The Cohen Brothers Discuss Their Offbeat New Animated Comedy Show, ‘Super Team Canada’

What the world needs now more than ever before is a group of well-meaning Canadian superheroes! That’s the wonderful premise behind Super Team Canada, a fun adult-skewing animated project produced by Thunderbird Entertainment’s Atomic Cartoons and Will Arnett’s production company, Electric Avenue. Created by brothers Robert Cohen (Somebody, Somewhere; The Big Bang Theory) and Joel Cohen (The Simpsons), the 20 x 10′ show has been greenlit by Canadian broadcaster Bell Media’s streaming service Crave, and will premiere early next year.

The adult-skewing toon chronicles the hilarious exploits of six little-known superheroes from the Great White North who try to save the world from giant robots, an unemployed octopus and needy hardware store clerks. Unfortunately, these underdog super-unknowns are the world’s last resort when all the other major heroes have been destroyed! The voice cast includes Will Arnett, Cobie Smulders, Kevin McDonald, Veena Sood, Ceara Morgana, Charles Demers and Brian Dummond, and the theme song is written and performed by another beloved Canadian superhero, Bryan Adams.

In advance of the show’s debut at MIPCOM this month, we had a chance to chat with the Emmy-winning creators Robert and Joel Cohen to find out more about this crazy Canuck concoction, which is Atomic Cartoons’ first original show for adults.

Animation Magazine: Congrats on the very promising new show! Can you tell us a bit about the origins of the show? How did it all come together?

Joel Cohen: After years of working in TV and animation in the U.S., Rob and I wanted to do something in Canada, where we are from. We came up with the idea, reached out to Will Arnett, another Canadian who we love, and he also eagerly came on board. Then we pitched it to Atomic Cartoons, who we all knew from other projects, and as a group pitched it to Bell Media in Canada, who was fantastic out of the gate. Then we got beyond lucky in having the incredible Cobie Smulders (How I Met Your Mother) and Kevin McDonald (Kids in the Hall) join the voice cast. It’s a Canadian success story, like Blackberry phones — if you skip over the colossal failure part.

What do you love about this new show?

Both: Super Team Canada is just fun, plain and simple. We have short, fast 10-minute episodes in which we try to pack in as much story, and as many jokes and Canadian references as we can.

What is it about Canadian superheroes that makes them perfect for comedy?  

We chose our heroes to make loving self-referential fun of Canada as much as we could. We have RCM-PC, a polite, apologetic computer housed in a Canada Post mailbox; Poutine, who shoots fries and gravy as weapons; Breakaway, a hockey-themed hero who may have more concussions than teeth, and others. They’re all flawed in unique ways, but together, they get the job done. Sort of. Sometimes. Plus, we loved the idea that the team is forced to jump from being so far off the radar they couldn’t even spell “radar,” to becoming the only thing standing between the world and certain destruction.

Will we see cameos from other famous Canadian superheroes — Captain Canuck, Deadpool, Nelvana of the Northern Lights? 

The quick answer is, “No.”  The slightly longer answer is, “No, sorry.” We are aware of our much higher quality predecessors, and we promise not to challenge their legacies.

Where is the animation being produced?  

In Canada. This was also important to us. It’s an Atomic Cartoons original, co-produced with Electric Avenue, and Atomic’s Vancouver studio is leading the production with help from Nova Scotia’s Cartoon Conrad.

Biggest inspirations?

Robert Cohen: Joel, Will and I all grew up with old-school Saturday morning shows like Super Friends and, for all of the Canadians out there who have the internet and too much free time, Rocket Robin Hood. We loved the opportunity to do retro 2D animation that was an homage to these shows, but also to those shows’ ridiculously compressed emergencies, solutions, and of course, in-your-face-messages about friendship and unnatural group laughter before end credits rolled.

Funniest plotline? 

We of course try to make every plot funny but to list a few, we have a secret race of underground pancake people attempting to steal all of Canada’s maple syrup, a very helpful hardware store clerk that is brought into the team’s lair to help fix things, then refuses to leave, and of course, a deranged hockey-themed villain who has bred and unleashes a deadly herd of Gretzky clones in an attempt to destroy the NHL — a tale as old as time, really.

What were some of your biggest challenges?

We had a set budget and a tight time frame to write and produce 20 scripts, but we could not have assembled a better team to do this. We went into this partnership knowing and embracing the restrictions, because the upside of working with everyone involved was so fun.

How would you describe the animation style and the visuals?  

Ultimately, we wanted to reference and celebrate the line-drawn 2D animation that we saw used in the shows that inspired us, like Hanna-Barbera’s Super Friends.

What do you hope audiences will take away from the series? 

Robert Cohen: For Canadians, there are references they will get and laugh at. And for non-Canadians, while some of these references may be confusing, they will encourage them to laugh at Canadians. So, we hope to elicit pride in Canadians and scorn from the rest of the world. We hope everyone laughs and enjoys it — we want people to know it is silly and fun, and very pro-Canada. Secondly, it might stand as further proof that Joel and I should be legally barred from show business. But we love making this show with our incredible cast and crew, and would do it forever.

To find out more, visit atomiccartoons.com/projects/super-team-canada.