Comedy from Stand-up to Sitcom - Part 1 I 30
History of the 90s
Kathy Kenzora
4.7 • 610 Ratings
🗓️ 19 August 2020
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the 1990s there was a massive flood of stand-up comedians making the leap to television to star in their own stand-up sitcoms thanks in part to the success of the Cosby Show and Roseanne.
Those shows were followed by other massive hits like Seinfeld, Home Improvement, Martin, Ellen and The Drew Carey Show. All of them featured a previously established stand-up comic who had been scouted from the comedy club circuit.
But there were lots of other shows starring comics that had high expectations but went down in flames like Grace Under Fire starring Bret Butler, All American Girl starring Margaret Cho and anything featuring Andrew Dice Clay.
On the next two episodes we are going to take a look back at some of the hits as well as some the failures from that decade. On part one, we look back at the stories behind Roseanne, Seinfeld, Home Improvement, Martin and Ellen.
Contact:
Instagram: @that90spodcast
Email: 90s@curiouscast.ca
Guests:
Paul Brownfield, magazine writer, former TV critic at LA Times
Twitter: @paulbrownfield
Greg David, TV critic and partner at www.TV-Eh.com
Twitter: @greg_david
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey there, it's Kathy. I just wanted to let you know that you can listen to History of the 90s |
| 0:04.7 | early and ad-free on Amazon music included with Prime. |
| 0:11.1 | Since the dawn of television, comedians have frequently made the leap from stage to the small screen. |
| 0:18.0 | Including in the 90s, when there was a massive boom in the number of stand-up comics |
| 0:23.3 | starring in their own TV sitcoms. |
| 0:26.3 | Thanks to the success of the Cosby Show and Roseanne, networks began searching comedy |
| 0:31.5 | clubs looking for a well-established stand-up comics they could build shows around. |
| 0:37.1 | Suddenly, every big network was adding at least one or two stand-up comics, they could build shows around. Suddenly, every big network was adding at least |
| 0:39.9 | one or two stand-up sitcoms a year. But not all of the shows left a mark, like Seinfeld, |
| 0:46.7 | Home Improvement, and Ellen. I'm Kathy Kinzora, and over the next two episodes, we'll revisit |
| 0:53.5 | some of the hits and misses from the 90s. |
| 0:56.8 | We'll look back at what could only be described as a comedy feeding frenzy in Hollywood and how it all came crashing down. |
| 1:05.5 | This is the story of how stand-up sitcoms went from boom to bust. |
| 1:13.6 | In 1987, Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner, the executive producers of the Cosby Show, were looking to bring a no-frills family comedy to TV. |
| 1:24.7 | They turned to Cosby writer Matt Williams to come up with a script about a blue-collar |
| 1:29.0 | family. Opulence dominated TV at the time with lavish soaps like Dallas and Falcon Crest |
| 1:36.3 | and sitcoms that followed upper middle-class families like the Cosby show and Empty Nest. It was a pretty |
| 1:43.7 | radical idea to center a show around a Salt of the Earth family of factory workers from the Midwest. |
| 1:50.8 | For the lead role, the team signed comedian Roseanne Barr, who caught their attention after appearing on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson to perform her stand-up routine. |
| 2:01.4 | She was kind of not known at all, certainly not nationally. |
| 2:05.6 | I believe she was out of Denver at the time. |
| 2:07.8 | When she went on the Tonight Show, when Johnny Carson was the host, |
... |
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