CBC looks for comedy at Prairie mosque

Thursday, January 18, 2007

CBC looks for comedy at Prairie mosque

This Show Is A HOOT! Watched it last night, my sides are still sore from laughin' sooo hard!

--The Wizard

The CBC has quietly ordered eight episodes of a promising -- but potentially politically controversial -- new sitcom, Little Mosque on the Prairie, about a fictional Muslim family living in rural Saskatchewan. But instead of hoisting pitchforks, rolling down hills and selling eggs at Oleson's General store like Michael Landon's Ingalls family, this transplanted clan will be trying to interact with the denizens of a little Prairie town in a post Sept. 11 world.

Given global religious tensions -- not helped by Pope Benedict's controversial remarks on Islam and the firestorm provoked by cartoons of Prophet Mohammed published in the Danish press -- Little Mosque on the Prairie's comedy will have to be handled with extreme caution. Or God knows, CBC could have any number of watchdogs running around like Little House on the Prairie's shrieking shopkeeper Harriet Oleson.

CBC is also still smarting from the beating it took over the short-lived programming fiasco The One and is wary of any more potential missteps. Unlike other series starting this winter, the network has been rather tight-lipped about Little Mosque. However, CBC spokesman Jeff Keay confirmed the broadcaster has ordered eight episodes and will begin airing them in January. "The producers recognize the potential sensitivities and are taking that into account," Keay said. "We're comfortable that [the show] is being taken in the generous spirit intended. Little Mosque on the Prairie is a funny, warts-and-all look at life in a small community."

Little Mosque is the brainchild of Regina-based filmmaker Zarqa Nawaz, who is writing and producing the comedy. Nawaz -- whose company is called FUNdamentalist Films because she wants to put the "fun back into fundamentalism" -- pitched CBC on the show two years ago. She's working with WestWind Pictures, also of Regina.

A former CBC radio and television producer heavily into satire, Nawaz's films include BBQ Muslims (a five-minute comedy about two brothers who are suspected of being terrorists after their barbecue blows up, shown at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1996) and Real Terrorists Don't Belly Dance.

According to one Web site, the working title Little Mosque on the Prairie has yet to be formally approved. Perhaps the programmers at the CBC should take heed of a recent turn of events in Berlin, where the director of the Deutsche Oper caused a furor when she cancelled a provocative production of a Mozart opera that depicted the severed head of Mohammed alongside those of other religious figures.

The director, Kirsten Harms, thought she'd avoid controversy by cancelling the opera but, instead, was lambasted by her own countrymen for assaulting freedom of speech and democracy. The Financial Times Deutschland called the self-censorship "hysterical and stupid."

Whatever happens here keep the title, CBC. It's hilarious.