Trailer Park Boys: Countdown to Liquor Day releasing tomorrow in the US!

Canadians are sometimes forced to wait for American TV shows or movies to appear north of the border. But the opposite is true for the epilogue of the long-running and totally fucking awesome Canadian comedic mockumentary TV/movie series: The Trailer Park Boys.

Countdown to Liquor Day was released in Canadian theaters last September. American fans have been waiting on edge for the US release date of the DVD, which just so happens to be THIS TUESDAY. It is available for pre-order on Amazon, but a customer service agent told me that means it will be shipped on February 23; it does not mean it would arrive on Tuesday.

Happily, the people at Best Buy are finally doing something right and stocking this thing on Tuesday. We'll be at the fucking door.

If you have not heard of The Trailer Park Boys, I urge you to give it a shot. You can buy the complete series or watch full episodes on YouTube (or find it another way). It all started in 1999, when Creator Mike Clattenberg wrote and directed a low budget mockumentary about a pair of liquor drinking, pot smoking, petty criminals and debuted in at Canada's Atlantic Film Festival.

Eleven years later, The Trailer Park Boys has spurned seven TV seasons, a couple TV specials, and two movies. It has also inspired a legion of rabidly loyal fans who obsess about the show on web forums.

If you've never seen TPB, you might think the show is based on laughing insensitively at the socioeconomically disadvantaged. And in a way I guess it is. But that's not all it is.

The characters are not one dimensional. They feel human. And they are relatable. Growing up in a small town in the mountains of western Canada, I felt like the characters on the Trailer Park Boys were an amalgam of people I actually knew, and maybe even included a part of myself. They are believable. And they have heart.

The Trailer Park Boys also boasts some great Canadian actors. Ellen Page, now famous in the US because of Juno, got an early start as a character on the show. Barrie Dunn, who plays the hard drinking cheapskate Ray on TPB, is in real life a Canadian TV producer, actor, and a practicing attorney.

One of my favorite characters is Jim Lahey, the uber-hammered manager of the Sunnyvale Trailer Park. Lahey is played by Canadian theater veteran John Dunsworth (his daughter Sarah is also on the show). Dunsworth proves his acting skills by turning a character who should be a depressing alcoholic into a hilarious clown:


But the main focus of the show is Ricky, Bubbles and Julian.  They're just three friends looking to swindle enough cash to have an early retirement.  And sometimes the law catches up with them.

Anyway, I could ramble on about this show forever. If you like Canadian trivia, drinking, and low brow humor, you should watch the last eleven years of The Trailer Park Boys from beginning to end.  You can thank me later.

Tomorrow is Liquor Day in America.