The short answer is yes, Canadians are just a polite as we’re believed to be. That is the finding of Fool Canada, CBC’s televised social experiment where hidden cameras capture everyday folks plunged into outrageous situations and confronted with outlandish characters.
Debuting Tuesday night, Fool Canada stars Will Sasso (MADtv) as the king court jester, who along with Craig Lauzon, Sam Kalilieh and Sara Hennessey goof on everything from our love of street hockey to mistaken identity.
“I would feel bad,” Sasso says. “The producers would be talking in my ear, telling me to push it a little further and I wouldn’t want to. ‘This person is on their lunch break, they don’t need to deal with me in a wig!'” And yet deal with Sasso they do, whether he’s dressed up like a European tourist and testing the patience of a passerby by having a dozen pictures taken or portraying a traffic cop and pulling over a girl for “speeding” on her skateboard.” The B.C. native describes Fool Canada as longform improv he found scary and daunting … exactly the reasons he signed on.
Though Sasso admits not all of the bits he participated in were stellar, several in Tuesday’s debut are. The aforementioned tourist bit goes from awkward to amazing and a segment where a city staffer (played by Kalilieh) drops off raccoons for placement in city homes is snicker-worthy. The laugh-out loud moment of the half-hour show? Two dudes playing street hockey … with two dolls strapped to their chests dressed up like real babies. The look of horror on the folks who walk by to see pucks bouncing off the fake infants is worth tuning in for.
“These things don’t work unless I’m in the comfy bosom of my countrypeople,” Sasso admits. “There is this meter where you wonder how far you can push. And when you reach that spot on the meter it becomes fun.”
Fool Canada airs Tuesdays at 8:30 p.m. on CBC.
