My Talk Show


My Talk Show is a daily comedic parody talk/variety television program that ran in first-run syndication from September 1990 to March 1991 in the United States and Canada. The series was produced by Second City Entertainment, Imagine Entertainment and MCA Television.

Details

The series, set in the fictional town of Derby, Wisconsin, featured a local talk show aptly titled My Talk Show, which was created by housewife and talk television fan Jennifer Bass, which aired on cable access. The program became a hit with viewers, leading to the series being picked up for syndication. The shows' setting took place in Bass' home with the garage being converted into an area for the studio audience, since the local television station in Bass' home town could not accommodate any space for the production, so a satellite van and cameras were bought over to help tape the show for the airing.
However, despite Bass' attempt to host a talk show, she would be accompanied by best friend and next door neighbor Angela Davenport, who also doubled as her sidekick, her brother-in-law Marty Dissler, Bucky Fergus, the town's multi-tasked city employee, her in-house organist Mrs. Battle and other Derby residents, especially when it came to the guests who were scheduled to appear on the show. Midway through the series' run, Bass would be replaced by rival Anne-Marie Snelling, owner and star of the Top Hat Dinner Theater, who had been jealous of Jennifer hosting a talk show from the beginning, and D.A. Young, who replaced Mrs. Battle as the house musician. However, Anne-Marie also had the same problems as Jennifer when others showed up to disrupt the taping.

Production

The series was inspired in some ways by Fernwood 2 Night, which was set in the fictional town of Fernwood, Ohio, and also used the same premise involving midwestern American television programming but it also had some elements borrowed from SCTV as well, since some of the cast members were also Canadian. But the concept was actually borrowed from another program, Tea With Michael Raye, a local cable access program that ran from 1985 to 2010 in the Los Angeles area. Raye was approached at first by the producers to bring his program to syndication, but the producers decided to go in a different direction instead, after the deal fell through.
However, the series had trouble in attracting viewers due to the stations that aired it in late nights, resulting in MCA ending production on the show by December 1990. Michael Patrick King was among the writers for the series, while Colin Mochrie did recurring appearances in several episodes.

Reviews

Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly gave the series a B+, praising Stevenson's performance as "Remarkable — a resourceful actress who does a subtle, funny job of portraying someone who's charming but awkward, a little bit flustered on-camera," while commenting that "My Talk Show may be gimmicky, but it's an amusing, well-thought-out gimmick."

Cast