That's
a new talk show, on TV Land, with David Steinberg:
Mr. Steinberg was a director of the early-80's sitcom "Newhart." And, he recalled, one of the highlights of working on that set was the chance to eat lunch with Mr. Newhart and other funny people - including Mr. Newhart's friend and fellow comedian Don Rickles, who would often drop by - and to sit back and listen to them talk, joke and reminisce about life in the comedy business.
"That was almost my childhood ideal of what show business would be, those lunches," Mr. Steinberg said in a telephone interview from his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. "That kind of experience is so memorable, and so rare."
Nice idea. I'll set the TiVo.
"Casual" is the watchword for the series itself. In contrast to "Inside the Actors Studio" and its scholarly, well-prepared host, "Sit Down Comedy With David Steinberg" is concerned less with serious analysis than with giving Mr. Steinberg and fellow comedians - some, like Mr. Newhart and Martin Short, old friends; others, like George Lopez and Jon Lovitz, performers he admired but did not know personally - the chance to riff off of each other.
"I'm not interested in the craft of comedy," Mr. Steinberg said. "I don't think that's interesting to an audience. I just wanted to show the audience how funny these people can be."
Mike Myers is the first guest, tonight. Larry David is the second guest, next week. What more do you need to know? This is perfect!
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10 comments:
Pretty much this show already exists on IFC and is called Dinner for Five.
Great concept, in execution rarely as good as you'd hope.
Maybe with Steinberg (who was always an excellent talk show guest) and the older and more comic oriented guest list might improve the palaver.
A better comparison than Dinner for Five would be the 2002 Bravo show Second City Presents…With Bill Zehme.
It ran for a handful of episodes and while mildly interesting, suffered from wanting to be too much like Inside the Actors Studio. It's biggest problem was that Zehme tried to be too clever with the comedians. I do recall it having some good moments, particularly the interview with Jim Belushi. Really raised my opinion of him until the next time I saw him act.
I'd expect Steinberg, being a former standup and a director, will have a much better sense of when to get out of the way and when to step in.
Larry David, George Lopez, Mike Myers, Jon Lovitz, Martin Short?
Are any of these guys remotely funny?
I loved David Steinberg! What is TV Land? I have cable but I don't think I have that...
Booga booga booga!
patca - TV Land is associated with Nick at Nick. If you had the Dish Network, it would be channel 105. But since you said you had cable, you're on your own finding the channel.
If all else fails, clips are available on the tvland site, or as David said, check out iTunes.
(That was a David Steinberg catch phrase for a while, a long long time ago.)
I loved David Steinberg's standup. (Example: talking about responses from other Jews after he did a joke "sermonette" on the Tonight Show. He said he had three kinds of responses: Orthodox rabbis, who were angry; Conservative Rabbis who said they didn't quite agree with everything, but they understood David was making a really good living as a writer and his parents must be very proud of him; and from Reform rabbis, who wondered who that "Moses" fellow was that he talked about so much?)
But then I really like Dinner for Five too.
At your bloggestion, I watched last night's show featuring Mike Meyers. That was at least as fun as anything I've seen anywhere else on the TV. Lots of clever repartee and both of them come off looking pretty good. They even discussed Meyer's visit to "Inside the Actor's Studio", and Myer's had funny stuff about James Lipton.
Ann, thanks for tipping me off to this show. I watched & enjoyed it. What did you think?
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