Stop Pushing The Vegetables, Start Working The Funny

Last night I found myself in one of my favorite urban hangouts here in Toronto. It's a chic, but unpretentious bar where they know how to pour a Guinness and mix a cocktail.

I was there with a few writers - a couple friends I hadn't seen for a while, and another guy who I've met and talked to a few times before. We ruled the corner booth and had way too many drinks and laughed and laughed. I could certainly see why these guys are pretty much top of their game in this country.

It was a bit of industry night. At another table was a writer I know (and taught, years ago) who's just wrapping his movie. A group celebrating their CBC pilot's wrap was in the centre of the room. There were actors I knew, a couple of development guys from companies I've worked with, and a passel of network execs from at least two Canadian networks. In the corner were a bunch of people from the Globe & Mail, gnawing dead things on sticks, god love'em.

Toronto really is terribly small.

Anyway, the thing that struck me is the way I had the same conversation five times: all about Little Mosque on The Prairie. Everyone's amused by the coverage. Everyone's worried. Everyone is holding their breath and wondering how CBC will react, or overreact, if the show doesn't do well.

I have to say that the drumbeat of articles is starting to make me nervous. It would be easy to fall into the pattern of thinking that the pre-press can only help the show. There's only one problem with that. Having been a journo myself, you have to separate out newsworthy from buzzworthy. Little Mosque is a great news story, no matter how it's played - the creator's story is interesting. The idea behind it is very interesting. But none of that is going to get an audience to stay tuned after minute one if the material isn't also funny, and relatable.

Jim Bawden takes up the case of Little Mosque today in the Toronto Star:

Storylines poking fun at small-town life are mixed with problems unique to Canadian Muslims trying to fit in. Sort of like Corner Gas, but with a difference.
What's missing are the usual stereotypes.
"The stories come from my own experiences and observations," says creator Zarqa Nawaz, who was born in Liverpool, grew up in Toronto, and now lives with her husband and four children in Regina.
"The feeling out there — the media's caricature — is of Muslim extremists," said Nawaz, who is creator as well as co-executive producer. "I'm showing a group of Canadian Muslims trying to keep their religion and family together, but facing everything with a lot of fun."

As far as it goes, that's great. But the dark thing is that Bawden's article is titled, "Comedy With A Mission."

In the New York Times article last week, which set off the round of international attention Mosque is getting, an even more telling quote snuck in in the last couple of 'graphs, where Neil MacFarquhar wrote:

In an earnest manner not atypical of Canadians, one goal of the show is to explain Muslim behavior, or at least make Muslims seem less peculiar, much as humor about Jews, Italians or gays helped those groups assimilate.

“On the news all you ever hear are voices from the extreme end of the spectrum,” Ms. Darling said. “This gives voice to ordinary people who look just like other ordinary people.

Does anyone see the problem here? MacFarquhar seems to get it, though he softpedals it by burying this observation near the article's end:

Selling the social responsibility will not work.

Traditionally, in Canada, we have done this a lot. We talk about how "worthy" the series is, not how engrossing or entertaining it is. There's no wonder Stephen Colbert wants to talk about Mosque -- it's a great story. But a great story is not neccesarily a great show - or a show that I want to tune in. Shows do not succeed or fail based on their news coverage or how worthy they are...they will succeed or fail based on how entertaining they are. How funny they are.

I worry about Mosque because I think, if you're a viewer looking for something to tune in in the New Year, you're going to choose what to watch based on what sounds entertaining and funny. But they're not making that case strongly -- the P.R. of this show is playing into the angle that's good for the people writing the stories -- but not for the audience who might tune in.

Imagine an alternate universe where all these articles still appear, and the lede is the same, about how this show could change people's views of Muslims blah blah blah, but all the relevant quotes from the show were, "You have no idea how funny this stuff is. We laugh all the time. I mean, if your faith dictates you must be veiled in front of a man, how do you take a swimming class when they change the teacher from a woman to a man?" "If you're just a regular person going through security, and you know you're a fourth grade teacher and they're looking at you like you're a shoe bomber, it's scary, but there's also something ridiculous about it, isn't there?"

The angle of the article doesn't change: just the sell. If I'm a reader, now my takeaway message is, "Man...that might be something to watch. Sounds like it could be funny."

Listen. Nobody wants this show to be funny more than me. I want CBC to have a big, fat, monster hit that pushes the envelope and kicks open the doors, and has people laughing at the foibles of intra-Muslim problems, and the misunderstandings with the larger community. It's a great idea, it's cutting edge, it's time, and it's daring.

But none of that matters if it's not funny. I just wish they spent a little more time selling the funny, and a little less time telling us how good this show is going to be for us.

Or as one of the people at the bar said last night, "If the show is all about how stupid all the white people are, I am so out of there."