Anna Lambe as Siaja in episode 102 of North of North.CBC/APTN/Netflix/CBC/APTN/Netflix
What a winter, eh?
It’s not the cold winds from the north this year, but blustery ones blowing up from the south that have been giving us the chills in Canada.
Everything feels uncertain right now – and we have no choice but to swallow it down (like a jagged little pill) and wait for the dust to settle (mixed metaphor courtesy of Alanis Morissette).
In the meantime, I recommend not walking around naked in your living room, but seeking comfort there in whatever state of dress you like, while watching a couple of True North strong and funny Canadian TV comedies that have been exploring the subject of change and all the pain and potential that comes with it.
North of North (CBC, APTN and their associated streamers) and Shoresy (Crave) are wrapping up their first and fourth outings on Tuesday and Friday, respectively, with seasons finales that bring big laughs – and, in the case of the former, left me in a puddle of tears.
I’m writing about the two together because there’s potential for some crossover in fandoms, if not quite a crossover episode.
Tonally, there’s not much in common between North of North (a gorgeously shot, warm-hearted, but unafraid to be raunchy, Inuit-led comedy set in Nunavut with elements of magical realism and a Netflix-boosted budget) and Shoresy (a hyperstylized Letterkenny spinoff set in Sudbury that follows the misadventures of aging men playing Triple-A Senior hockey and features many oversexed slo-mo sequences set to electronic music).
But the connection between the shows clicked for me when their main protagonists both took time out this season to sing, voices cracking, along to our national anthem about figuring out who you are in times of change: You Learn by Morissette.
In North of North, Siaja – played by True Detective: Night Country’s Anna Lambe, endowed with enough charm and comic timing to anchor a rom-com in any cardinal direction – is a young Inuk mother who decides to exit a marriage to a self-centred hunter named Ting. She’s navigating a really tight job market, an impossible housing situation and the prospect of going on her first date since high school.
Oh, and Siaja’s just met her white dad, Alistair (Jay Ryan), after a lifetime of her Inuk mother, Neevee (Maika Harper), keeping his identity a secret.
It took two episodes for Siaja to turn to Morissette for succour. She sings along full-throated to You Learn while taking the songwriter’s recommendation of “biting off more than you can chew,” trying her hand at picking up large items for the dump on a flatbed truck that keeps getting lodged in snowbanks.
It’s a clever set piece that shows off Lambe’s knack for slapstick as she wrestles a discarded stove single-handedly. But it also physically represents the overall arc of the show: getting stuck; trying to get a handle on new, overwhelming circumstances; and helping pick up the pieces in a community that’s made it through many serious challenges.
Meanwhile, it took title character Shoresy, Canada’s top chirper, three episodes to reach out to the Morissette classic to underline the themes of his own changing circumstances.
Jared Keeso in Shoresy.Lindsay Sarazin/Crave
Played by creator and writer Jared Keeso, Shoresey is undeniably entering middle age and exiting a hockey career he finally has to stop after one too many concussions. He’s searching for a new path, but finds on-air sports commentating brainless and struggles as mentor to a group of Gen Z prospects who teach him the concept of toxic masculinity.
Shoresy is head-over-skates for Laura (Camille Sullivan), a journalist and single mom who wants him to prove he’s truly no longer, in the parlance of the show, one of the Sudbury Bulldogs “sluts” before introducing him to her life (and her kid) in a more serious way.
To that end, Shoresy turns to karaoke to showcase his vulnerable side by singing You Learn with assists from his male former teammates and their female management staff. I don’t think a scene has brought a bigger smile to my face this winter.
North of North seems destined to take the world by storm when its lands on Netflix this spring. The finale this week shows just how brilliantly it has been plotted and paced, revealing why Neevee has been pushing away Alistair upon his return to Ice Cove despite renewed attraction. While showrunners Stacey Aglok MacDonald and Alethea Arnaquq-Baril have played around with the tropes, it’s far from your typical on-off TV romance.
There’s no doubt in my mind that Harper will be winning a Canadian Screen Award for her performance. If she isn’t also nominated for an Emmy Award (along with costume designer Debra Hanson), the Canada-U.S. relationship is permanently off-track.
Shoresy is a more idiosyncratic comedy – one that I’m thoroughly addicted to, despite being largely ambivalent about our national sport. But it’s not without depth, and this season it also shares with North of North a celebration of strong single moms while exploring the impact of biological fathers lost or never known.
The wise message of its fourth season – “when you don’t know where to go, go where you’re needed” – could easily be applied to North of North. Both shows resonated with me particularly at a time when change is coming, whether we like it not, and both gave me a dose of cultural pride that, for the first time in a while, didn’t feel unbecoming.