The mere premise of The Yard made us chuckle.
Imagine The Sopranos with 11-year-old kids. That's funny right there, don't you think?
"Essentially it's The Sopranos goes to the school yard," said Paul Gross, co-executive producer of The Yard. It's a six-part Canadian comedy series that debuts with back-to-back episodes Friday, July 8 on HBO Canada.
"These kids make me howl, it's so odd," Gross continued. "It's raunchy and full of expletives, and no one in it is over 12."
The Yard is a mockumentary-style take on the inner workings of a school yard, complete with leaders and muscle and babes and geeks and rivalries. Gross provides the voice of the unseen adult documentarian.
Of note to TV watchers, the kid named Nick who "controls" the playground is played by Quintin Colantoni, son of Enrico Colantoni of CTV's Flashpoint.
"In one way or another, each episode has a sort of metaphor for the adult realm," said Gross, the veteran Canadian actor, writer and producer best known for the TV shows Due South, Slings and Arrows and Eastwick, the films Men with Brooms and Passchendaele, and a long list of theatre roles.
"The first episode is called The Economy and it's all about the equilibrium of the financial system of the school yard. It's explained to you how it works. It really is funny."
Indeed, the financial balance of the playground is maintained through a stable currency, a.k.a., a certain brand of trading cards. It's the fair distribution of these cards that keeps the peace, even allowing nerds to rise to respectability.
The threat of instability occurs when a new brand of trading cards is introduced by a gang of bullies looking to expand its power base beyond the lunch room. If no one thinks the old brand of trading cards is cool any more, will this make it impossible for Nick to maintain order?
Perhaps the most amusing moment in the debut episode of The Yard is when Nick's six-year-old little brother Adam, played by Devan Cohen, breaks down the chaos that would ensue if the old trading cards completely lost their value. Some kids purchased those cards for "futures", Adam explains, signing away desserts they didn't even have yet.
If only the sub-prime mortgage crisis could have been summed up with such clarity and simplicity.
"In another episode we have our own BP oil spill, but it's a volume manufacture of stink bombs that goes haywire," Gross said.
Besides Colantoni and Cohen, other young actors featured in The Yard include Sarah Cranmer, Keana Bastidas, Olivia Scriven, Daniel Lupetina, Cameron Mazzei, Daryn Karp, Jared Karp, Shemar Charles, John Fleming and Alex Cardillo.
"It's just a marvellous group of kids, they were all terrific," Gross said. "This was the brain child of (co-creators) Michael Mabbott and David Eddie. It's such a good idea. They've done a great job, it's very unique."
Hey, The Yard isn't a primetime cartoon, or a sitcom about young adults looking for love. So in the interests of laughter, TV could use a little "unique" right about now.
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