The story
In a small rural Ontario town, siblings Wayne and Katy run a farm and produce stand, with their friends Daryl and 'Squirrely' Dan never far away. Life revolves around running feuds between the town's cliques, from the hockey players to the local skids, settled through rapid-fire insults, dense wordplay and the odd scrap, with Wayne's deadpan, straight-to-camera rants setting the tone.
Why it matters
Letterkenny shows how a web sketch can become a streaming service's calling card: the YouTube shorts led to the first original series Crave ever commissioned, which ran for 12 seasons, won a Canadian Screen Award for Best Comedy Series and spun off Shoresy.
From web series to TV
Jared Keeso first made Letterkenny Problems, a short-form web series released on YouTube in 2013 in which he and Nathan Dales trade comic one-liners. Crave commissioned a full series in March 2015 — the first original series it commissioned — and Letterkenny premiered there on 7 February 2016.
Notable facts
- It was the first original series commissioned by Crave, which premiered it on 7 February 2016. (source)
- Letterkenny Problems was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award for digital media at the 2nd Canadian Screen Awards in 2014. (source)
- Crave said Letterkenny's debut was the biggest of any series on the platform since it launched in 2014. (source)
- A spin-off, Shoresy, premiered on Crave on 13 May 2022. (source)