There should be no contesting this first-place finish.
Hate the Player: The Ben Johnson Story is hands down the best new Canadian TV show to premiere so far this year.
The final two episodes that ran on Thursday on GameTV, and are now available to stream on Paramount+ in Canada, landed some gold-medal guffaws about one of the biggest steroids-in-sports scandals of all time. But they cemented, too, the show’s status as a comedy that is more serious in its thinking about our country’s shortcomings than most of our small-screen dramas.
The penultimate episode focused on the relationship between sprinter Johnson (Shamier Anderson, who’s shown a superb knack for comedy in the lead role) and his beloved mother (Schitt’s Creek’s always invaluable Karen Robinson).
Shamier Anderson (left) and Andrew Bachelor in Hate the Player. The show has cemented its status as a comedy that is more serious in its thinking about our country’s shortcomings than most of our small-screen dramas.Paramount/Supplied
It featured some of the most politically incorrect humour of the six-episode series, but was also a surprisingly powerful exploration of family separation, which has affected so many Caribbean-Canadian clans because of our immigration policies.
What to Stream: Our picks of the best in film and television
The series finale, meanwhile, dug deep into the tortured psychology regarding our relationship to the United States as it lampooned the Dubin inquiry into performance-enhancing drugs that followed Johnson’s fall from grace at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
Canada’s paradoxical desires to beat the Yanks at something, anything, and also feel morally superior to them at all times has been an overarching theme of the miniseries. (These are paradoxical because the Americans win at so many things precisely because they don’t play fair.)
Hate the Player is only the latest miniseries to re-examine a late 20th-century tabloid scandal through a contemporary lens. But all credit to creator Anthony Q. Farrell for coming up with a fresh comedic angle on the genre, which has delivered diminishing returns over the past decade.
American producer Ryan Murphy is the most prominent pioneer of this kind of show. Back in 2016, his American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson made that 1990s murder trial a sensation once more by exploring how societal sexism and racism hindered the case. It redeemed prosecutor Marcia Clark’s reputation in the process.
From left: Darryl Hinds, Andrew Bachelor and Shamier Anderson.Paramount/Supplied
But this year’s Murphy-produced Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette has been a mushier nostalgia trip back to the 1990s. It’s bolstered myths about the Kennedy clan as much as it’s interrogated them, and, instead of righting past wrongs, it’s created new ones – namely in the unfair, some say sexist portrayal of actor Daryl Hannah.
Perhaps part of the reason why this once exciting genre has been on the decline in the U.S. is that, in the year of our lord 2026, it’s becoming harder and harder to look back at the past and imagine that we are living in a society that is in any way more enlightened.
Hate the Player succeeds not just because it is Canadian – but because, following a great Canadian artistic tradition, it comments on the American form of entertainment it mimics.
A disclaimer at the beginning of each episode makes clear that we are not necessarily getting a clearer picture of the past just because we are further from it. (And, yes, it’s also likely there for legal purposes.) The one for the first instalment read: “This is a heightened and theatrical take on Ben Johnson’s story. His version of events. If things don’t jibe with your recollection, it is what it is. Go make your own show.”
From left: Suresh John, Lisa Horner and Andrew PhungParamount/Supplied
So even though Hate the Player had Johnson’s direct involvement, its framing device specifically sets him up as the show’s unreliable narrator.
A cast of actors playing multiple parts in ridiculous costumes and wigs (in a style reminiscent of Drunk History) reinforces the point that this is a “sketchy” retelling. The resulting intoxicating mix of truth and over-the-top exaggeration is funny; it also leaves room for skepticism and undercuts any smug feeling of superiority viewers might feel about the past.
Farrell and his writers have done an admirable job of circumventing clichés of “rise and fall” stories, too, by avoiding a chronological narrative and instead embracing circular storytelling that layers complexity into Johnson’s tale and character in each episode.
The former fastest man in the world comes out looking not like a hero or a villain, but like a human.
Toronto’s New Metric Media (Shoresy, Letterkenny) is the main production company behind Hate the Player. Chief executive officer Mark Montefiore wants to turn it into a Murphy-style anthology series and take on other controversial Canadians in future seasons.
Let’s hope he can sell this first one to the U.S. (Montefiore says he’s hoping to close a deal shortly) and other countries (its themes should make it a middle-power hit) to get enough juice to make another.
Heaven knows there’s enough material out there in this country. We do love to gawk at every speck of dirt over the border while sweeping our own messes under the rug.