It's a small world, isn't it?

Bruce McCulloch was unable to reprise his role as a exploitative talk show host on Don McKellar's Twitch City. The actor who inherited the part is none other than his Kids in the Hall cohort Mark McKinney!

"Coincidence. They auditioned 7,000 actors and then they came to me by chance!" McKinney says, laughing.

Truth be told, McKinney doesn't really know how he came to be Rex Reilly, idol of the series' central couch potato character.

"I never asked. I'd like to think Don McKellar saw my work on Kids in the Hall and thought I was a genius," he says from his home in New York.

"But probably Bruce couldn't do it and suggested me as a replacement."

The Ottawa-born comedian had actually met with McKellar about appearing in the first season of the CBC series, which airs tonight at 9 p.m. on F and GJ.

"I read the scripts and I almost left Saturday Night Live to do the original six because they were that intriguing. But I just had a kid and I needed to pay the doctor's bills, so I stayed on Saturday Night Live for another year and a half."

The cutting-edge sitcom explains the change in actors by claiming Reilly was the recipient of a "cranium transplant."

It's an operation that apparently affects your vocal cords as well.

"We were on the talk show set with (director) Bruce McDonald and I said, 'I don't know ... I feel a demi-Australian accent coming on. Can I go with it?'" McKinney recalls.

For McKinney, Rex Reilly was the realization of a dream.

"It finishes my trilogy of work: Spice World, Dog Park and Twitch City. Those are the three things I really wanted to do after leaving Saturday Night Live," he jokes.

The recent Kids in the Hall reunion tour was wildly successful by all accounts but inexplicably ignored most Canadian destinations.

It was an inexcusable offense in our books when you consider McKinney and McCulloch are alumni of Calgary's Loose Moose Theatre Company.

"It's not personal. We're not dissing our roots. In terms of the routing, it just became easier to play the northeast United States."

The troupe hopes to make amends in the future with another outing. (That is to say more tour dates.)

"Absolutely, the next leg for me is going be Halifax, Calgary, Edmonton, Victoria and Winnipeg.

"That's where we all want to go sentimentally."

Until then, fans can expect McKinney to unexpectedly pop up in films such The Out-of-Towners, The Last Days of Disco and Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang. His next big-screen appearance will be in Ladies Man, from SNL and Kids producer Lorne Michaels.

"I'm good for like five, ten thousand a year off these guys," McKinney says. "You work with who you know.

"It's all staying in the family."