September 27, 1992 - January 17, 1993
FOX Sketch Comedy Series - 13 Episodes
Cast:
| Host / Various Characters: | Ben Stiller |
| Various Characters: | Andy Dick |
| Various Characters: | Janeane Garofalo |
| Various Characters: | Bob Odenkirk |
| Various Characters: | John F. O'Donohue |
| The Grady's Guy / The Devil: | Dana Gould |
| Foxy the Fox: | Judd Apatow |
The funniest show you never saw, for its brief and shining moment,
The Ben Stiller Show recaptured the anarchic spirit and subversively funny
voice of first-season Saturday Night Live and SCTV. More too-hip-for-the-room
than ahead of its time, the show suffered dismal ratings and was unceremoniously
cancelled. It then went on to win an Emmy for best writing and attract a fervent
following, enhanced by the fact that the series has seldom been syndicated.
To watch Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, Andy Dick, and a pre-Mr. Show Bob Odenkirk
at the dawn of their mostly unconventional careers, romp in the show's opening
is akin to watching the Beatles frolic on that football field in A Hard Day's Night.
Stiller and company's pitch-perfect and intimately observed skewering of movies,
television, and show business convention could be exhilarating, as witness
"Woody Allen's Bride of Frankenstein" (you'll never watch another Allen film with
a straight face again), "Cape Munster," with Stiller as a psychopathic and vengeful
Eddie Munster, "Skank," a potent comment on the crass programming that was
initially Fox's stock in trade, and even brilliant riffs on the seminal reality
series Cops, which re-imagine the series in witch-hysteric Salem, Massachussetts,
ancient Egypt, and medieval times. In addition to the cast's uncanny impersonations
(Stiller's Bono, Tom Cruise, Bruce Springsteen, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Bruce Willis,
and Garofalo's Juliette Lewis), The Ben Stiller Show was home to a gallery of
recurring characters--agent Michael Pheret, the No, No, No Guy--who, thankfully,
SNL producer Lorne Michaels was not around to parlay into godawful films. The
topical humor can't help but date some of the material (the show is a veritable
Trivial Pursuit of pop culture references, from The Partridge Family to Beverly
Hills 90210, but the brilliance of the writing and sheer abandon of the
performances are still a joy to behold.
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The Ben Stiller Show
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These links were last tested March 2007.
