The premise arrived fully formed: a video store magnate, his soap star wife, and their two grown children lose everything and land in a town they once bought as a joke. Schitt’s Creek ran six seasons and 79 episodes on CBC Television, from January 13, 2015 to April 7, 2020.
Created by Dan Levy and his father Eugene Levy, the show opens with the Rose family stripped of their fortune after their business manager embezzles the family company, Rose Video. Their mansion is seized. Their only remaining asset is the deed to Schitt’s Creek, a small town Johnny bought for David’s birthday in 1991 as a joke. The family moves into two adjacent rooms in a run-down motel.
That is a strong engine for comedy, and for two or three seasons it runs mostly on the friction between the Roses and the town. The problem is that the engine idles.
Trailer, via Schitt’s Creek.
Johnny Rose and the Motel Rooms
Eugene Levy plays Johnny as a man permanently mid-explanation, a businessman who cannot stop pitching. It is a generous performance, and a limited one. Johnny’s arc across six seasons is essentially a single note held for 79 episodes: he wants his money back, then he wants his family comfortable, then he wants the motel to work. The show gives him little else to do.
Catherine O’Hara fares better as Moira, the former soap actress with an accent that belongs to no known country. O’Hara was the creators’ first choice for the role. She initially turned down Eugene Levy’s offer, citing “laziness” and an aversion to long-term projects. Levy reached out to another actress but kept courting her. She agreed to shoot the presentation pilot with no obligation to continue, then signed on after CBC picked up the series.
That persistence paid off. Moira is the one Rose whose mannerisms feel like character rather than costume, and O’Hara finds real hurt underneath the vocabulary.
David, Alexis, and the Casting That Almost Wasn’t
Dan Levy writes David as a man who has turned anxiety into a personal brand, and he plays it with a straight face that earns laughs the scripts do not always set up. Annie Murphy’s Alexis is the show’s best piece of casting luck. Murphy was on the verge of quitting acting after two years without work when she got an email inviting her to audition. She first read in Los Angeles, where Dan Levy said she stood out for her “wonderfully natural likability.”
Eugene Levy was unsure. Murphy did not have the blonde hair he had pictured for Alexis. She was called back to read for a different part, the sarcastic motel clerk Stevie Budd. Dan Levy then convinced his father that Murphy could dye her hair, and she was cast as Alexis.
Emily Hampshire landed Stevie after auditioning in Los Angeles. She first asked to submit a taped audition because of nerves and recurring hive breakouts, then agreed to read in person. She says she has no memory of it.
The supporting town is deep: Chris Elliott as mayor Roland Schitt, Jennifer Robertson as Jocelyn, Sarah Levy as Twyla Sands, Karen Robinson as Ronnie Lee, Dustin Milligan as veterinarian Ted Mullens.
The Netflix Bump and the Run Order
Schitt’s Creek was not a hit at first. Its early seasons drew limited audiences. Regional appearances on Netflix after the third season are credited with its rise in stature, the so-called “Netflix bump,” helped along by a dynamic social media presence.
Here is the run:
| Season | Run |
|---|---|
| 1–6 | January 13, 2015 – April 7, 2020 |
The bump is real, and it is also a tell. A show that needs three seasons and a streaming platform to find its audience is not a show that was misunderstood. In this paper’s view, it is a show that took too long to settle on what it wanted to be.
The Awards and the Case for Patience
The prizes came late and they came heavy. Schitt’s Creek won two ACTRA Awards and 18 Canadian Screen Awards. Critical acclaim and a cult following followed, particularly for the writing, the humour and the acting.
Those are real achievements. They are also the achievements of a show that needed time to find its footing.
Where the Six Seasons Actually Land
The published critical score sits at 6.4 out of 10, per Metacritic (64/100), by way of Wikipedia. That number is honest about the show’s split personality. When Schitt’s Creek is good, it is very good: Moira’s vocabulary, David’s mortification, Stevie’s deadpan, the slow accumulation of a town that stops being a punchline. When it is not, it is a premise doing laps.
The show’s real subject, to this paper’s eye, is not poverty. It is the discovery that the Roses were always this way. That idea is worth six seasons. It is not always served by six seasons.
What matters most is Murphy. She took a role that was nearly written off before it was cast, and she built Alexis into the show’s emotional centre. The series’ rise is credited to Netflix and social media. Murphy is the reason to keep watching once you arrive.
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