“It’s as if The Dukes of Hazzard boys got drunk on Cooter’s moonshine and Uncle Jesse whipped out his handycam.” That’s what “TV Guide” says about “Trailer Park Boys,” a raunchy comedy series airing on the Canadian cable TV station Showcase.

“‘Trailer Park Boys’ is a mockumentary, a kind of ‘Cops’ from the criminal’s point of view,” says Jeremy Harty, the series’ senior editor.

It takes place in Sunnyvale Trailer Park, a blue-collar district outside of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The three main characters — Ricky (Robb Wells), Julian (John Paul Tremblay) and Bubbles (Mike Smith) — spend much of their time on wacky schemes that see them in jail as often as out. They speak a language so swollen with swearing that it’s almost its own dialect. When the series aired in a non-late-night slot on BBC America, the bleeping became its own running joke.

“‘Trailer Park Boys’ is a mockumentary, a kind of ‘Cops’ from the criminal’s point of view.”

For all that, the tone of the show is surprisingly gentle. “On the surface it’s crazy,” says Barrie Dunn, who produces and appears in “Trailer Park Boys.” “But at the heart of the show are these three guys. They’re each other’s family, and they’ve been best friends since childhood. Then there’s the larger community of the park. In the end, there’s loyalty, friendship, forgiveness and love, which is what you look for in a family.”

“Trailer Park Boys” is a bonafide hit; there's even a feature film set to be released in 2006. But the series would have never been made at all if it hadn’t been for the perseverance of a group of friends who believed in their characters and understood what they could do with Apple technology.

The Beginnings

The guys responsible for “Trailer Park Boys” have a long history together. Tremblay met Wells when they were eight. Tremblay thought Wells was “a little dork”; Wells thought Tremblay was “a greasy dirt biker.”

Fast-forward a few years and some childhood scrapes, and the by-then best friends meet Mike Clattenburg, who would go on to direct the series. The three self-funded their first film, a short called “One Last Shot,” which was well received. They next endured the laborious process of completing a near-zero-budget, limited-release feature film, “Trailer Park Boys.”

“It was about 80 minutes originally,” says Harty. It was shown at the Atlantic Film Festival. Dunn happened to be there, and he was convinced that the characters would be fantastic in a television series. The next day, he drove about 250 miles to meet with Clattenburg and convince him to pursue the idea.

After being rebuffed by the first network Dunn and Clattenburg pitched the series to, they cold-called Laura Michalchyshyn, senior vice president of programming at Showcase, a subscription-based Canadian network. “We freaked when she actually picked up the call,” Dunn recalls. The show premiered in 2001 and quickly became a huge success. “Showcase is in about 1,000,000 homes,” says Harty. “And one of our episodes last year was viewed by over 575,000 people. For a specialty channel that’s really, really huge.”

The Right System

Shooting the series is a labor of love for all involved. The shows, while scripted, allow for a lot of improvisation, requiring a much larger than usual amount of footage. This is where the crew’s near obsession with Apple hardware and software helps.

Next Page: The Process