TV Review #11: Radio Active (1998 - 2001)

 

I think I will take this time to sing praises upon YTV. It was a really great little channel. It has a lot of variety in shows. Shows for little 3-5 year old kids. Shows for kids 6-12. Shows for teens. Animated shows. Comedy shows. Live action shows. Game shows (yes we will get to that one day). Even stuff like Dr. Who for sad nerds still up at 3 in the morning to watch. They would show movies, in my day YTV AT THE MOVIES or whatever the hell they called it would show stuff like Moby Dick. I think my absolute favorite thing about them were the Program Jockeys or PJs. They would have these little segments in between shows talking about stuff and the upcoming show. The ones who appeared on YTV during the time I would watch it the most were the best. PJ Phil is still the coolest guy in the world. Also puppets. Lots of puppets. I like puppets. 

You think with a opening review like that I would be discussing an underrated Canadian gem of a television show and well you'd be completely fucking wrong. I just wanted to mention some positivity because this show is really bad and I'm going to yell at it a lot. Radio Active is a Canadian sitcom made for kids. It takes place in a school radio station and the hijinks that happen within. This was a show I didn't like when it was on. Always preferred Student Bodies for my Canadian tv show comedy involving high school students.

Radio Active was based around a French comedy show called Radio Enfer. I'm assuming the original show was also terrible because as my review of The Wacky World of Tex Avery showed was that French people are never funny. White men can be funny. white women ladies too. Black people. Transgender people. Homosexuals. Iranians. I'm not going to be boring and do the thing where I post every group of human beings I can think of because there are a lot of groups of human beings and I think I've played that bit out. The point is that everyone, ever is funnier than the French. I don't hate the French but I would keep them all away from comedy as far as humanly possible.

A lot of comedy bits, especially in goofy situational comedy comes from really good acting and a whole hell of a lot of charisma. The people in this show do not have either. I could only just barely make it through one terrible episode of this show so I can't talk about the entire cast but everyone here is terrible. Another really awful thing in this show is the fact I wasn't sure about the characters archetypes. Like you know, The goofball, the jock, the wimpy kid, the angry woman, the wimpy man. Like Some of these come off as yeah I can tell that guy is a wimp. But THAT  guy was the Jock character? I haven't had a fight since I was 5 years old and I ran at the guy with my fist extended because he wouldn't give back my TMNT plush and I'm sure I could beat this guy and no he wasn't a teenager at the time I don't think. He apparently appeared in Good Will Hunting. He did not scream I AM A SPORTS LOVING JOCK. A good sitcom lets you know about the characters in every episode, this is not a good one.

FINAL VERDICT: This is just cheap junk. The goofy character just tries way too hard. The principal guy who I assume is a wimpy guy tries very little. It's very hard to watch honestly. They also spend way too long on some bits in this show. Yes I get it the goofy guy made a silly game maybe if the actor had any charisma I would care. I'm worried about how well Student Bodies holds up because I didn't even like this stupid garbage as a kid and I hate this shit now.