Mike & Mike's Excellent X-Canada Adventures
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Mike & Mike's Excellent X-Canada Adventures was a TV show that ran on the MuchMusic network (orignal Canadian verson of MTV, for those not internationally conversant) from 1987 to 1993. The very basic premise of the show was to send the two Mikes out into the vast expanse of Canada, with completely unaware cameramen, to bring back footage of whatever happened to them...
Canada is, as you may know, the second largest county in the world as a land mass. It is full of goofy stuff. Mike and Mike did their level best to get to every nook and cranny and bring the real country to the channel's viewers. Along the way, they did some amazing things that the average Canadian (in other words, Canadians without the benefit of their own TV shows) would never, ever, get a chance to do. They: flew in F18 fighter jets, they skydived (dove?), they bungee jumped (before it was fashionable), they jumped out of an airplane, they did shows from movie sets in L.A. (Wayne's World, Naked Gun 33 1/3, Coneheads), they put on skis and went places they had no business going, they drove snowmobiles across open water, they climbed mountains, they built igloos, they... well, you get the picture...
Their show was also the only one on MuchMusic that didn't have to ask permission of the powers-that-were to air whatever videos they wanted to play. To that end, they played great Canadian independent videos as a matter of course, and were huge boosters of the independent music scene in Canada before it was fashionable.
Relegated to many horrible time-slots on the network, the Mikes tried their level best to bring the underexposed - and the downright weird - from every corner of the country, to the rest of Canada. The show's appeal, generally, was attributed to the fact that every guy in the country, who had an actual friend, figured he could do the job as well - or better - than they could. They were the "everymen."
The show became a cult hit but was cancelled in 1993. Mike Campbell moved to Halifax and went on to produce/host/shoot MuchEast and then Going Coastal. He is now one of Joel Plaskett's managers. Mike Rhodes stayed in Toronto.
There are plans afoot to bring the show back (Mike and Mike have rescued the original footage from most of the 300+ shows) in some form in the foreseeable future. If you've been watching The Mercer Report, or any number of other shows, you should know that practically everything on them has been cribbed from Mike and Mike... and that's the truth...
Hosers? I think not.
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