Canadian-made Sitcom Seed is Ludicrous but Fun

Credit: Citytv

Adam Korson stars as a habitual sperm donor in Seed

The silly and hilarious new sitcom Seed looks at what happens when a sperm donor’s chickens come home to roost

For years, womanizing slacker Harry (Adam Korson) has treated the local fertility clinic like an ATM, making deposits to the sperm bank in exchange for quick cash.

This comes back to haunt him when the nine-year-old boy he had no idea he spawned, named Billy (William Ainscough),  manages to hack the clinic’s database and tracks Harry down. 

When Billy’s lesbian moms (Amanda Brugel and Stephanie Mills) find out he’s discovered his bio-dad, the women aren’t exactly thrilled to learn the sperm donor they had believed to be a brainy Princeton grad is actually a barely employed bartender whose life consists of one-night stands, beer and video games. 

That same day, Harry receives an unexpected visit from a teenage girl named Anastasia (Tsawwassen actress Abby Ross) — you can see where this is going, right?

Like Billy’s moms, Anastasia’s parents (Matt Baram and Laura de Carteret) are perturbed that she sought out her “father,” but a series of wacky sitcom circumstances brings everyone together as a sort of extended, dysfunctional family, with Harry as its reluctant nucleus. 

But why stop there? In the midst of this, Billy meets a fetching but neurotic single woman (Carrie-Lynn Neales) who fears her biological clock is almost ticked out and is desperate to have a baby.

After a series of zany mishaps that result in her backing out of a planned impregnation rendezvous with Harry, she winds up getting artificially inseminated at Cryobank — the same fertility clinic that’s been selling Harry’s seed. Take a wild guess as to the identity of the donor she unwittingly selects. 

Silly Works for Seed

This is the wildly improbable premise of Seed, a new Halifax-shot comedy that is every bit as silly as it sounds. 

Once you move past the ludicrous premise, though, the truth is that Seed is actually a very funny show, boasting clever dialogue and surprisingly sharp punchlines (“I’m not maternal,” quips Harry’s boss, played by Vanessa Matsui. “My womb only accepts incoming.”). 

Bottom line: Seed is certainly not free of flaws, but it made me laugh — which is more than I can say for a lot of other sitcoms, both American and Canadian. In fact, once Seed sets things up and gets going, the result is an enjoyably risqué ensemble comedy that hits more than it misses.

Seed airs Mondays at 8:30 pm on Citytv.

Originally published in TVW. For daily programming updates and on-screen Entertainment news, subscribe to the free TVW e-newsletters, or purchase a subscription to the weekly magazine.