‘Slings’ takes Canada out of the background

Canada is all over American television, standing in for New York and Chicago, for foggy San Francisco and rocky Colorado, but it is only in Canada that Canada gets to play itself.

Most of us are, to be sure, so enthralled by the interesting goings on in TV series and movies to notice, but the difference is there, in the way the sky hangs low over the landscape, in the very sidewalks and signage -- an impediment to perfect believability.

When Canada stands for Canada, as it does in the terrific imported backstage-comedy miniseries “Slings & Arrows,” getting its U.S. debut Sunday on the Sundance Channel, that cognitive dissonance disappears -- the country is revealed not as a fake America but an authentic Canada.

We are accustomed also to the occasional Canadian performer becoming successful south of their border -- Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Mike Myers, William Shatner -- which only tends to reinforce a vision of Canada as a farm team for American pop culture. But Canada has culture of its own, ranks of writers and directors and actors who may pass their whole lives doing good work unseen by United States of American eyes.

A few of the faces in “Slings & Arrows,” set around the staging of “Hamlet” at a Canadian theater festival, will be familiar -- star Paul Gross played the lead in the 1990s CBS Mountie sitcom “Due South,” young Rachel McAdams is the female lead in “The Wedding Crashers” -- but Canadian viewers will recognize this is an all-star cast. Most have had extensive stage experience, including with Shakespeare, and know whereof they act. Gross -- married in real life to his leading lady, Martha Burns -- plays an actor who had a nervous breakdown performing “Hamlet” and has himself played Hamlet; Stephen Ouimette, who plays the festival’s erstwhile artistic director, has been an associate director of the Stratford Festival, on which the series’ fictional New Burbage Festival seems to be based.

Directed by Peter Wellington and written by playwright-actress Susan Coyne (who has played Shakespeare’s Juliet, Portia, Regan and Olivia); Mark McKinney, a former Kid in the Hall and “Saturday Night Live” cast member; and comedian Bob Martin, it is full of familiar types -- the mad genius, the aging diva with the slow-witted young boyfriend, the wide-eyed ingenue, the scheming outsider, the flamboyant yet untalented director with bad avant-garde ideas, the seen-it-all old pros -- but in each case fresh things are done with them.

Although there’s nothing particularly arresting about its various plot lines and themes -- art versus commerce, boy meets girl, estranged older couple working together again, most of which, along with the Shakespeare, can be found in the book of “Kiss Me, Kate” -- their twists and turns on the way to the happy endings are unpredictable, surprising but always believable.

Shakespeare recycled his plots, of course, and his audience knew from word one that things would end badly for Macbeth or well for the Midsummer Night’s Dreamers. (One measure of a play or movie is how successfully it makes you forget what you know will happen.) What matters is the trip, what you might pick up on the way, and how you might be moved at the end.

From the Noel Coward pastiche that runs under the opening credits, “Cheer Up, Hamlet” (“your incessant monologizing fills the palace with ennui / Your antic disposition is embarrassing to see”), “Slings & Arrows” is a splendid show, always smart but never superior. Its novelistic length allows for some productive meandering along the way, but it gains focus and force and goes along.

Each episode seems deeper and more substantial than the last, but you don’t really notice this while it’s happening. You don’t even have to know, or even like, Shakespeare, to enjoy it -- the series is full of subtle references to and reflections of “Hamlet” as well as some particularly cogent and understandable dramatic analysis -- but why wouldn’t you like Shakespeare? You should! You can! This might be the place to start.

*

‘Slings & Arrows’

Where: Sundance Channel

When: 8 p.m. Sunday

Ratings: TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14)

Paul Gross...Geoffrey Tennant

Stephen Ouimette...Oliver Welles

Martha Burns...Ellen Fanshaw

Rachel McAdams...Kate McNab

Don McKellar...Darren Nichols

Jennifer Irwin...Holly Day

Director: Peter Wellington.