The Brian Benben Show aired from September until October 1998 on CBS.
A sad-sack newsman was domoted and divorced, but wore a silly grin through it all, in this slapstick sitcom. Brian ( Brian Benben), was co-anchor on the KYLA-TV news in Los Angeles, who had been replaced, along with his co-anchor, in favor of 2 incompetent but attractive young news personalities: Chad (Charles Eston), who most recently was a VJ on cables VH1, and Tabitha (Lisa Thornhill), who had scored highly in audience testing when males were asked, " who would you most like to screw?" Despite having been dumped, Brian returned to the station as the emergency replacement for the human interest reporter-who had been mauled and killed covering an ape exhibit at the zoo. He did have his allies at KYLA-Kevin ( Wendell Pierce), the sports anchor, and Billy( Luis Antonio Ramos), the weatherman. Beverly ( Susan Blommaert), the station manager who had dumped him, was a constant thorn in his side. His friend Julie ( Lisa Vidal), provided a sympathetic ear and good advice.
A Review of The Brian Benben Show
Written By Rick Ellis, September 21st, 1998
The trouble with this week is that are just too many tv shows premiering at the same time. New programs, new episodes of your old favorites-- some shows are just bound to get lost in the flurry of hype. Granted, this isn't always a tragedy. If no one watches Buddy Faro the world will survive. The world may even be better for the failure. But sometimes a good show has trouble building some momentum.
The Brian Benben Show debuted tonight, and it couldn't be airing in a worse timeslot. In theory, it should be a cushy spot. It's part of CBS's long-running Monday night lineup of sitcoms, and it's following the popular Ray Romano sitcom, Everybody Loves Raymond. Unfortunately, it's airing opposite Ally McBeal, Monday Night Football, the constantly-hyped Will and Grace and the WB's soap-fest Hyperion Bay. So I have a feeling this may end up canceled before anyone even notices that it's on the air.
Which would be a shame, because this is a pretty funny show. Brian Benben was the star of HBO's Dream On, but since then he's starred in a couple of pilots that didn't sell, attempting to find the right project for him. He has a Mark Harmon breezy charm to him, and he needs a concept that allows him to be witty, a little sexy and a little beaten down. In the Brian Benben Show, he plays--go figure-- Brian Benben, a Los Angeles television anchor who has worked himself up to the position from mailboy. He's well-liked, funny and good at what he does. And he's now out of a job.
Station manager Beverly Shippel (Susan Blommaert) replaces the current anchor team with Ken and Barbie clones who get the job because they tested well with audiences. "When they're asked, don't viewers consider me the most trusted anchor on television?," asks Benben. "Yes," Shippel explains. "But we changed the question. It's now 'Who would rather have sex with?'" Benben is out of a job, replaced by Chad Rockwell (Charles Esten), a man whose entire previous on-air experience consists of two years as a VJ on VH1. He's arrogant, and contemptious of Benben, telling him that all it takes to do his job is look sincere and read the teleprompter.
Benben is back on the air the next night, however, after the station's human-interest reporter is killed by an gorilla in heat. But while Benben is working again, he's taking grief from the new anchors and decides to get even by sabotaging the teleprompter. That leads to a funny sequence where the new anchors begin reading all sorts of odd sentences and jokes.
But the prank backfires on Benben when Rockwell throws the camera to Benben, who's at a local nursing home interviewing L.A.'s oldest woman. She and her sister proceed to swear at the camera and flash the audience.
Next week Benben will find himself being forced to sell his expensive dream house now that he's lost his anchor salary. Unless, of course, he can bring himself to accept one of the most demeaning examples of celebrity endorsing that you can imagine.
The show attempts to spoof the vapid local tv station news scene, and already does a more effective job than the somewhat similiar Al Franken series Lateline. Benben does a nice job of playing the casual, confident reporter role. And he's surrounded by a steady cast of newsroom cronies, including sports reporter Billy Hernandez (Luis Antonio Ramos), and weather guy Kevin LaRue (Wendell Pierce). The show isn't written as cleanly as it need to be, but there are a lot of nice moments, and I can't help think that, given a chance, the show could find an audience.
A Review From The New York Times
by Caryn James
The more lightweight ''Brian Benben Show'' is built on a common but true assumption: the Ted Baxters of the world have taken over local news, that broadest and most irresistible of television targets.
Mr. Benben, best known as the fantasizing Martin Tupper of the HBO series ''Dream On,'' inspires sympathy here as a character named Brian Benben. He has been pushed aside as an anchor at a Los Angeles station in favor of two young, plastic airheads. ''Ken and Barbie have entered the building,'' Benben's colleagues say when they spot the new anchors. Benben is handed a fluffy human-interest segment called ''L.A. Story.''
In a mini-homage to the famous ''Mary Tyler Moore'' episode in which Chuckles the Clown, dressed as a peanut, is crushed to death by an elephant, we see Benben's predecessor on ''L.A. Story'' meet his end. He does a story at the zoo and is crushed to death by a lovelorn ape. His funeral is crammed with people he has covered, including Professor Kazoo and Miss Garlic. Now all that is Benben's.
Beneath this silliness, though, Benben shares much of the sardonic attitude of Martin Tupper. The series' tone is set by his vindictive attitude toward his gloating replacement, Chad Rockwell (Charles Esten), who is evil but happens to have great hair. With its surface giddiness and sight gags and its undertone of mordant wit, ''The Brian Benben Show'' plays better than it sounds and is much sharper than CBS's lame promos for it suggest. It is not the most hyped series of the season, but could turn out to be one of the most enjoyable.
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