlin on SCTV

A typical episode of SCTV would present a compendium of programming seen on the station throughout their programming day.

They also mimicked numerous popular celebrities who would appear on SCTV programming.

However, especially after expanding to a ninety minute format, SCTV quickly pushed the envelope on television sketch comedy.

To add to the feel of the show — that of a low-budget local television station that went national — the SCTV crew recruited their dance troupe from the writers on the show, led by costumer Juul Haalmeyer.

Death Ray a character throws a watch out of a window, prompting Crow T. Robot to cry " SCTV is on the air!

Developed amongst The Second City improv comedy troupe, Grimley made his television debut on the sketch comedy show SCTV in 1982, leading to popular success for both Short and the persona.

Guest stars on the show included Christopher Guest and SCTV alumni Eugene Levy and Dave Thomas.

These channels are carried on all digital platforms in the Republic including Sky Ireland, UPC Ireland, Magnet Networks, SCTV and Crossan Cable.

1981: Sang " Sushi Girl " and " Talk to Ya Later " on the television sketch comedy program SCTV, Episode # 86 airing July 24.

He is best known for his comedy work, particularly on the TV programs SCTV and Saturday Night Live.

At SCTV Short developed several characters before moving on to Saturday Night Live for the 1984 – 1985 season:

In the early 1980s, Novello produced SCTV, a Toronto-based comedy show, which starred Martin Short, Joe Flaherty, John Candy, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Rick Moranis, Andrea Martin, and Catherine O ' Hara.

During its early years, Seputar Indonesia was also carried by RCTI's then sister station SCTV.

* In an SCTV parody commercial for fictional Poochare dog food, a borzoi dog is seen being taken for a walk by Eugene Levy.

SCTV writers responded by making the " crane shot " a ubiquitous symbol of production excess while also lampooning network executives who care nothing about artistic vision and everything for the bottom line.

In a typically surreal SCTV sketch, the play is presented by NASA and " Buzz Aldrin's Mercury III Players ," with space-suited astronauts as the actors, and proceedings narrated by Walter Cronkite as if they were a NASA moon mission.

The Canadian television comedy show SCTV featured a character named " Sue Bopper-Simpson ", a fictional daughter of the Big Bopper, played by Catherine O ' Hara.

SCTV parody shows included Natalie Wingneck, a Tarzan-style spoof in which Martin played a girl raised by geese after her family died in a plane crash.

The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley is a 1988 animated series produced by Hanna-Barbera starring Martin Short's Ed Grimley as well as other characters and actors from Second City's SCTV.

Episodes featured Ed Grimley in adventures, which start out as mundane, but turn very surreal and cartoonish, interspersed with science lessons from The Amazing Gustav Brothers, Roger and Emil, and a live-action segment with a " scary story " presented as a show-within-a-show by Grimley's favorite television host, SCTVs Count Floyd ( played by SCTV cast member Joe Flaherty ).

Major touchstones for English-speaking Canadians include Canadian beer, promoted through advertising by brands such as Molson and Labatt, and comedies that poke fun at Canadian's love for beer, such as the 1980s " hoser " television comedy skit The Great White North ( from SCTV ) and the spin-off film Strange Brew.

On the 18 March 1983 episode of SCTV in the Mel's Rock Pile segment, Mel Slirrup ( Eugene Levy ) has a tribute to punk rock featuring a number by the band The Queenhaters — Martin Short ( lead singer ), Andrea Martin ( lead guitarist / back-up vocals ), Eugene Levy ( secondary guitarist ), Joe Flaherty ( bass ), and John Candy ( drummer )— performing " I Hate The Bloody Queen ", a sound-alike song that almost matches the original it is spoofing, with references to the Falklands War (" I'd like to drown the Queen / Off the coast of Argentine / Throw her off a battleship / With her Falkland war machine!

* SCTV episode 142 featured a spoof of the Hinterland Who's Who " Woodchuck " episode, voiced by John Candy.

She is well known for her comedy work on SCTV, and her roles in the films After Hours, Beetlejuice, Home Alone, and The Nightmare Before Christmas, and also in the mockumentary films written and directed by Christopher Guest including Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, and For Your Consideration.

Celebrities impersonated by Levy on SCTV include: Perry Como, Ricardo Montalban, Alex Trebek, Sean Connery, Howard Cosell, Henry Kissinger, Menachem Begin, Bud Abbott, Milton Berle, John Charles Daly, Gene Shalit, Jack Carter, Muammar al-Gaddafi, Tony Dow, James Caan, Lorne Greene, Rex Reed, Ralph Young ( of Sandler and Young ), F. Lee Bailey, Ernest Borgnine, former Ontario chief coroner Dr. Morton Schulman, Norman Mailer, Neil Sedaka, and Howard McNear as “ Floyd the Barber ”.

His brother Ben was seen in at least one episode, played by Ian Thomas ' actual brother Dave Thomas of SCTV.