From David Berry:

There tends to be a lot of handwringing in this country about producing good television, but Corner Gas managed to do something that is even more rare: It was a Canadian TV show that Canadians actually watched. At the peak of its popularity, it could break even with, or outdraw, the American imports that make up most of our TV watching.

Corner Gas doesn’t present as a particularly prestigious show, one of those things that changes our ideas of what television can do, or even just takes a novel or insightful look at the modern world. Its unabashedly rural setting is reasonably unique among even semi-modern TV comedies, though it does play perfectly into a certain regional, steadfastly quaint Canadiana that runs back to Sunshine Sketches and plays out still in Vinyl Cafes and Kraft Hockeyvilles, one of our main national myths. (The new movie actually revolves around a competition for quaintest Canadian town, but even its point that these ostensibly serene places are populated by free-range loons with good intentions is keeping with tradition.) Continue reading.