Indie producer Ira Levy believes Canadians have cracked the code to create the perfect Canadian sitcom by moving beyond sketch comedy to build shows around a single comic. The Breakthrough Films & Television cofounder argues Canadians traditionally found success by crafting laughers around strong sketch comedy troupes like Kids in the Hall, SCTV or Royal Canadian Air Farce.

But now the Canadian industry has followed the American and British lead and gone the stand-up-to-sitcom star route.

‘The new way is the Corner Gas model, which has Brent Butt as the funny guy with a show built round his presence,’ Levy explains.

Before Butt, Canadians, despite seeing a generation of Canuck comics like Jim Carrey, Martin Short and Mike Myers conquer Hollywood with their on-screen personas, for a long time folded their arms and cold-shouldered homegrown sitcoms like Material World, Rideau Hall and Snow Job.

But that all changed with Corner Gas and then Little Mosque on the Prairie. Now CTV has tapped Butt to do another comedy, Hiccups, and Gas’ Fred Ewanuick to top-line Dan For Mayor, while the CBC rolls out 18 to Life and the father-and-son dramedy Republic of Doyle to take Canadian comedy to the next level.

And that has Breakthrough mining Canadian comic talent at home and in L.A. to carefully craft a slate of homegrown comedies for international markets. The indie producer has pitched sitcoms built around veteran Canuck comics Dave Foley and Dave Thomas, and is developing another comedy with rising stand-up talent Debra DiGiovanni.

Here Breakthrough is looking to follow up its success with Less Than Kind, the family sitcom that jumped from Citytv to HBO Canada.

Less Than Kind was the brainchild of Winnipeg homeboy Marvin Kaye, whose father ran a driving school in that city’s north end. Levy and Sarah Adams, Breakthrough’s head of development, mentored Kaye as he developed a one-act play into a semi-autobiographical TV script at a National Screen Institute boot camp. Kaye was soon partnered with Vancouver-born Chris Sheasgreen, and Mark McKinney was brought on board as a showrunner after City acquired the series.

‘He [McKinney] helped to develop not only the storytelling through the development stage and production, but really tapped into Marvin’s core voice,’ Levy recalls.

Key to the development of Less Than Kind was the early writers room, which included Mad TV’s Garry Campbell, Jenn Engels and Jennifer Beasley.

‘It’s all about organically growing from a voice and grounding the comedy in that, and getting it to a more sophisticated level and building the writers room around that,’ Levy adds.

You can trace the same mingling of comic ideas, careers and credits in the making of Single White Spenny, which this time combines the youth and experience of Spencer Rice of Kenny vs. Spenny fame and Canuck comedy icon David Steinberg, respectively.

‘The first thing is comedies, being a process, don’t just happen overnight. Single White Spenny took a long time to come together,’ recalls Carolyn Newman, director of development for comedy and dramas at Breakthrough.

Newman says it took two years to get Steinberg to commit to executive producing and directing the Showcase Television pilot for Single White Spenny, a coming-of-age comedy based on a 36-year-old Spenny and done in the improv style of Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Breakthrough also attached Stevie Ray Fromstein, a writer and producer on Roseanne, as a co-creator.

Focus on veteran writing talent also led Breakthrough to attach Joel Cohen, co-executive producer of The Simpsons and Futurama, early on in the development of Crash Canyon, an animated primetime family comedy. The result, says executive producer Joan Lambur, was a quick green light from Teletoon.

‘The trust level was just rock-solid with the channel. Right out of the gate, there was that confidence and we were able to avoid a lot of the pitfalls in development,’ Lambur remembers.

Welcoming Canuck talent like Cohen and Steinberg back from L.A. has also enabled Breakthrough to exploit the stable of writers that ride on their coattails.

‘Joel is pulling in A-list primetime sitcom writers for our series because he has that network, so our network is expanding,’ Lambur observes.

The creative brain trust for Crash Canyon includes creative producer Greg Lawrence, a showrunner on E1’s Majority Rules, who, unlike Cohen and Steinberg, never left Canada for Hollywood.

Producing Parker, another primetime animated comedy from Breakthrough, began with creator Laura Kosterski and a team of women writers and was eventually built around the voice of Kim Cattrall after her star turn on the Sex and the City TV series, recalls Stephanie Betts, director of animation development and licensing.

It’s that combination of Canadian talent working both sides of the border to create the perfect homegrown sitcom that energizes Levy.

‘The networks have seen the comic strength coming out of Canada – Russell Peters, Jim Carrey, Tom Green, Kenny vs. Spenny. The opportunity is for us to have a Crash Canyon, a

Less Than Kind migrate to the American networks, or the higher end of the cable end – Showtime, HBO, Comedy Central,’ he says.