The Definitive Guide to Comedy
Nick Cannon is supposed to be easing up on his workload for his own personal health, but that hasn’t stopped him from selling a teen sketch comedy series to the Cartoon Network. Yes. The Cartoon Network. Not Nickelodeon, which had one of its earliest hits with You Can’t Do That …
Stevie Ryan has a compelling screen presence and an ability to impersonate many of today’s pop stars and celebutards that populate the basic cable landscape, so her transition to TV with Stevie TV on Vh1 makes sense. Three episodes into its first season, it’s also apparent that Ryan and co-creators …
The first season of Key & Peele has been such a delight that it’s not surprising that Comedy Central quickly renewed the sketch comedy series for a second season. Actually, perhaps that is surprising, considering Comedy Central’s recent track record on sketch. Check out this sketch from last week’s episode. …
Both of New York City’s major outlets for sketch and improv comedy announced new house teams for the 2012 calendar year. Nate Dern, the Upright Citizen Brigade Theater’s New York artistic director, said he received more than 400 audition submissions from actors and 160 writing packets for the UCB’s weekly …
Over the summer, Gary Rudoren (co-author of Comedy By The Numbers) told me he had a brilliant idea for another comedy book. Rudoren wanted to publish an oral history of the Upright Citizens Brigade. But he said he was too busy for it. Turns out I was too busy to …
The Upright Citizens Brigade opened its third full-time comedy theater on Tuesday night — its second in Manhattan — with the long-awaited launch of UCBeast. Whether you decide to say it as UC Beast or UCB East, the new 124-seat venue instantly upturns and reinvigorates the East Village comedy scene. …
Reading the TV tea leaves seems fairly simple once you read enough of them, because television executives tend to follow certain predictable patterns. Such as: If you hype a new sketch comedy series featuring a relative unknown comedian but backed by a famous TV/movie comedic actor, tell us you’re going …
Have you seen the new TV ad McDonald’s is running to promote its line of “premium” chicken sandwiches? Pete Karinen and Brian Sacca sure have. And they see a little too much of themselves in the commercial. Specifically, they see that McDonald’s used the same essential idea that they drew out …
Aug. 14 is an odd date to launch a sketch TV show, let alone one revolving around only one sketch player, but that’s what FOX has decided to do with In The Flow with Affion Crockett, starring one Affion Crockettt as a variety of characters both known and unknown. It …
What if the funniest guy in the office also was a comedy nerd who treated the workplace as a comedy venue itself? No, I’m not describing any character in NBC’s The Office. I’m talking about any office, your office, and UCB sketch group Onassis introduces you to Barry Fisler. Roll …
