Comedy fans, rejoice! The iconic and groundbreaking cast of
The Kids in the Hall are reuniting — and not just for a reunion special, although those are always fun to watch. Just announced on March 5, Amazon is bringing back the original cast of Mark McKinney, Scott Thompson, Kevin McDonald, Bruce McCulloch and Dave Foley for a new season of the Canadian sketch show.
The Hollywood Reporter broke the news on Thursday, announcing that Lorne Michaels would serve as the executive producer for all eight episodes of the new season. Canadian-born Michaels has a long history with the show. McKinney and McCulloch wrote for
Saturday Night Live in the late 1980s and when Michaels saw the writers and their troupe perform together, he helped develop the plan for what would become
The Kids In The Hall sketch series, which aired on CBC, HBO and CBS for five seasons between 1988 and 1995. “Even after 30 years,
The Kids in the Hall has retained its brilliance and originality,” said Michaels in a
statement released this week. “We are happy to be bringing back all of the original Kids for the new series."[video_embed id='1914470']RELATED: We're breaking down the classics in our millennial's guide to remakes[/video_embed]
The Kids In The Hall debuted with a one-hour pilot on CBC and HBO in 1988 and became a weekly sketch show that drew comparisons to Monty Python more than SNL. Most sketches were limited to the five cast members, who often performed female roles in drag. The show featured several recurring characters and bits, including Cabbage Head, The Chicken Lady and Headcrusher. Bellini was played by writer Paul Bellini, who was one of the few non-cast members to have a reoccurring role. His ‘towel man’ persona always appeared in a towel and never spoke until the series finale when he danced on the graves of the cast and exclaimed “Thank god that’s finally over.”
Arguably the most famous character to come out of
The Kids In The Hall was Scott Thompson’s Buddy Cole. An effeminate gay socialite, Thompson, who is also gay, delivered long and explicit monologues as Cole in a role that was groundbreaking for gay representation on television. Thompson continued to tour as Buddy Cole following the end of
The Kids In The Hall, and in 1998 he and Bellini released the mock memoir
Buddy Babylon: The Autobiography of Buddy Cole. Thompson also appeared as Cole on several episodes of the 2014 season of
The Colbert Report, covering the anti-gay laws in Russia during the Sochi Olympics.
The Kids In The Hall have reunited several times since the series ended in 1995. The group released the 1996 film
Kids In The Hall: Brain Candy and worked together again in 2010 with the miniseries
The Kids In The Hall: Death Comes To Town, which ran for eight episodes on CBC.The upcoming season of
The Kids In The Hall marks the first original Canadian show produced by Amazon, which currently airs shows like
The Boys and
The Expanse, which are filmed in Canada but considered US productions. All five seasons of
The Kids in The Hall are currently available for purchase on Amazon.[video_embed id='-1']Before you go: This delivery guy seems to be having a really bad day[/video_embed]
