The Knights Of Prosperity - Oct. 14, 2006

THE KNIGHTS OF PROSPERITY
ORIGINALLY SCHEDULED TO PREMIERE OCT. 17; ABC (U.S.) AND OCT. 21; CTV (CANADA).
PULLED BY THE NETWORKS AFTER THIS COLUMN WENT TO PRESS. NOW SCHEDULED TO PREMIERE IN JANUARY.

BOTTOM LINE: BETTER HOLD YOUR NOSE.

What's in a name?

Sure, a rose by any other name may still smell as sweet. But sometimes,even a bunch of title changes can’t keep a lousy TV show from stinking up the place.

By Eric Kohanik

Sometimes, a title can make or break a TV show.

A title has to reach out and grab a viewer’s attention – and hang onto it.

A lot of shows have one-word titles: Survivor, Supernanny, Vanished, Jericho and Kidnapped are examples.

Of course, it helps if that single word also has only one syllable: Friends, Cheers, Cops, House, Bones, Shark and Lost.

Sometimes, a one-word title is accompanied by “The” – The Office, The Unit, The Apprentice, The Bachelor, The Sopranos – presumably to distinguish the show from others around it.

Sometimes, titles use acronyms – letters that form a single word but stand for many more: ER, CSI, NCIS and M*A*S*H.

And sometimes, the acronyms are paired with “The” – like The O.C. – creating a double whammy.

Sometimes, titles use numbers to stand out: 60 Minutes, 24, 20/20, 30 Rock, Nanny 911 – and even the wacky Numb3rs.

And, sometimes, titles just rely on simple clichés: Without a Trace and Close to Home are a couple of examples of current shows that took that route.

Producers and TV networks spend a lot of energy coming with the right titles. Sometimes, the original ends up getting tweaked: Seinfeld started out as The Seinfeld Chronicles, for instance. And, this season, Justice started out as American Crime, the title of the show within the show.

Perhaps the wildest title exercise this season stems from The Knights of Prosperity. It’s a horrible new comedy series that casts Ottawa native Donal Logue as a schlubby, middle-aged janitor who recruits a group of losers to rob Mick Jagger’s luxury apartment in order to finance their individual dreams.

Jagger’s guest stint is the only good thing inthe pilot episode, which tends to come offmore like a cheesy made-for-cable movie.

The series was originally pitched to ABC assomething called Let’s Rob Jeff Goldblum. When Goldblum didn’t materialize but Jagger showed interest, the title was changed to Let’s Rob Mick Jagger.

Then, after someone realized that title would limit things – after all, what would happen after they robbed him? – the title was changed to Let’s Rob…, leaving the dooropen for others to be robbed in the future.

Ultimately, it became The Knights of Prosperity, which is what the would-be thieves end up calling themselves. But even when executive producer Rob Burnett was promoting the show to the press in Los Angeles back in July, he still wasn’t sure about it.

“If anyone has suggestions for a title, we’reopen to them,” Burnett quipped before providing a more serious explanation. “We felt The Knights of Prosperity was, at least forus, the best way to market this.”

The title stinks – but then, so does the show. Maybe Burnett is onto something.

Sometimes, no amount of title-changing can make a bad show good.

30 Rock / Twenty Good Years - Oct. 7, 2006

ON SCREEN:

30 ROCK
TWENTY GOOD YEARS
WEDNESDAYS; NBC

BOTTOM LINE:
A LESSON IN TV COMEDY.

Laughing matters

Comedy styles can be as different as night and day. For proof, check out a couple of newcomers in this week’s TV lineup.

By Eric Kohanik

It has often been said that comedy is a funny thing.

Not “ha-ha” funny. We’re talking funny in an “unusual” sense.

The business of TV comedy is like that these days. In fact, American comedy series are in the midst of an interesting transition.

It used to be that most, if not all, American sitcoms used a standard format of production. That format involves multiple cameras that simultaneously film a show as it is being played out in front of a studio audience.

The format was actually pioneered by Desi Arnaz on I Love Lucy in the 1950s. It has remained basically unchanged ever since.

There have been a few variations. All in theFamily and its spinoffs were shot on videotape rather than film. But most other sitcoms – everything from Happy Days and Cheers to Seinfeld and Friends – basically used the multi-camera film format.

In recent seasons, TV comedies have been switching to a single-camera production format. It’s the same way that most movies are made – one camera films a scene from one angle and then the entire scene is repeated as the camera is set up to film the action again and again from various other angles.

Several comedies – Get Smart, M*A*S*H and Sports Night, to name but a few – used that format in the past, but American networks would often insist on adding canned laughter to the shows, basically because they thought television audiences weren’t smart enough to know where the funny stuff was.

That’s all changing now. Thanks to the success of such shows as The Office, My Name Is Earl and Everybody Hates Chris, most of today’s best new comedy series are forgoing studio audiences and laugh tracks, deeming them as dated relics of the past.

The two styles of TV comedy can be as different as night and day. And, interestingly, NBC gives viewers a bit of a lesson in both of them this week, thanks to back-to-back premieres of two new series on Wednesday night.

First up, 30 Rock is a wry, single-camera comedy that spins its fictional stories around what goes on behind the scenes at a TV show. Saturday Night Live graduate Tina Fey tops a good cast that includes Alec Baldwin, Tracy Morgan and Jane Krakowski.

By contrast, Twenty Good Years is a much broader sitcom that stages the bulk of its action in front of a studio audience. The series casts Jeffrey Tambor and the always-larger-than-life John Lithgow as two lifelong pals who are hit by a midlife crisis and, as a result, set out to make the most of the 20 good years they have left.

The two shows are substantially different in appearance, tone and substance. And both have pros and cons to the way they do what they do.

Together, though, they offer TV buffs a great chance to see what a funny thing television comedy really is.