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If I mention the show Slings & Arrows in conversation, I am always met with one of two responses. People either have never heard of it, or they are passionately in love with it. There’s no middle ground. Which is why I feel it’s incumbent upon me to make sure that you know about Slings & Arrows. Because in my limited research, if you know about it, you love it.

Slings & Arrows is a Canadian dramedy about a theater festival teetering on the brink of disaster. Pompous Oliver Welles has sold out, alienated his former friends, and is purposely staging toothless productions of Shakespeare plays because he no longer has the passion to push the system. Then, he gets drunk, trips into the road, and is run over by a tractor trailer truck carrying hams. Yes, hams.

The festival turns to the eccentric Geoffrey Tennant (Paul Gross) to take over as artistic director. Geoffrey was once the festival’s brightest star, but he went literally insane while playing Hamlet for Oliver. The two were best friends, but then they became enemies. Anyway, Geoffrey reluctantly agrees to take over the festival (which includes a new production of Hamlet starring a movie star) and is immediately visited by Oliver’s ghost. And that’s kind of the show.

Of course, there’s more. Kids In The Hall alum Mark McKinney plays the festival’s awkward financial director, and he is being played by an American business woman who wants to buy out the festival and turn into a kitschy theme park. Geoffrey’s ex, Helen, is dealing with the fact that she is aging. And yes, future movie star Rachel McAdams plays a sweet young ingenue who gets tangled up in all the drama. There are sword fights, love affairs, and a pesky chameleon. It’s wonderful.

The show is smart and funny, but above all else it is honest. The theater world isn’t just satirized, but honored. Yes, there are self-absorbed directors and actors. Yes, there’s a buffoonish critic. Yes, there is a lot of campy stuff happening, but it’s all based on reality. If you’ve ever wanted to see what happens after the cast bows and the curtain closes, you should watch Slings & Arrows. (Hint: There’s drinking. There’s a lot of drinking.)

Slings & Arrows is so on point when it comes to depicting the trials and triumphs of backstage life, that it kind of ruined Birdman a little bit for me. Don’t get me wrong, Birdman is gorgeously shot. It’s a monumental achievement for effects and staging. However a lot of the human moments in Birdman felt lifted from Slings & Arrows. In fact, some of the inhuman moments in Birdman felt lifted from Slings & Arrows. You know those scenes when Riggan is talking to the Birdman voice in his head, and then someone walks in the room, and it’s like, “Oh, he was just talking to himself. No one was there. Is he crazy? Or is the voice real? What’s going on?” That’s the entire conceit of Geoffrey’s scenes with Oliver’s ghost. People already think Geoffrey is crazy, and it’s made worse when they constantly walk in on him talking to “himself.”

In many ways, Slings & Arrows was simply ahead of its time. It’s the kind of nuanced drama that would demand a big budget and a five season order from AMC or Netflix today. But when it originally came out, it only found life in the United States on the niche cable channel, Ovation. The show found a cult following among theater nerds who passed the DVDs along to one another. And that’s how I discovered it. The cool thing now is that you don’t have to wait for your best friend from your college drama days to lend you a used copy of the show. You can stream it. In fact, you can stream the pilot for free on Amazon.

So, yeah, there’s no excuse. I’ve done my duty. I’ve told you about Slings & Arrows, the best show that you now know about.

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[Photos: Everett Collection]