Almost Heroes and Single White Spenny will debut June 2, 2011 on Showcase, kicking off a Thursday night comedy lineup.  Almost Heroes will air at 9:00 PM ET/PT, followed by Single White Spenny at 9:30 PM ET/PT.  The two shows will be twinned with Curb Your Enthusiasm and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Almost Heroes has gone under a few working titles – Masters of the Plazaverse, The Strip and (this is my favourite) Untitled Belleville Brothers Project.  Frankly, Masters of the Plazaverse is the best name.  Almost Heroes reads like a David Bowie biopic.

I’m not sold on Almost Heroes yet.  The trailer isn’t funny, at all.  It looks like The Odd Couple recalibrated for geek culture, yet done in that peculiar Canadian underacting “style.”  My favourite part is when George Buza appears for a second at 0:22.  I hope Almost Heroes is better than its trailer.

I’m actually partial to Single White Spenny.  This is Spencer Rice’s attempt at a Curb Your Enthusiasm-style show.

Ken Finkleman and Paul Reiser took stabs at the CYE format earlier this year, like it was Caligula and they were the Praetorian Guard.  Spenny’s at least gone to the trouble of nabbing a Curb Your Enthusiasm director, which is impressive…until you realize it’s David Steinberg.

Below is some time-coded footage from a Single White Spenny episode.  Familiar names on SWS include Nikki Payne and Debra McGrath.  showcase.ca mentions Mark Breslin (yeah, the Yuk Yuk’s founder), although I assume that’s for the pilot episode.

Single White Spenny looks pretty good, at least from the clip below.  I’m surprised.  I already prefer two minutes of SWS to two episodes of whatever the hell Ken Finkleman’s Good Dog is.  I hope Spencer Rice’s show isn’t a botch.

Before I finish the first URBMN post in two months, I have to ask one thing of Shaw Media: where the hell is The Drunk and on Drugs Happy Funtime Hour?  Showcase has done a good job rolling its 2011 shows off the wagon, but Drunk and on Drugs has been on the shelf for a while.

Shaw Media mentioned a winter 2011 rollout for Drunk and on Drugs almost a year ago, in the dying days of Canwest.  I think both this and Kenny Hotz’s Triumph of the Will will be bumped to the 2011-12 season.

Three years for the Trailer Park Boys followup is far too long.  That’s, like, 900 years in Internet time!  URBMN’s already been dead for a century!