From a YouTube web series to the critically acclaimed phenomenon, the fictional town of ‘Letterkenny’ completely shifted the Canadian TV landscape by showcasing the everyday difficulties of farmers, ice hockey players, drug addicts, and various other citizens of a small rural Ontario town.
‘Letterkenny’ has now concluded an era of 74 episodes, seven specials, five live tours, branded merchandise, and a Canadian Screen Award for Best Comedy Series by releasing its final 6 episodes on 25 December 2023 on the Canadian streaming service Crave, followed by a release on Hulu the very next day.
The mantle will now be carried by the spinoff “Shoresy,” a comedy series named after the struggling Triple-A ice hockey player played by Jared Keeso, which has recently wrapped up filming for a third season in Sudbury, Ontario this month.
The most amazing achievement for a show with such a narrow focus on the Canadian small-town lifestyle—from the language to the sets—was that it was able to explode into popular culture and gain devoted audiences both in Canada and the United States.
“The more specific you get, hopefully, the more universal your experiences become,” co-creator and director Jacob Tierney, who also plays Glen, told Variety magazine. “Most small towns have some version of the local sports thing, the local drug thing, the local religion thing. We dug into what we knew.”
Tierney also described how they captured the comedic charm: “We were right in that what we thought was funny, other people thought was funny. I guess that sounds obvious, but it doesn’t feel obvious when you’re doing it — especially in the first season of the show.”
The Beginning of an Idea
In an undated interview with reporter Amber Dowling of Variety magazine from 2014, Keeso stated how the series “is not really for everybody,” just before Crave announced “Letterkenny” as their first original series.
In what he considered to be the greatest decision of his career thus far, Keeso invested $6,000 to create the online series “Letterkenny Problems.” The short videos showed him and Nathan Dales as hicks hanging out at the fruit stand, babbling about their troubles. They also spoke in a fast-paced language and chirped hockey players and skids, characters that would go on to become key roles in the series.
For Keeso, a series was always the goal. Therefore, “Letterkenny” was placed into development alongside Keeso and New Metric Media by Bell Media’s head of originals and development, Corrie Coe, as soon as the shorts went viral.
When a script was finished, Coe emailed it to Mike Cosentino, the company’s SVP of programming at the time, who recalls: “In May 2014, I was flying home from the L.A. Screenings, and the team and I had watched 30 or so new U.S. network pilots. But it was ‘Letterkenny’ that was blowing up in my mind.”
What is Letterkenny?
The sentence “There are 5000 people in Letterkenny. These are the issues they face”, which is presented as an episode begins, encapsulates the soul of the show. The show centers on Wayne and Katy, siblings who, with assistance from Wayne’s friends Daryl (often referred to as “Dary”) and “Squirrely” Dan, operate a small farm and produce stand.
Episodes center on various aspects of small-town life, including the farmers (referred to as “the hicks”), the ice hockey players for the local team, the town’s openly gay Christian minister, drug addicts (referred to as “the skids”), people who live nearby on First Nation reservations (referred to as “the natives”), gym patrons, Mennonites, and Québécois.
Two months after Crave’s December 2015 Canadian launch, the first “Letterkenny” six-pack was available. After 12 Seasons, 7 specials, and 5 live tours, Cosentino claims that it overtook “Seinfeld” and “The Big Bang Theory” in terms of streaming, eventually becoming the largest thing on Crave.
