In his introduction, former SCTV cast member Dave Thomas explains that he was prompted to write this book after being contacted by another writer treating the same subject. Not wanting anything to do with it, Thomas lied and said he was working on a book of his own. Broken telephone style, Thomas’s small lie circulated as fact, and editors soon got in touch.

The end result of this odd germination? Not bad, actually. Breezily written, The Inside Story charts the early days of the SCTV stage show in Toronto, all six seasons of filming, and after. Thomas sometimes gets bogged down in the minutiae of TV production, and the overall impression of the happily manic creative atmosphere comes across as a touched-up Official Account, rarely panning over to the offstage lives of these complex, competitive performers. The portrait of John Candy in particular is a protective one, even if his cocktail glass does keep getting into the shot. But this time around the gang doesn’t want to push the edge, preferring instead to reminisce about the times they did. The result is a warmhearted, gentle memoir.

Most of Thomas’s former colleagues co-operated with his project, and long quotations from them break up his readable, first-person narrative. The cast have different takes on many things, but it is unlikely anyone will mistake this book for a definitive work of reportage. Its real target, as the comprehensive appendixes of trivia questions, list of sketches and seasons attest, is the fan. Perhaps the biting satire of SCTV was not for everyone. But when the talented comics from what has been called the best sketch comedy show ever filmed hit the right target, in comedic parlance, they killed. Occasionally, the book does too.