For twelve seasons, 105 episodes, and three movies, the cult Canadian mockumentary "Trailer Park Boys" has taken us into a cartoonish trailer park named Sunnyvale in fictional, rural Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
The show centers on three friends: Ricky (Robb Wells), who failed 6th grade three times, lives in his car, and despite working multiple jobs throughout the run of the series claims that he has never had a real job; the perpetually drunk Julian (John Paul Tremblay), who brings a camera crew to Sunnyvale to follow him around; and Bubbles (Mike Smith), a maritime Milton Waddums, known for his thick, obscure accent, thicker glasses, and his penchant for AK-47s and stray cats. These actors are bringing their characters and what they're calling "one of the craziest Christmas shows ever" to the Kodak Center on Wednesday, December 5.
"You can expect a lot of crowd interaction and a lot of fighting," Robb Wells told CITY via phone from Nova Scotia. "We're gonna be drunk for two weeks straight. That's our only plan. We have a day off after Rochester. You're gonna get out our all."
"It's gonna be a naughty one," Mike Smith added, in character as Bubbles, with his signature creaky, maritime accent (and gasping for air with every other syllable). He added that at the group's Minneapolis show the previous night, "there was almost a riot."
Minneapolis and Rochester are two stops of a twelve-city US tour. Live shows have become routine for the Trailer Park Boys in recent years, since the show was resurrected by Wells, Tremblay, and Smith after a long run on Showcase, a Canadian TV channel. The actors bought the rights and are said to have acquired funding for the show's production from the Canadian government. The group has since partnered with Netflix to produce its most recent seasons.
The actors used the show's cult following to launch a successful podcast named after "Trailer Park Boys," as well as their own streaming service called SwearNet. SwearNet has become something of a petri dish for the trio, allowing them to put existing "Trailer Park Boys" characters in new situations. The cheerfully low budget spinoffs form an extended universe, most notably the podcast spoof, "The Jim Lahey Show and Randy."
That show centers on bit players Jim Lahey (the crabby manager of the trailer park) and his shirtless sidekick-assistant manager Randy. (Lahey was portrayed by John Dunsworth, who died in 2017). When asked about Dunsworth, Wells said: "That's a tough one. His memory will live on." As will the Trailer Park Boys, who say they have a new project coming in 2019.
