It’s ... "Wednesday 9:30 (8:30 Central)," the first-ever American sitcom starring John Cleese. Even better, it’s a backstage comedy about TV from “Larry Sanders” vet Peter Tolan. Too bad it airs at 9:30 p.m., opposite the second half-hour of “West Wing,” and no one will ever, ever see it!
Quick thinking there, ABC!
TV Guide says:
TV Guide says:
Debut: This behind-the-scenes spoof of network TV was created by Peter Tolan (The Job). Set at the fictional IBS network, the pilot follows new exec David Weiss (Ivan Sergei) as he tries to maintain his Midwestern values amid the backstage backstabbing of his more callow colleagues. But as they all eye up the top spot held by the network's nervous president (Ed Begley Jr.), David accidentally triggers an industry scandal by bedding IBS's biggest star (Lori Loughlin, playing herself). Soon David realizes that it's his job that may be up for grabs...until a little thing called publicity turns his mistake into a ratings miracle. Lindsay: Melinda McGraw. Mike: James McCauley.
USA Today gives the show two stars (our of four) and says:
... the only notable thing about Tolan's latest show is its name ... There are a few tiny flashes of humor when Wednesday zeroes in on actual Hollywood foibles, but in general the show is both pointless and toothless. Surely no one really thinks the problem with network TV is that there are too many Midwestern playwrights or black women in positions of power? Like too many network attempts at satire, Wednesday pounds at targets that don't exist, in order to avoid offending the ones that do. And that won't do — even on ABC.
Variety says:
[Wednesday 9:30] has little going for it beyond a strong lead actor in Ivan Sergei and John Cleese returning to the wackiness of his Monty Python days … "Wednesday's" first two episodes feel bound and determined to fulfill every Hollywood cliche imaginable …In the second, funnier episode - thanks to more screen time for Cleese - Weiss is actually fired. ... Show does try to key in on the idiosyncrasies of the characters rather than the machinations of a network. Still, when [a network exec] hits on Weiss and denies it, it feels like this could only happen on TV and in Hollywood. Ted Wass' direction avoids most cliches and at the end of the second episode, the marvelously eccentric Cleese is allowed to do his weirdo thing so well that it feels like an unsupervised, well-tuned monologue. Writing is funny in parts though it doesn't penetrate the business sufficiently - if the writers could find a way to demonstrate how IBS' sitcoms spring from these particularly gay and Jewish points of view, that could be subversively funny. For that, it would have to take lessons from TV's finest show about itself, "The Larry Sanders Show."
