As for why no US actors getting leads, it because yes, most cannot act. They either don't know how to perform, or are weak in genre shows. RADA trained actors, since they do so much stage work, are better at selling the outlandish nature in genre stuff. They are trained for years in the notion of if you are doing Henry V, you better make me believe there are 2000-3000 soldiers just offstage.-----later-----m

I like "Las Vegas" (though the point of doing a Nikki Cox series without Nikki Cox eludes me.) I like John Laughlin (Crimes of Passion) John McLaughlin (Mahavishnu Orchestra, Tom Laughlin (Billy Jack) and Sarah MacLachlan (Lilith Fair). I liked Laugh-In, which looks similar to Laughlin. I liked the Andy Warhol superstar known as Viva and Penthouse's spin-off feminist publication Viva.

As for the conventional wisdom that English shows don't translate into American, I liked Cybill, All In The Family, Max Headroom. I enjoyed the American Red Dwarf pilot. Of the two attempts to do Fawlty Towers, I never saw the Bea Arthur one but the John Larroquette version, "Payne", was quite enjoyable. (As Larroquette always is.)

As for Viva Laughlin, I think it's on opposite something else I'll be watching instead or something.

So the show sucks for the most basic of reasons: why do I want to tune in each week and waste an hour of my life to see totally unlikeable characters trying to solve a murder that I don't give a shit about in the first place?

Which brings us to Jackman and the fact that he then becomes the biggest problem of all. Simply because by playing a snaky, active, sexually charged businessman he STILL exudes more charm and "oomph" than everyone else on the show COMBINED. Seriously, any minute he was on screen there was at least some energy...some true star power shining through...and the minute he was gone it just vanished in a heartbeat, and the show was instantly back in the toilet.

So it's really bad news when your guest star outshines everyone else THAT much including your so-called "star" -- though I guess now CBS and NBC (with the BIONIC WOMAN) now have a similar problem that they can commiserate over...

I don't get why the musical numbers are done they way they are. The actors aren't singing the songs, they are singing ALONG with the songs. And their vocals don't exactly match the song's lead vocals which makes it look like they are lip-synching. Plus, some of the songs are very forced in a very clumsy way - working the diaglogue so it can segue into the lyrics; sometimes it works, more often it does not.

Why did they sing "Viva Las Vegas" in the opener? It's Laughlin, not Vegas. Another example of forcing a song that does not belong. I think "My Way" would have been a better song to use in that situation.

Someone above mentioned the cop. Is what he is doing legal? He's questioning the wife of a suspect without identifying himself as a cop. In fact, he's lying to her about who he is and why he is talking to her. He's not an undercover agent, he's not a PI, he's a police detective. But I guess it would be less probable for them to have the affair that is so obviously coming if she knew he was the cop investigating her husband.

Hugh Jackman returns next week. I may watch again to see him, because he is the only character worth watching.

I still refuse to think of Cop Rock as bad TV. But at least that show had style and humor and likable characters and comprehensible plots and, most importantly, original songs, many of them by top pro tunesmith Randy Newman. Viva Laughlin is just karaoke, with the characters suddenly breaking into singing along with pre-existing songs. And does two guys in a car singling along with the radio even count as a musical?

I mean... gahhh. No, I'm not being ineloquent. that's exactly what I mean. that's my review of Viva laughlin. "Gahhh."

That's not even the point of this post.

As I have may have alluded to in the past, it is a fact that I am not a sports afficianado. I realize that in spite of my status as a fat white male American baby-boomer cause of all the worlds problems, not everything is targeted directly at my own specific demographic market segment. I realize that a chunk of every daily paper and a third of every nightly local news report is dedicated to covering activities I have no interest in. I know that many people - a significant market share - apparently DO contribute the hindquarters of a verminous rodent about grown men becoming wealthy engaging in chilldhood playground activities. (Yes, we played loosely organized sports during recess - my grade school had a large lot.) But no vermin patootie giver, I.

Although this sometimes interferes with my own television viewing activities in intrusive fashions, I try to be open minded. Other people like sportball shows and I can't watch everything at once, so that's fine.

NBC had the one with the men in snug knickers and crash helmets with cages over their faces carrying an object made from a dead pig through a giant "H". As if Quidditch and 43-Man Squamish weren't weird enough. At least it was schedules.

Fox had cartoons scheduled, but that wasn't what they showed. Okay, it would be nice if all TV listings were accurate and up to date, but sometimes MeeVee and Yahoo! get things wrong. They said Simpsons and Family Guy but Fox had that other game with the caps and the wooden sticks.

But CBS had Viva Laughlin scheduled for 8:00 pm and apparently for some reason (and I'm just theorizing here, but I suspect it might have been sports related) the show actually aired at 8:15. Haven't VCR's been around for a couple of decades and even DVR's for nearly ten years? Aren't TiVo watchers now folded into the ratings? Can't the networks grasp that delaying the start of a show (and more importantly, arranging so that people who tape it miss the last fifteen minutes) is a BAD thing? I know, different market segments have different tasts. but is catering to the sports fans really worth flipping the bird to everyone who actually wants to watch the regularly scheduled program enough to record it? Or here's a radical idea... Since 60 Minutes is a new program made up of short component segments, and since they've already demonstrated that the name of the show is meaningless by repeatedly airing 90 minute episodes, if a sporting event throughs the evening schedule off by a quarter hour, why not just edit on the fly, trim a section off of 60 Minutes, air a 45 minute long episode, and then show the 8:00 show at 8:00 (and ditto the 9:00 and 10:00 shows)?

Call me Mr. Puntuality, but if you set a schedule, why not make some attempt to stick to it. After over half a century of airing sports on television, the sport people still can't corretly schedule a sport show and allow enough time for it to be over when pkanned. I think this contributes to those negative stereotypes about jock intelligence being an oxymoron.

I really suspect CBS doesn't want anyone to see Viva Laughlin. There was nothing on NBC, nothing on Fox, and that ABC worse than nothing thing with the annoying carpenters. They have 8:00 all to themselves to give people a chance to check out Viva Laughlin, and what do they do? show up a quarter of an hour late - already losing anyone in the audience with plans to watch something else at nine.

We've had TV for what, 50-60 years now? They cleared up the snow, worked out color and stereo, high-def and Dolby 5.1, we have VCRS and DVRs and DVDs of old shows. We 9and by we I mean sombebody else, not me) have two0inch thick giant wide screen TVs hanging on the wall like something out of "The Jetsons" or "1984". Heck, they have these things called computers that can automatically ping Grenwich or the Atomic Clock or something and keep themselves synchronized to the second. But network executives still can't grasp that a sportsball event might run a little long and schedule enough time so that it will be over before the next show is supposed to start.

Man, that Heidi thing happens one time and they act like sports owns the airwaves from then on...