Entertainers of the Year: Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Daniel Levy & Annie Murphy (Cast of 'Schitt's Creek')

by Julian Spivey

Photo: POPTV

On September 20 of this year, I sat down to watch the 72nd annual Primetime Emmy Awards and the first categories up on the telecast that evening where the comedy categories and the first hour went like this … “and the winner is Annie Murphy for ‘Schitt’s Creek’,” “and the winner is Daniel Levy for ‘Schitt’s Creek’,” “and the winner is Catherine O’Hara for ‘Schitt’s Creek’,” “and the winner is Eugene Levy for ‘Schitt’s Creek’.”
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It was an utter ass-kicking by “Schitt’s Creek” that evening as it became the first comedy in television’s long and illustrious history to win every single major Emmy category. The entire main cast swept the acting awards, the show won for Outstanding Comedy Series and it also won for writing and directing. The Emmy glory was for the show’s sixth and final season, which aired in America from Jan. 7 – April 7 on POPTV. The remarkable thing was the series had never won an Emmy for its first five seasons and had only received four total in its run (all being for its penultimate season).

So, what happened?

“Schitt’s Creek” had been hailed for a while as a show critics enjoyed, but it was a slow moving train that began as an original series for Canada’s CBC and aired on the little seen POPTV channel in America that didn’t do much original programming (and as of a few months ago no longer does original scripted programming). It was the show’s inclusion after a few seasons on the streaming service Netflix that led to a snowball effect that really grew early this year when folk were running out of TV shows to watch amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantining. This all happened alongside the show’s final season and led to a boom that had Emmy voters, like much of the American public, realizing just how funny and maybe more importantly heartwarming this show was and we needed something both hilarious and heartwarming in 2020.

Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Daniel Levy and Annie Murphy play the Rose family – who were rich as Eugene Levy’s Johnny Rose was a successful video store chain owner that rivaled Blockbuster and his wife Moira (O’Hara) was a popular soap opera actress. Their children David (Daniel Levy) and Alexis (Murphy) were spoiled rich kids living off their parents’ success and money. When the family goes broke due to being defrauded by their business manager, they’re left with nothing but the small town of Schitt’s Creek that Johnny had bought as a joke for his son. It’s a true fish out of water story that sees the Rose family slowly adapting to their new lives and we fall more and more in love with these characters as the series goes on to the point where it’s incredibly hard to say goodbye to each of them at the end of this year’s sixth and final season.

The time many of us spent with the Rose family in 2020 – as many of us binged the show from start-to-finish this year – truly was a bright spot in such a dark year. The 80 episodes we spent with Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Daniel Levy and Annie Murphy was a blast and time well spent … that is why the cast of “Schitt’s Creek” is one of The Word’s Entertainers of the Year for 2020.