The Bomanizer is heading to TV. That’s the handle of Canadian comedian Boman Martinez-Reid, who broke out on TikTok in 2020 and is now starring in a TV show on the Canadian channel Crave.
The show in question is titled Made for TV with Boman Martinez-Reid, and it offers satirical commentary on the troubled path many creators walk when they attempt to jump to television. Each episode will see the comedian try his hand at a different genre in hopes of finding one that sticks. By the end of the series, Martinez-Reid will have attempted everything from news to competitive drag — though there are no guarantees he will find his calling before Made for TV‘s first season ends.
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The eye-winking, meta nature of Made for TV jibes with its star’s social media personality. When he broke out during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Martinez-Reid drew millions of views with parodies of reality TV tropes.
Bell Media is hoping that the Bomanizer’s brand of satire will translate to TV, even if it will be packaged within a conceit that pokes fun at that very concept. The owner of Crave is pairing Martinez-Reid with showrunner Natalie Metcalfe in hopes of recreating the success of the channel’s other internet-to-TV hits, chief among them the cult favorite Letterkenny.
In explaining the idea behind his self-referential show, Martinez-Reid invoked the ideas of Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan, who famously wrote that “the medium is the message.”
“My content can exist on TikTok because it’s a constant conversation,” Martinez-Reid said. “I make videos so that people can watch it and go, ‘I get that.’ And people will come up to me and say, ‘oh my God, I love you,’ or whatever, but I’m always like, you really don’t know anything about me, but you know the jokes that I make, and you understand the point that I’m making, because you get it. Whereas on TV, it has to be a little more standalone. So we’re making a show that has to exist on its own, and can’t really be a part of a larger conversation, like what happens on social media. Which is why sometimes the bits on social media don’t work when you just try to copy them and put them on TV. But we were aware of that.”
Made for TV premieres on July 12 on Crave. In the meantime, the show’s star will continue his fruitful career on social media. Since his rise in 2020, he has landed agency representation, cracked TikTok’s Discover List, and collaborated with brands like Target.
