CBC has picked up 8 episodes of Little Mosque on the Prairie, set in the fictional town of Mercy Saskachewan. The show debuts tonight and has received a lot of buzz.
It has received a lot of media coverage for it’s title and premise, while reviewers overall are liking it. The National Post:
Published 1 year, 10 months agoThe good news is the new show doesn’t suck, thereby sparing us no end of “Little Mosque Bombs” headlines. Indeed, it goes some ways toward diminishing the age-old “Mideast comedy gap” between Muslims and Jews.
The pilot had some primo one-liners, most of the characters are promising and the premise is exceptional: A group of Islamo-Saskatchewanians in the town of Mercy (population: 13,293) sets up a mosque in the Anglican church’s parish hall, scaring the bejeezus (the beallah?) out of many of their neighbours.
Mercy has plenty of preachers but Little Mosque isn’t preachy. It’s a straight sitcom — think of it as Everybody Loves Ramadan (not to be confused with Everybody Loves Raymond’s Japanese spinoff, Everybody Loves Ramen, or the French-journalism version, Everybody Loves Le Monde, or the Toronto Maple Leaf twist, Everybody Loves Raycroft, titled on alternate weeks: Everybody Hates Raycroft).
If Little Mosque has one weakness, it’s that several of the non-Muslim characters have the depth of cardboard. The antagonistic townspeople come across as a bunch of inbred, bug-eyed sister-kissers. Mercy may be small, but it has a radio station with a shock jock who loves to fearmonger, and a populace happy to be monged. And when Amaar, the town’s metrosexual new imam, is en route to Mercy from Toronto, the cops who detain him at the airport are even more imbecilic than the two Mounties on Corner Gas. Amaar says that if his story doesn’t check out, “you can deport me to Syria,” to which one of the policemen huffs, “Hey, you do not get to choose which country we deport you to.”
While the whiteys tend to be monotone (with the exception of a kindhearted Anglican minister), Little Mosque’s Muslims are a variegated lot. Their practical leader, Yasir, played by Carlo Rota, has a liberal daughter and a paleface wife, played by Sheila McCarthy. Rota is the calm centre a sitcom needs — he’s an experienced actor and is also on the cast of 24 as Chloe’s suave ex-husband.
Search
Subscribe 
You are currently browsing the Bene Diction Blogs On weblog archives.
Related Entries
For blog design, Wordpress or MovableType coding or blog consulting, see cre8d design.
Readers and viewers are welcomed to share their experiences from within their community at Little Experiences:
http://littlemosqueontheprairie.wordpress.com
“Little Mosque” depends of offensive stereotypes for its humour.
Also, while at times funny, I do wonder about how “real” the situation is. I once saw a show about how the Nazis made two propaganda films about the conflict between the British and the Irish. The films, at least according to those who were interviewed who had seen them were quite good. The only problem was that the people in the movies were not Irish. What I mean by that was that the culture of the Irish portrayed in the films in no way reflected actual Irish culture as I guess the Germans who wrote, produced, and acted in the movies never took the time to get to understand the traditions and feel of the Irish people. It just wasn’t important to them because in the end it had nothing to do with the Irish. It was as one commentator of the movies said “Germans talking to Germans”.
And that is kind of what I am getting with the “Little Mosque” show. In the end it isn’t really about small town Saskatchewan or Muslim communities living within small town Saskatchewan. In the end what it comes down to is just Liberal Urbanite Canadians talking to Liberal Urbanite Canadians, with their political message being far more important to them than whether or not the situation portrayed reflects a real situation in the country accurately enough.
By the way, why does “The She Mayor” remind me so much of the mayor on South Park?
I haven’t seen it since the opener - it is conceived and written by a Muslim, there are Muslim consultants.
Are there rural Saskatchewaners working on it? Don’t know, I agree while small town experience has some similarities, regions are unique. Is it as offensive as say, Trailer Park Boys?
I love this show.
White people living in Saskatchewan are SO STUPID!
I love watching them made fun of.