What makes Trailer Park Boys so good?

A friend got me into this show. He makes films - the latest one won some awards too. With my limited knowledge of TV, as far as I am aware Trailer Park Boys has never been aired in the UK, although I’d hazard a guess it has reached or is about to reach homes in the US, because the movie is soon hitting theatre screens there.

Anyway, when he said "check this out", I approached the first episode with slight trepidation. What hit you first are really dodgy haircuts and character names. Of course, you don't quite realise how funny it is yet. But soon, you're half way through the 20 minute episode and you've laughed out loud a couple of times at the ridiculousness of the whole situation and the behaviour of the characters - these grown adults behaving like playground children. And towards the end you find yourself rooting for them. The pleasant sting in the tail is that you're left with a warm and fuzzy feeling.

Because it's a show of interesting contradictions. It has heart. It also has crime, and moral ambiguity. It has one dimensional characters and it has really real characters.

By the third or fourth episode I was hooked to the main characters, the shambles they live in, the havoc reaped by Ricky the village idiot, and the drunken hilarity of Mr Lahey the Trailer Park Supervisor... not to mention his inimitable side-creasing relationship with pregnant-gutted partner-in-crime, Randy.

The stories are great. And to top it off TPB has proper character development, over the short and long term. That feels realistic, interesting, and most of all properly milks the characters and their changes, inside and out, for laughs. Everyone changes and grows. Even Randy's stomach gets bigger. And despite this, like in life, everyone keeps making the same mistakes, or slightly different ones, and somehow, everyone stays rooted to Sunnyvale Trailer Park. After all it's their territory, their home.

TPB has a certain kind of integrity too. This is unusual, coming from a TV series in which all the characters are wasters of one kind or another, including of course the quintessential trailer park trash, J-Roc, an Eminem-clone. We've got ex-cons, gangsta wannabes and porn movie makers, drug dealers, dirty cops, loose girls, shopping cart thieves. Everyone does alcohol and drugs to excess, and pretty much everyone is stupid and has utter disregard for the environment and the general public. But, believe me, you will grow to like these flawed characters. There are some core values there - family, loyalty and friendship stand out. A sense of community prevails. In some ways (and I say some) these complete idiots are better neighbours than many suburbian folks worldwide. It feels crazy to write these words, knowing the show!

So in summary I fully recommend it as an offbeat, hilarious show for open-minded folks. It encompasses many different types of humour but I'd have to say it has generally more male appeal (and by that I don't mean that it's sexist - in fact one of the amazing things is despite how easily it could fall into such traps, it is not sexist whatsoever). At times the lead actors are truly brilliant - some moments with Lahey and Ricky really stand out. The show covers morally dubious grounds and often. It's always entertaining and interesting because it smacks of the reality of a life on the fringes of society whilst keeping the focus firmly on the laughs. It's written, acted and filmed with rare discipline. It's so damn good cos it's a shitcom, Randy.

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