PASADENA, CALIF.—When you name your show Schitt’s Creek, you’ve got to be prepared for some blowback.

Especially if it airs on the CBC.

So Canadian star Eugene Levy and son Dan, the producers of the new single-camera comedy, went through phone books to see if the name Schitt actually existed. It did. And they gave pages from directories featuring the name to the public broadcaster to prove their point.

“We argued that if CBC was doing a news broadcast with the name Schitt, would you not use it?” Levy told the Star in an interview. “They said, ‘Yes, we would air the name.’ So we called the show Schitt’s Creek.”

The comedy, which premieres Tuesday at 9 p.m. with back-to-back episodes, is one of the CBC’s most important offerings this year as it tries to retool a tired lineup of shows that have been struggling in the ratings. It has already been renewed by the public broadcaster for a second season to air in winter 2016.

Levy and the cast are in Pasadena at the Television Critics Association conference with a full-court press to promote the show, which will also air on Pop TV in the U.S. The 13-episode fish-out of-water series, commissioned by the CBC, is edgier, showing the influence of cable on network broadcasting and the determination by the CBC to move beyond the ordinary.

Levy says the origins of the somewhat controversial name came from dinners with his wife Deborah — with a little assist from actress Kim Basinger.

“My wife had an idea for a television show about boomers not having money or moving in with their kids. Their situation was described as being up s---’s creek. It just made us laugh. Then my son Daniel came in with an article one day about an actress, Alec Baldwin’s ex-wife (Basinger), who bought a town. She was hoping that film people would come to the town to use it as a location area and she lost a lot of money. The idea of wealthy people buying a town went back to the Schitt’s Creek idea.”

The series is also something of a family affair for Levy. It stars his son Dan, his daughter Sarah and fellow SCTV cast alumnus Catherine O’Hara (as well as Late Night With David Letterman alumnus Chris Elliott). Levy plays a video-store mogul who goes bankrupt and is forced to live in a town that he once bought as a joke. His wife and two kids are forced to pack up and live in a motel.

“It would be hard for me to do a show with my kids if they weren’t pulling their weight and they didn’t have what it takes,” says Levy, in a trademark fitted suit, sitting on the patio of a Pasadena hotel. “But I’m the proudest father in the world.”

This is the first time Levy has had an opportunity to work with his son (a former MTV Live host) and the comic says he “honestly didn’t know what to expect. But he was really good. He blew me away and his work was incredibly brave and funny. I can’t compare it to anything I’ve seen on TV before.”

While the town is representative of anytown, U.S.A., it is actually shot in Goodwood, Ont. The interiors are shot at Pinewood Studios in Toronto; the writing is done in Los Angeles, where son Dan lives.

And apparently residents in Goodwood are tickled pink that their town represents Schitt’s Creek.

“They put up chairs on their front lawn and watched us shooting. At one point they had a baseball team they renamed the Schitt’s Creek Bears,” says Levy. “We all loved it. We were so welcomed.”

Schitt’s Creek, along with darker fare such as the western Strange Empire, is an attempt by the CBC to create offerings to compete with serialized dramas and comedies.

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“The CBC was intent on rebranding themselves. When we came in, we were at the right place at the right time,” Levy says. “We set out to make a show we wanted to watch. And the CBC fortunately latched on to it in a big way and said, ‘This is what we want to do.’”

Just don’t call it a sitcom.

“It’s a single-camera show that is definitely character-driven,” Levy says. “It plays much more cinematically than a sitcom by design. It’s much more grounded in reality.

“If it works as well as we hope it does, then the audience will have more emotional involvement. Something that they can hang on to. And I’m hoping we pulled that off.”