TORONTO -- When roots-rocker Chris Isaak decided he wanted to create his own TV series, he adopted the same retro-cool approach you can hear in his music.
Just as his own albums reinterpret the classic sounds of early rockers such as Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison, "The Chris Isaak Show" borrows from classic early sitcoms and gives them a decidedly contemporary twist.
"My favourite show would be 'The Honeymooners'," Isaak says of Jackie Gleason's groundbreaking blue-collar comedy series from television's early days.
"I like those kind of shows where you care about the characters, based on some little bit of reality.
"(The Chris Isaak Show") is kind of a cross between 'The Honeymooners' and Ricky Ricardo on 'I Love Lucy.' He was a real musician, but he had friends in show business, but he also never had so much money that it separated him from everybody.
"He was always going: 'Lucy, you cannot buy that vacuum cleaner'," he says, adopting the Cuban bandleader's accent.
The singer was in Toronto on Friday to beat the drum for the series, which was created for the Showtime cable channel in the U.S. and begins airing in Canada on MuchMoreMusic on June 28.
The program casts Isaak and his band members as themselves, with the addition of comedian Jed Rees as the combo's degenerate, scene-stealing keyboardist, Anson. Like the real-life Isaak, his TV doppelganger lives in a crummy, thrift shop-furnished two-bedroom house in San Francisco (the show is actually filmed in Vancouver), hangs out at the legendary nightclub Bimbo's, drives a '64 Chevy Nova, and shops at Safeway.
Mix in some stellar live-music sequences, guest appearances by some of Isaak's real showbiz acquaintances (including Minnie Driver, Stevie Nicks, Bif Naked, and Poison's Bret Michaels) and a touch of surrealism -- Isaak's guru is a woman whose naked image is projected into the fish-tank at Bimbo's -- and you've got a curious mix that hangs together well and provides plenty of surprises and laughs.
Whether it's casting his actual band-members, adopting a no lip sync policy or maintaining down-to-earth storylines, keeping it real was part of Isaak's design from the start.
"(TV industry) people would go: musician? Rock star? So it can be a lot of wild sex, and you are taking drugs, people are getting high, and there are chesty girls all the time," he says of early discussions for the show.
"Okay, that is a very small percentage of what the story can be. But the reality is, to me it is much more interesting going to Safeway, running into your ex-buddy who doesn't like your music and it always ticks you off," he says. "A story that is more in reality, and someone can go, 'I've been there'."
