Twitch City
Genre	Sitcom
Starring	Don McKellar Molly Parker Daniel MacIvor Callum Keith Rennie Bruce McCulloch Mark McKinney
Country of origin	Canada
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	13
Production
Executive producers	Susan Cavan Armand Leo Bruce McDonald
Running time	30 min.
Original release
Network	CBC Television
Release	January 19, 1998 (1998-1-19) – April 5, 2000 (2000-4-5)

Twitch City is aCanadiansitcom produced byCBC Television,^[1] which aired as two short runs in 1998 and 2000.^[2] The series also aired in the United States onBravo, and in Australia. The show'ssurreal humour was popular with critics. The show was never a mainstream ratings success in Canada, although it had a devoted cult following.

The show was directed byBruce McDonald and produced byShadow Shows andAccent Entertainment in association with theCBC.^[1] Music was composed byBob Wiseman.

Set in theToronto,Ontario neighbourhood ofKensington Market, the series is about Curtis (Don McKellar), atelevisionaddict who refuses to leave his apartment, and his friends Nathan (Daniel MacIvor), Hope (Molly Parker) and Newbie (Callum Keith Rennie).^[3] McKellar was also one of the show's creators.^[1]

In the first episode, Nathan is sent to prison for killing a homeless man with a can of cat food.^[1] The homeless man was played byAl Waxman, who had been the star of the 1970s sitcomKing of Kensington,^[1] although the producers claimed that they did not intend for the homeless man to be seen as the same character.^[4] Nathan remained in prison throughout the run of the series; the first episode of the second season opened with anOz parody in which he criticized the hip hop-inspiredslam poetry of his cellmate.^[5]

Throughout the series, Curtis and Hope's ongoing attempts to find a new roommate to replace Nathan provide one of the show's major plot threads. In one episode, Curtis rents Nathan's room to a mysterious businessman who uses it to storedrugged cookies, while in another, Hope unwittingly rents it to twoNeo-Nazis she mistakes for agay couple. That episode includes a Nazi rally which features all four members of the rock bandSloan among the extras. At the end of the episode, the two Nazi roommates renounce Nazism and promptly kiss each other, vindicating Hope's judgement.

Bruce McCulloch andMark McKinney (both fromThe Kids in the Hall) also starred in the series as Rex Reilly, theJerry Springer-like host of Curtis' favourite TVtalk show.^[3] McCulloch played Reilly in the first season, and McKinney played him in the second. The change in Reilly's appearance is explained in his autobiography,Tyrannosaurus Rex, which refers to his "on-air cranium transplant."

Guest stars on the series includedJennifer Jason Leigh,Tom McCamus,Valerie Buhagiar,Charmion King,Kenneth Welsh,Hugh Dillon,Kim Mitchell,Stefan Brogren,John L'Ecuyer andJoyce DeWitt. DeWitt plays herself as a guest onThe Rex Reilly Show, meeting lookalikes in an episode devoted to the theme "I Look Like Joyce DeWitt".

All thirteen episodes were released onDVD in 2006.

Most episodes of the series are titled for the theme of theRex Reilly Show episode depicted in the script.

• Twitch City atIMDb

• 1998 Canadian television series debuts
• 2000 Canadian television series endings
• CBC Television original programming
• Television shows set in Toronto
• Kensington Market
• Television shows filmed in Toronto
• 1990s Canadian sitcoms
• 2000s Canadian sitcoms

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Episode list using the default LineColor