History Series / MadeInCanada

* CliffhangerCopout: Parodied; the end of Season 3 had a rapid-fire cliffhanger on each major character. The next season explained why that happened, that it results in lame excuses, and proceeded to quickly and causally list them before proceeding with the plot.

* FourthWallObserver: Richard's frequent addresses to camera about not just how television production works but about the narrative structure of the episodes themselves identify him as a fourth wall observer.

** Almost every episode begins with Richard speaking to the camera in the cold opener giving some insight into the lives of producers and executive, corporate life.
*** While those initially seem out of the blue, they inevitably gain context as they relate directly to the episode's plot.

* CasanovaWannabe: When she and Alan try to piece together why a deal with [=AnnMarie=] [MacDonald=] fell through (it was due to Alan being an idiot), Wanda says that Victor thinks that he's either James Bond or Simon Templar...well, someone played by Roger Moore at any rate.

* CliffhangerCopout: Parodied; the end of one season had a rapid-fire cliffhanger on each major character. The next season explained why that happened, that it results in lame excuses, and proceeded to quickly and causally list them before proceeding with the plot.

* [[EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep Everyone Calls Her Nurse Melissa]]: The main characters seem to not remember the real names of most of the cast on ''Beaver Creek''. (As an example, it took for the show to get cancelled for Veronica to learn that Blind Jimmy's real name was Dino.) This comes into play during the third-to-last episode when they have to race around frantically trying to find out Nurse Melissa's real name. (it's Lillian Vale, by the way.) Needless to say, she wasn't thrilled to realize that despite working for Pyramid for what seemed like a thousand years, the idiots at the front office didn't care enough to inquire as to her real name.

* [[EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep Everyone Calls Her Nurse Melissa]]: The main characters seem to not remember the real names of most of the cast on ''Beaver Creek''; this comes into play during the second-to-last episode when they have to race around frantically trying to find out Nurse Melissa's real name.

* CasanovaWannabe: When he and Wanda try to piece together why a deal with [=AnnMarie=] [MacDonald=] fell through, they agree that Victor thinks that he's either James Bond or Simon Templar...well, someone played by Roger Moore at any rate.

* ChurchOfHappyology: The Series 2 episode "It's a Science" features the Church of Spirentology, whose members include an old friend of Alan's who claims to have created ''Sword of Damacles'' and shows up demanding royalties. Victor is sent undercover in the church to investigate the possibility that the claim is part of a scam, but ends up on the conversion path himself.
** The end of that particular episode reveals that the whole thing is part of a scam Victor cooked up to help the other guy extort money from Alan; Victor couldn't (yet) openly betray Alan so they had to resort to other means.

* BrickJoke: An episode in which [[TheChessmaster Brian from the network]] pretend to want to work at Pyramid in order to screw over a rival had most of the characters explaining to Wanda that none of them knew exactly how television works. When they realized that [[XanatosGambit he'd not only gotten promoted]], screwed over his rival and poisoned things for potential rivals, he'd also gotten enough of in idea of how Pyramid works to be able to screw them over better, he told Richard that [[IronicEcho that's how television works]].

* AlternateCompanyEquivalent: Every show within the show is a ripoff of something IRL, most notably ''The Sword of [[SpellMyNameWithAnS Damacles]]'', a takeoff of ''Series/HerculesTheLegendaryJourneys'' and ''Series/XenaWarriorPrincess'', and ''Beaver Creek'', an equivalent of the various ''Literature/AnneOfGreenGables'' series. There's even a copy of ''Series/{{The Office|UK}}'' where Alan Roy convinces the show's lead to write the show in a new mocking manner just by Alan trying to not look stupid but inevitably doing so. Sometimes it doesn't really matter, like when Moses Znaimer of Toronto's [=CityTV=] shows up as the head of "[=ShunCity=]".
* AllGermansAreNazis: While Pyramid depends on sales in Germany to keep afloat, the main characters really don't like the idea. As an example, Victor explained to Alan that the reason the Germans love Damacles is that he's a big bully who wins all the time. In the same episode, Richard made an aside about how the Germans [[TodayXTomorrowTheWorld have taught us to think globally]] as well as replying to Alan's comment about how angry the Germans were by saying "That's bad news for Poland."
* BabiesEverAfter: [[spoiler:Richard and Veronica. They even name their son after Victor.]]

* HorribleHollywood: [[AC:in Canada!]]

* TheShowMustGoWrong: The Pyramid executives' decision to air a LiveEpisode to celebrate 150 episodes of ''Beaver Creek'' when the network rejects their ClipShow inevitably leads to this. The few readthroughs and dress rehearsals are marred by cast infighting and technical problems, and the actual airing is plagued with visible crew members, malfunctioning sets, actors freezing or otherwise forgetting their lines (or resorting to spite-fuelled ad libs), and finally an invasion by an anti-TV violence campaigner which forces the network to [[WeAreExperiencingTechnicalDifficulties cut the transmission and air a documentary about beaver.]]

* SelfFulfillingProphecy: In the first episode, the executives are tasked with having to keep the starring actor ''Sword of Damacles'' from leaving the show before they have 65 episodes, which is the minimum needed in order to syndicate. ''Made In Canada'' only has 65 episodes itself, thus being a meta BrickJoke.

* SpringtimeForHitler: In "Beaver Creek: The Movie", Alan has written a script called ''Water'' on the basis that many successful television series revolve around water in some way. Richard, Victor, and Veronica all know the script is terrible and try to kill it by sticking it in DevelopmentHell and giving a copy to ''Adele of Beaver Creek'' star Mandy Forward, who wants revenge on Alan for making a pornographic parody of ''Beaver Creek'' using the same sets and relishes the prospect of telling him to his face that the film is garbage. However, to everyone's surprise, she loves the script, and offers to make two more ''Beaver Creek'' movies if she can play the female lead in ''Water''.

** Peter Blais appears as a Film/Theater professor in the Series 1 episode "The Mill Show", and later has a recurring role as Jeff, the gay actor who plays Parson Hubbard on ''Beaver Creek''.

* KeepCirculatingTheTapes / NoExportForYou: Only the six-episode first season has been released on DVD and has since fallen out of print. Some US PBS stations still run the series, as does the Canadian channel "Bite." Some wonderful individual has been capping them and putting them out there.

Plots typically revolved around Richard, Veronica, and Victor stabbing each other in the back as they try to climb to the top of Pyramid, or the shooting of films and television series (especially the fantasy series ''Sword of Damacles'' and the long-running period drama ''Beaver Creek'') which run into problems due to clashes of egos and/or Alan's poor planning and corner cutting.

* StupidBoss: This is generally the Pyramid gang's outlook on Alan.

** One episode had a television interview with Steve Smith, better known most people as [[Series/TheRedGreenShow Red Green]]. Peter Keleghan, who plays Alan, is of course also known as the CloudCuckoolander Ranger Gord.

''Made In Canada'' (generally known as ''The Industry'' outside of Canada) was a 5-season Canadian sit-com that ran from 1998 to 2003. As a satire of the film and television industry, it featured the inner-workings of a fictional Canadian production company, Pyramid Productions. Rick Mercer starred as a Machiavellian producer trying to worm his way to the top.

* AlternateCompanyEquivalent: Every show within the show is a ripoff of something IRL, most notably ''The Sword of [[SpellMyNameWithAnS Damacles]]'', a takoff of ''Series/HerculesTheLegendaryJourneys'' and ''Series/XenaWarriorPrincess'', and ''Beaver Creek'', an equivalent of the various ''Literature/AnneOfGreenGables'' series. There's even a copy of ''Series/{{The Office|UK}}'' where Alan Roy convinces the show's lead to write the show in a new mocking manner just by Alan trying to not look stupid but inevitably doing so. Sometimes it doesn't really matter, like when Moses Znaimer of Toronto's [=CityTV=] shows up as the head of "[=ShunCity=]".

* LiveEpisode: The Series 3 episode "Beaver Creek: Live" involves celebrating ''Beaver Creek'' reaching 150 episodes by airing a live show (after the original plan to air a ClipShow is rejected by the network). With just a week to prepare and produce the episode, Richard, Victor, and Veronica fish a PurpleProse-saturated BottleEpisode written by Alan's daughter Siobhan (in which her character gets 90% of the dialogue) out of the dustbin; inevitably, the actual airing is plagued with visible crew members, malfunctioning sets, actors freezing or otherwise forgetting their lines (or resorting to spite-fuelled ad libs), and finally an invasion by an anti-TV violence campaigner which forces them to [[WeAreExperiencingTechnicalDifficulties cut the transmission.]]

* TheDanza: Rick Mercer as Richard.

* LiveEpisode: The Series 3 episode "Beaver Creek Live" involves celebrating ''Beaver Creek'' reaching 150 episodes by airing a live show (after the original plan to air a ClipShow is rejected by the network). With just a week to prepare and produce the episode, Richard, Victor, and Veronica fish a PurpleProse-saturated BottleEpisode written by Alan's daughter Siobhan (in which her character gets 90% of the dialogue) out of the dustbin; inevitably, the actual airing is plagued with visible crew members, malfunctioning sets, actors freezing or otherwise forgetting their lines (or resorting to spite-fuelled ad libs), and finally an invasion by an anti-TV violence campaigner which forces them to [[WeAreExperiencingTechnicalDifficulties cut the transmission.]]

'''Victor:''' We'd rather see you struggle and then make snide comments from the sidelines.

* DrinkingGame: In one episode, it emerges that university students have devised a ''Beaver Creek'' drinking game, with such rules as taking a drink whenever a character says "The beaver are in the creek", or whenever the parson tips his hat.

* FourthWallObserver: Richard's frequent addresses to camera about how the world of television production works identify him as a fourth wall observer.