The team behind the low-budget sketch show for children from Canada You can’t do that on TV didn’t know it would help define the Nickelodeon brand when it premiered 45 years ago.
British television producer Roger Price had produced several children’s programs in the UK before moving to Canada. There he wanted to launch a show that respected children’s perspectives and didn’t condescend to them. Price was not a person who glorified childhood, as he had a tough childhood that included boarding school in Switzerland.
Inspired by adult programs such as Rowan & Martin’s laughter, YCDTOT The series mainly featured amateur actors playing children who set up their own TV show and had to cope with incompetent adults. The premiere on CJOH-TV in Ottawa on February 3, 1979, the US series caught the attention of the young broadcaster Nickelodeon, which began broadcasting episodes with high ratings in early 1982.
“With 30-second sketches, there’s no room for filler,” recalls Abby Hagyard, an adult cast member who played “Mother” on the show.
Now a Nickelodeon signature, always being covered in slime originated on YCDTOT. Anyone who said “I don’t know” was doused in green slime – Price chose this trigger because his own children used the phrase to avoid responsibility. Price initially assumed the cast would hate being covered in slime, but he was quickly proven wrong.
“It was an honour to be sprayed with slime,” says Adam Greydon Reid, the YCDTOT as a cast member at age 11 after I sent Price a letter, and later wrote episodes with him as a teenager. (Plus, it was a nice perk that each cast member received a $50 inconvenience fee for each slime.)
Among the show’s discoveries was writer Bill Prady, who later co-created The Big Bang Theoryand a young Alanis Morissette, who appeared in five episodes and impressed her colleagues by playing her demo tape. The show’s 10 seasons live on in pop culture; SNL parodied it in a 2022 episode, and Ryan Reynolds (who was once engaged to Morissette) immediately quoted YCDTOT when asked in a recent interview to name an important Canadian show.
A reboot attempt failed a few years ago, but Reid has heard of renewed interest in a revival. Price is open to a revival, but only if the tone doesn’t change: “The kids really have to feel like it’s their show.”
This story first appeared in the August 14 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
