Do you want to see actors and comedians being courageous? Wait no more . . . than a few days. As I mentioned a couple months ago (U.S. reality comedy ‘Thank God You’re Here’), NBC is coming out with an American version of Thank God You’re Here, the hit Australian improvisational reality show.
The two-hour premiere (double-header) of the series is:
Monday, April 9, 2007, at 9 p.m. Eastern Time.
Future episodes will air:
- Monday, April 16, 2007, at 9 p.m. ET
- Wednesday, April 18, 2007, at 8 p.m. ET
- Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET.
The first episode features:
- Jennifer Coolidge (Best in Show)
- Bryan Cranston (Malcolm in the Middle)
- Wayne Knight (Seinfield)
- Joel McHale (The Soup)
Future celebrity guests include:
- Jason Alexander (Seinfeld)
- Tom Arnold (The Best Damn Sports Show Period)
- Fran Drescher (The Nanny)
- Shannon Elizabeth (American Pie)
- Ana Gasteyer (Saturday Night Live)
- Tom Green (Stealing Harvard)
- Chelsea Handler (Girls Behaving Badly)
- Angela Kinsey (The Office [US])
- Mo’Nique (The Parkers)
- Alanis Morrisette (Nip/Tuck)
- Paul Rodriguez (Resurrection Blvd.)
- Nicole Sullivan (Mad TV)
- George Takei (Star Trek, Heroes)
- Eddie Kaye Thomas (‘Til Death)
- Fred Willard (Best in Show)
The official site has some interviews and promos, as well as the whole first episode and clips of Jason Alexander’s and Tom Arnold’s segments.
Thank God You’re Here is different from Whose Line Is It Anyway? (UK and US) in that it isn’t a multitude of group improv games and suggestions from the audience. Instead, a performer individually gets into a costume (which reveals a little of what is to come), goes through a door into an unknown situation, hears someone say “Thank God you’re here,” and wings it through the scenario. Judge Dave Foley (The Kids in the Hall, NewsRadio) decides when the sketch ends and gives feedback to the performer.
In between the four sketches of different scenarios are tapes of practice sessions with the performers all doing the same scenarios individually (but different sketches from the ones in the main program).
At the end of the episode there’s an “all-in challenge,” with all the performers together in one sketch. Dave Foley picks a winner for the coveted plastic award. David Alan Grier (In Living Color, Life with Bonnie) hosts and produces.
I enjoyed the first hour (online). I got a few laughs out of Wayne Knight’s and Bryan Cranston’s segments (and Tom Arnold’s clip) and smiles out of all of them. I thought Knight’s was funnier, but Cranston got put on the spot more and ran with it. The all-in sketch was mostly funny for the wardrobe malfunctions. I hope future episodes have a little more camaraderie among the performers in the all-in. Admittedly, that’s hard when, unlike Whose Line Is It Anyway?, they’re only together briefly.
Future episodes should also be available online after they’ve aired (useful when the show moves to Wednesdays and you want to watch Jericho and record Bones, or vice versa).
I’ll be checking it out.