“Remember when your parents would send you to the store to get them cigarettes?” asks Canadian improv legend Colin Mochrie, of TV’s Whose Line Is it Anyway? fame. “Or, you were just gone for the entire day and your parents had no idea where you were? They didn’t really seem to care. I’m sure they did care, but it was assumed that everything was going to be fine.”

These days, Mochrie is narrating the TV show, Old Enough!, which sets out to prove that maybe parents have gone too far in the other direction, and we should go back to giving our kids and grandkids the kind of freedom and responsibility we used to have as children – although, we can all agree that those cigarette runs are best left in the past. 

Old Enough! is based on a Japanese series that has been running for 35 years that follows toddlers as young as two years old as they set out by themselves to do tasks for their parents – with a hidden camera crew following behind. Most of the episodes involve the kids walking to a series of stores to buy ingredients for dinner – which involves crossing busy intersections using a yellow flag to get drivers’ attention. Anyone who caught the show on Netflix was immediately charmed – and aghast. After all, that could never happen in North America where the terms “coddled”, “attachment” and “helicoptering” have replaced “free-range” when it comes to parenting. And where, let’s face it, the crime rates, speed limits and pedestrian fatalities are much higher than in Japan.

While the U.S. has yet to adapt the show, Ontario’s publicly-funded educational broadcaster TVO has just released its third season with Mochrie providing the silly play-by-play voiceovers (the way Bob Saget did in America’s Funniest Home Videos). Turns out, with a little convincing and the promise of a crossing guard at every street, some Canadian parents are willing to send their four years olds – sometimes with a younger sibling in tow – out to face the real world on their own. 

We caught Mochrie, 68, at home in Toronto after a tough year where he had a knee replacement and his retina detached. Now fully recovered, he’s about to head out on two North American improv tours: Hyprov: Improv Under Hypnosis and Whose Line Is It Anyway? featuring Mochrie and Brad Sherwood. But first up, we talk independent kids …

 

Zoomer: Hi Colin, this project is outside of your usual improv world, but it sure looks fun.
Colin Mochrie: I love gigs where I don’t have to shower; I sit in the booth and watch other people who have done all the work. And I just read the script. 

Z: I was wondering if you were fully following a script or if you were using your improv skills while watching and narrating the footage.
CM: I definitely do a pass where the script is fully realized because you want to respect the writers. But every once in a while, the director says, ‘You know, we don’t have something here’ or ‘Can you add a little thing?’ So, yeah, I have a little leeway to improvise, but it’s all very controlled.

Z: There seems to be enough chaos going on with the kids.
CM: There is. Also, you don’t want to get inappropriate.

Z: It’s a fine line: you’re trying to make adults in the audience laugh, but you don’t want to be too mean about the kids on the screen?
CM: Exactly. You can’t say, “Oh look at this idiot trying to get an ice cream cake.” 

Z: That episode where the parents send their little boy to get the family four ice cream cones – all different flavours – and carry them home is a mess.
CM: I mean, there are some times when it seems like they’ve set them up for failure. But that’s what gives it that tension and that sort of adventure part of it. It’s like, how are they going to do this? 

Z: Obviously, the show is lightheartedly addressing the serious hot-button parenting topic of free-range vs. helicopter parenting.
CM: In Japan, the culture is quite different, and they do give a little more responsibility to their children. And here in North America, we do tend to coddle more. We do try to protect more, I think sometimes to their detriment. So hopefully the series can lightly show what you can do to give the kids a little more responsibility, and that you don’t have to be with them all the time. Although, you can’t always have a camera crew following them.

Z: Some of the best moments are when the kids forget what they are doing, what their mission is, and seeing how they eventually get back on track.
CM: Yeah, I love that. And I love watching them get distracted just as we do during the day: I will be doing something that I have to get done and then think, “Oh, what’s this on Instagram?” But with them, it’s simpler. It’s like, “Oh, there’s a stick. I’ll just watch that for an hour.” It’s fascinating how even as we get older, we still have the same problems trying to focus on one thing and getting through the day with all the little distractions and obstacles. It’s nice to show kids when they’re young that this is just a small part of what’s going to happen to you.

Z: I guess you never get to meet any of the kids.
CM: No. They keep me away. I don’t know why. [Laughs] I’m very good with children. 

Z: You did work with kids on the game show Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?
CM: That was the most work I’ve ever had to do in my life. I had to keep the contestants happy. I had to deal with the kids and had producers in my ear just talking the entire time. Actually, I just got a message from one of the mothers that two of the kids who met on the show fell in love and now are together. And I was like, wait, how long ago was that? 

Z: I’ve heard you speak about how improv skills can help in life, especially in your marriage [to Canadian actress and comedian Debra McGrath]. Do you think improv tools also work well in parenting?
CM: A friend of my wife was having issues with her daughter. They were just constantly at each other. And Deb said, “Hey, why don’t you try, ‘Yes, and’” – where you accept what the person has said and then expand on it. And a couple of days later, the friend said, ‘What is this thing? It’s amazing.’ It’s so weird how we’re so conditioned to go immediately to the negative. And teaching improv classes, I spend entire sessions trying to get someone to say yes to someone else. They want to say ‘Ok, but I have a better idea.’ And that’s not how it works. Everywhere there’s sort of a listening problem. It seems like people are just waiting for you to stop talking, so they can talk – as opposed to listening to what you’re saying. And I think sometimes we have that with the kids. Even, you know, my wife and I, who love each other and adore each other for 37 years, we have had so many fights where we’re actually talking about the same thing and we’re both on the same side, but we’re not listening.

Z: Do you remember any times with your own daughter, Kinley, where you may have been a protective or free-range parent?
CM: Yeah, we definitely were very protective – that only child sort of thing. And we were older, in our late 30s. And I just remember the first time we decided that Kinley was going to walk to school by herself. It’s like four blocks away, and Deb was hiding behind bushes, following her. It’s really hard to let go. But once you do, it’s amazing how quickly they accelerate in independence. I mean, there really is no guidebook for parents. There’s the what to expect while expecting, the what to expect after you’ve expected. But really, a lot of it is just common sense and communication – and it’s an ongoing thing. It’s never like, okay, I got this. Our daughter’s 35 and she’s amazing. She’s great. But there’s still stuff where we go, “What’s this?”

Z: The emotional turmoil that comes with teenagers and adult children seems so much harder than trying to wrangle a toddler.
CM: The emotional part and the launching them is way harder. Having to go through things like their first heartbreak. Those are the ones where it’s like, “I can’t do anything for you. This is something you just have to get through.” 

Z: When you are doing improv in front of audiences, do you get a lot of suggestions and prompts about parents and kids?
CM: It does come up a lot, and they are often the ones that really resonate with the audiences because being a parent or having parents is such a part of everyone’s life. One of the great things about Whose Line was that people would say it was the one show they could watch as a family. Sometimes it wasn’t appropriate for kids, but things would likely just go over their heads. Some families started playing the improv games at home after watching the show. And  I’m always advising people to take improv classes even if you’re not going to be an improviser – and I would highly recommend you don’t. It’s not a good career. I just lucked out. But it’s just a great skill to have in your utility belt. It really helps you not bring prejudice to situations and to go in with an open mind. 

Z: I saw you did a short but funny Trump impersonation on your Instagram. Are you using that a lot in your improv these days?
CM: Because we do a lot of shows in the U.S., we open the show saying we’re not taking any political suggestions whatsoever. And the audience really responds to that. We actually started that during the Bush years because one of us made a comment – and it wasn’t sharp, incisive political satire but more like, “Boy, he’s stupid.” And you could feel the audience split in half.

And this was after years of Clinton jokes, but something happened. Also, how could you even top Trump with improv? There’s truly nothing we could do that would go beyond reality. 

Z: Considering you’re partial to this Old Enough!-type gig, where you sit in a booth, does that mean you’re moving toward getting off the road and maybe thinking about retirement?
CM: I always think I could really pull back – and yet I’m booked until next November. So I don’t think it’s going to happen. It’s just going to be one of those things that I’m out there until both hips go, both retinas detach. Luckily, people still want me to do things, which is nice. All these kids who watched Whose Line are now becoming producers and directors and they always need an old guy.

Z: So you have a hard time saying no?
CM: That’s the curse of being an improviser, you say, “Yes, and…”