The Critch Get Critcher

Based on his award winning memoire Son of a Critch, the heartfelt and charming coming-of-age story set in 80s Newfoundland is now a CBC comedy airing Tuesdays at 8:30pm ET / 9pm NT. To shed a little light onto the origins of the material, I had the pleasure of chatting with series creator and star Mark Critch. 

Mark Critch as Mike Sr., and Richard Clarkin as Dick Dunphy. Courtesy of CBC

You’re known in Canadian culture for your sketches and your political comedy - what in your career made you reflect inward to begin crafting the Son of a Critch memoire?  

I was talking to the folks from Penguin Random House about a book, and I had kind of expected it to be more about my career and traveling (like my second book, Embarrassment of Critch’s) I had written a few pages of what would become the first chapter of Son of a Critch, and they were like “whoa wait a minute - how’d you grow up? WHERE? Radio station? Old folks? There may be a whole book here!” and I thought “I don’t think so, I think I grew up fairly normally.” And then I tell them about the nun strapping me and they’re like “were you okay?!” and I’m like “yeah I’m fine, what’re you talking about?” Then I realized “ OH! I’m weird. Okay.” … And then you get (get writing) and you open up the lid and go “oh yeah THIS happened, oh THAT’S connected to THIS, I forgot about THAT, I didn’t even know how THAT happened.” My father had died, and my mother passed away during the process of writing the book, so it was a good time to be reflective, because it helped in terms of letting go. Then after all that, my good friend Tim McAuliffe, who had written for The Office, Last Man on Earth, and MacGruber, said “we gotta make this into a TV show.” Once again I thought that people wouldn’t be interested in that, but we talked to the Project Ten guys, and they said “you grew up how? Where???... we gotta make this a show!” So both times, it wasn’t my idea. (laughs) At times I feel a little like a lab animal being experimented on. 

What has it been like working with Tim McAuliffe in terms of adapting your life story into a TV series?

Tim has heard all these stories a million times. We’re very good friends. I was the officiant at his wedding, he emcee’d mine, and we started off on This Hour Has 22 Minutes together. We’d get lunch together and write our sketch ideas on cocktail napkins (laughs). And he’s such a good TV writer, he was always aware of the structure of the stories and character arcs and all that stuff. But then he’d go “I don’t know how these people talk” because of the East Coast dialect, and I’d go in and do the dialogue. It was very collaborative, and we also have the same sense of humour which is good in a partnership like that. 

It must be great to have such an intimate collaborator on such a personal project.

So much so. I don’t think TIm and I have ever had an argument - I mean, we’ve disagreed, but never a full-out argument. And if you have a friendship like that, it’s important to hold on to, but if you can turn that into a working relationship, it doesn’t get any better. 

What is it about Benjamin Evans Ainsworth that makes him embody a younger Mark Critch?

We looked far and wide for a kid. We had these wonderful casting folks in Ireland, and they cast a wide net and we had kids from all over with the most amazing accents. And then he was the third kid I saw, and he was about three sentences in and I thought “that’s the best kid actor I’ve ever seen. He must be famous, we can’t afford him.” Then I thought about how if we went with another kid, (Ben) would always be in the back of my mind. It’s kinda like when you go to a used car dealership and they show you a car you can’t afford, and they drive away thinking “I wish I had heated seats.” It’s like that (laughs) he was the heated seats of child-acting. But he connected with the material, him being an old soul himself. I’m just so grateful that we have (Ben), and he and his parents are just a joy to be around. And the great thing is - he’s twelve and Malcolm McDowell is seventy-eight. It's neat to watch two generational talents collaborate  together. And they’re both big Liverpool Club Football fans. These two would talk football like eighty-year old men, and I’d watch thinking “we got the right kid.”

Claire Rankin as Mary, Malcolm McDowell as Pop, Benjamin Evan Ainsworth as Mark and Mark Critch as Mike Sr. Courtesy of CBC

How do you feel about playing your own father? 

That was something I resisted at first, because I thought it might take Canadian viewers out of it a bit, making them go “look! It’s Critch in a wig!” Everyone kept saying “you gotta do it!” And I’m very grateful for it now, because we re-created dad’s outfits, we re-created dad’s house, which hadn’t been there since the 90s. It’s like being in a memory. And I wrote these scenes from my point of view as a kid, and I have to look at these scenes from my father’s eyes, which adds another layer of understanding. I have to go “okay, what was dad going through at the time.” So I think it brought me much closer to him because it made me take a second look at things in life a bit more. At times, I’ll be honest, I got a bit melancholy, getting lost in thought. But then you’d hear Malcolm and Benjamin laughing or arguing over football, so it feels like I’m filling my parent’s home with new memories and new people. And some people say “oh I wish I knew your parents,” or people on social media, like a lady who had reached out to me yesterday said “I worked at the radio station in the 70s, … let me tell you a story” and they’ll tell you a story about him. So getting these new memories and aspects of their life you hadn’t known about before has been a real gift.

A quote I heard in regards to writing such personal material is that “when you give a piece of yourself to the universe, sometimes you get a piece back.” 

Oh that’s beautiful! This is the first time I’ve written something that’s hyper-personal, and putting it out there feels like (nervous sounds) “ohhh noo!” But then you get this warm feeling back. Because as specific as growing up next to a radio station with old parents is, the emotions, the insecurities, the etcetera, are universal. At first I thought “no one will get this because they haven’t gone through it, and it’s not relatable.” I realized the situation isn’t relatable - the emotions are. And people go “I’ve felt like that.” You might not be a Filipino Canadian, but you understand what Ritchie’s going through. You’ve seen that happen, and you’ve stood by, or maybe you’ve been in that situation yourself. I was shocked by the amount of people that tuned in and watched the first week, because I wasn’t sure it would be relatable. Now I think there’s lots of ways to relate to it - as a parent, as a grandparent, as a kid. Kids who are 11 or 12 are watching thinking “this is a show for me!” And parents are watching thinking “this is a nostalgic show.” I’ve seen a lot of Filipino Canadians reach out saying “this is me on screen!” Different groups of people, as different as they are, can see it as their show. Now when I sit back and reflect on it I think “okay, now I get it.” 

Son of a Critch airs Tuesdays at 8:30pm ET / 9pm NT on CBC, and is also available on CBC Gem.