True North

Ron James performs like Canada’s frantic, verbose town crier, delivering a manic recap of a historically chaotic year. The appeal here is watching a veteran road comic use high-velocity, poetic language to try and talk his audience down from a collective panic attack over the state of the world.

Filmed at the Kingston Grand Theatre in Ontario, True North aired on CBC on December 30, 2016. At this point in his career, James had fully established his niche as the nation’s go-to year-end commentator, adapting his “What Just Happened” touring show into a tight television hour.

The material swings between global political dread and the year’s strangest domestic fads. James addresses the immediate shock of the U.S. election, noting that the Chicago Cubs broke their historic curse just in time for American voters to elect a brand new one. He targets the rise of adult coloring books, calling them the perfect companion piece to adult diapers, and rails against the absurdity of Pokémon Go players wandering into old-growth trees in search of a Squirtle. The set also includes a comparison of gun culture, where James lays out exactly why assault weapons never quite caught on in Canada.