The CBC has flipped back and forth on the importance of comedy this past decade. When Schitt’s Creek broke through to an American audience, they went all-in, throwing money into comedy productions they largely abandoned between two and four seasons. We’ve lost a lot of great shows through these years, but there’s none I miss more than Nirvanna the Band the Show, whose third season may never be released.

Nirvanna the Band the Show is a TV show unlike all others: a mockumentary-sitcom shot in the real world by a kooky pair of best friends pretending to be their 12 year-old selves, interacting with a blend of real Torontonians and producer plants so good even they don’t know who’s real.

Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol play Matt and Jay, best friends with a band called Nirvanna the Band. Their greatest aspiration is to play a show at the Rivoli theatre, famous home of the Kids in the Hall, and their schemes to book a show there result in all kinds of crazy misadventures.

Johnson is known for pushing the envelope as a director (The Dirties, Operation Avalanche, Blackberry). Nirvanna the Band the Show have pulled off creative shoots in all kinds of places, from bringing camera parts into a Maple Leafs game and building it past security to foraying his Operation Avalanche premiere into being the first TV show to shoot both on the plane and on the ground at Sundance Film Festival.

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie premiered at South by Southwest Film & TV Festival in March. Soon after, Neon acquired US distribution for the film. It then made its Canadian premiere at TIFF’s Midnight Madness, where it won the Midnight Madness People’s Choice Award. It boasts 100% on Rotton Tomatoes, and its two VIFF screenings sold out to members, before tickets were ever available to the public.

Tomorrow’s show at the Rio will be special: Johnson and McCarrol are on tour with the movie and doing a special Q&A after each show. For fans, a Q&A is a dream come true: Johnson has said in interviews that he prefers asking forgiveness over permission when it comes to the show’s public taping (the most dramatic of which occurs in the season 2 finale, when Matt and Jay rob the Royal Ontario Museum) and fans are jumping at the chance to ask the guys, “What was real?” and “Will we ever see season 3?”