House of Crouse

On the Saturday May 10, 2025 ediiton of The Richard Crouse Show we’ll meet a living legend on the Canadian Comedy scene. The Winnipeg born, Chicago bred Kenny Robinson is often called the Godfather of Canadian comedy. His irreverent, socially conscience, intelligent, opinionated and profane style of comedy has made him a fixture and favourite with comedy clubs, festivals, radio, and television audiences for 3 decades.

This year he celebrates 30 years of his live show Kenny Robinson’s The Nubian Show, a monthly night of live comedy that has been the launching pad for many of Canada’s Whose Who of Comedy and featured appearances by heavy weight comics like Dave Chappell, Kevin Hart, Russell Peters. A new documentary, “People Of Comedy: Celebrating 30 Years Of The Nubian Show,” now streaming on Crave, traces The Nubian Show’s early beginnings at Toronto’s Yuk Yuk’s to its evolution into a powerful and unfiltered platform that has launched many careers, all under Kenny Robinson’s watchful eye.

Then we’ll meet Luke Gordon Field, editor-in-chief of the Beaverton website, Canada's most trusted, least accurate news source, and co-executive producer of the critically acclaimed Beaverton television series. He has run The Beaverton since 2012, and is now the host of The Beaverton Weekly Report podcast, available wherever you find fine podcasts. Their press release says, “Every Wednesday Luke Gordon Field will assemble an all-star panel of comedians to talk, mock and riff their way through the news of the week. Their knowledge of the news will then be put to the test in a very important quiz where the stakes couldn't be lower. It's just like watching CNN, only funnier and with fewer erectile dysfunction ads.“

On the Saturday April 26, 2025 edition of The Richard Crouse Show we’ll  meet JUNO Award-winning Indigenous artist Crystal Shawanda. Born and raised on Manitoulin Island in Northern Ontario, Crystal began her career in country music, signing with RCA Nashville. After parting ways with the label, she launched New Sun Records and shifted her focus to the blues. Her highly anticipated new album “Sing Pretty Blues,” blends blues and Southern country soul with Stax, Chess and Motown influences, is available now via her very own label, New Sun Records on all streaming platforms.

Then we’ll meet actor, comedian, writer and producer Susan Serrao, who started acting at the age of 35 after raising 4 boys. The Calgary based performer always encouraged her kids to go after whatever they wanted in life. Then one day her kids encouraged her to do the same thing, so she finally went after her dream to be an actor.

Since then, she’s kept busy, appearing on shows like ”Fargo” and “Homeland,” appearing on stages across Western Canada and elsewhere. She has a YouTube channel called Susan Serrao Sketch ‘N Stuff which is home to her sketch series “got milf?,” her podcast “Completely Off Topic, With Susan Serrao.”

From a bloodthirsty brood, to celebrity viruses and a euthanasia program, on this week's edition of "Maple Syrup For Your Eyes" I have a look at two generations of filmmaking Cronenbergs, David, Brandon and Caitlin.

On the Saturday May 3, 2025 edition of The Richard Crouse Show we’ll meet one of country music’s most exciting and dynamic new voices, Niko Moon. He first garnered attention as a co-writer for Zac Brown Band, contributing to hits like “Homegrown” and “Beautiful Drug.” He has also wrote songs for Dierks Bentley, Zac Brown Band, Rascal Flatts, and Morgan Wallen before breaking out as a solo artist with his 2020 multi-platinum single “Good Time”.

His debut solo album ‘Good Time’ showcased his ability to write a catchy-hook and he continued to deliver the optimism and hope he’s been known for on 2024 album ‘Better Days’ and on his latest releases, ‘These Are the Days' and ‘These Are the Nights.'

This tour follows Niko’s latest EPs These Are The Days and These Are The Nights (2024), which features great tunes like “Money Can’t Buy” and “Summer Don’t Go”.

Then, we’ll meet Keira Jang, star of Can I Get A Witness?” a Canadian eco-sci fi/coming-of-age film now on streaming sevices. It’s set in a future where climate change and world poverty have been eradicated. To mitigate these modern-day issues, travel and technology are banned and every citizen must end life at 50. Documenting the process are artists as witnesses, like the character Kiera plays, a teenager on her first day on the job.

On the Saturday April 19, 2025 edition of The Richard Crouse Show we meet Dr. Janet McMordie. She is a sports medicine physician who blends her medical expertise with a passion for the arts. During the pandemic, she embarked on a simultaneous journey into storytelling, discovering a revitalized connection to her creativity. She shifted from a tunnel-visioned medical career to explore improv, acting, and producing.

We talk about medicine, acting, her award-winning Second Act Actors podcast and much more.

Then, David Cronenberg. The Village Voice called him "the most audacious and challenging narrative director in the English-speaking world.”

He has directed horror films, dramas, psychological thrillers and gangster films, like “Shivers,” “Scanners,” “Videodrome,” “The Fly,” “A History of Violence,” “Eastern Promises” and “The Dead Zone” among many others.

Seven of his films were selected to compete for the Palme d'Or, the most recent being “The Shrouds,” which was screened at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.

Starring Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger and Guy Pearce, “The Shrouds” explores the future of death. Casserl plays a “an innovative businessman and grieving widower, who builds a novel device to connect with the dead inside a burial shroud. This burial tool installed at his own state-of-the-art though controversial cemetery allows him and his clients to watch their specific departed loved one decompose in real time.”

It's an unsettling idea for a film, but it is a powerful and ultimately therapeutic look at grief in its many forms.

Here's a list of Canadian horror films that are scarier than the Frankenstein Burger King on Clifton Hill. I’ll tell you about a 3D archaeologist, a werewolf movie that reinvents the genre, the first slasher flick, a vocal virus and much more.

I present a list of Canadian sci fi and fantasy films that will wrap their robotic arms around you in a warm Canadarm hug. I’ll tell you about a government manhunt to eliminate the rise of the machine consciousness, a war-ravaged totalitarian future, marginalized superheroes, a slimy bipedal creature and an animated, malevolent rock star.

I present a list of Canadian documentaries that are more fun than a bucket of Beavertails. I’ll tell you about a major art forgery, the beginnings of a beloved band, a five-year-old orphan on the streets of Chennai, India, who went on to become one of Toronto’s most celebrated chefs and a journey across the 24,000 kilometers of our big, beautiful country. First up, a documentary about a family secret.

Film critic Richard Crouse presents a list of Canadian comedies that are more fun than a two four of Moosehead. We’ll meet the “Governor of Givin’er,” a bingo caller named Ned, an obsessive film fan, a free-spirited teen whose birthday mushroom trip brings her face-to-face with her 39-year-old self and writer director Cody Lightning and his film Hey Viktor!

On the Saturday April 5, 2025 edition of The Riuchard Crouse Show we’ll meet writer, radio host, television personality, and public speaker Bee Quammie. She was the co-host of the Kultur’D podcast on Global News Radio and is a regular guest on The Social. Her writing has been featured in publications including The Globe and Mail, Maclean’s, Chatelaine, Ebony, Flare, and Hazlitt among others, and covers topics spanning race and culture to parenthood to health and wellness.

Her latest project is “The Book of Possibilities,” which shows us how small acts of bravery and paying careful attention to our inner voice can open up a world of opportunity and lead to a fulfilling life.

Then, we get to know British novelist Natasha Brown. Her debut novel “Assembly” was shortlisted for many awards and she was named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2023 and one of the Observer’s Best Debut Novelists in 2021.

Her new novel “Universality” tells the story of a young journalist who sets out to uncover a murder mystery and winds up drawing connections between an unsympathetic banker landlord, a larger-than-life columnist, and a radical anarchist movement. She solves the mystery, but what she uncovers unearths a deeper web of questions.

Elle calls “Universality” an “instant classic,” and “The Bookseller” calls it “a pin-sharp, savagely funny tale of class, wealth and manipulation.”