Jimmy MacDonald's Canada

Summary

Jimmy MacDonald's Canada: The Lost Episodes is an eight-episode Canadian television series that aired on CBC Television in the summer of 2005. The show is a mockumentary, purporting to be a lost Canadian public affairs series of the mid-1960s, hosted by the fictional Jimmy MacDonald with additional commentary by Marg Margison. The premise of the show is that Jimmy MacDonald's Canada was a wildly popular TV show in the 1960s, but that MacDonald had a breakdown while on the air and fled to northern Canada, taking all of the filmed episodes with him. His plane crashed and he was presumed dead, and the premise is these films have recently been found. The humour of the show is derived from the differences in social values between the 1960s and today. This humour also extends to now-taboo, then-common cigarette advertisements being included in the show, and even the opening credits, which lampoon the similar style of manic, partially animated credits that were common in the era. Incorporating scripted retrospective commentary from actual public figures, the series never breaks character. In his series, ultra-conservative MacDonald rails against various innovations and the rise of youth culture. Although fictional in nature, the series incorporates actual news and human interest footage from the CBC archives.