Ongoing Influence in Canadian Popular Culture
In his book, TV North: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Canadian Television, Peter Kenter says "The Trouble With Tracy is universally considered the worst Canadian TV show of all time, especially by those who have never seen it." With re-runs airing as late as the mid-1980s (albeit primarily in tricky time slots, such as early mornings before Canada AM, that needed to be filled inexpensively) the show became something of a cult favourite to a whole generation of Canadian viewers, especially those who first saw it as teenagers.
Barenaked Ladies frequently played a song called "The Trouble With Tracy" live in concert in the early 1990s. However, except for its title, the song is not related to the show. A live recording is included as a B-side on the band's 1993 CD single "Brian Wilson"; the song also appears on their rare early releases Buck Naked and Barenaked Lunch. The song was based on a poem by Steven Page called "The Trouble With Robon."
In March 2003, The Comedy Network, a Canadian specialty channel owned by CTV, announced that it would air a pilot for new version of The Trouble with Tracy, based on the original scripts, on April 1 of that year. If successful, this pilot would lead to a 13-episode series starring comedian Laurie Elliott as Tracy and David Lipovitch as David. Elliott and Lipovitch both participated in a press conference to promote the new production. The actress who played the original Tracy, Diane Nyland Proctor, herself joined this advance media campaign and conducted interviews for the press.
Although the Comedy Network held the press conference in mid-March, and Nyland did her interviews at around the same time, this was in fact an early April Fool's joke, and the "pilot" consisted only of a brief intro sequence which segued into an episode of The Gavin Crawford Show. Perhaps not expecting an April Fool's joke to be set up in March, some media, including the Toronto Star and CTV's own Canada AM, did fall for the prank.
Read more about this topic: The Trouble With Tracy
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