Viva Variety

This was one of my fave shows of all time. It was hilarious and great parody! She was so sexy and he was such a great parody TV host. The variety acts and music and dancing were always so entertaining and the show always made my sister and I laugh our guts out. I can't believe people barely remember this show now, so sad.

This show was incredible, but too esoteric for most people. If you had never truly seen a European variety show in the 70's or 80's (or at least a Mexican one) the entire show would probably be lost on you. If you had, this show was a dead on skewering satire of the phony spectacle and shallowness that these shows dive into at their worst. Helmed by a chain-smoking suave wannabe with a pencil moustache and his ultra-glamorous and immasculating harridan of an EX-wife, "Viva Variety" is a variety show that tries to get off the ground every episode but always descends into in-fighting and acts gone very wrong. The hosts are joined by "Johnny Bluejeans", a dim witted side-kick who seems to have been named because blue jeans are a very popular product in his country and that means the kids will like him, which of course, they don't.

The result was a hilarious spoof of variety shows in general. Imagine the arguing that probably happened BACKSTAGE during the last days of the "Sonny & Cher Show". Now imagine it's happening ONSTAGE in front of you and the stars are trying to keep their composure. Now add cheesy acts and a Euro-riche mentality (tuxedoes, gowns, booze, accents and smokes). NOW you have "Viva Variety".

Have you ever heard a musician whose music was pretty much written for other musicians? Too conceptual? Viva Variety did this for comedians. WAY too esoteric for the standard American audience. It was funny as Hell. And doomed.

This was a strange show. In an era that hasn't seen a successful variety show, we get a parody of one. Many of the guests and performers were real, but the whole show revolved around the fact that VV was supposedly the American version of "Europe's #1 variety show.". The hosts were bad parodies; the bickering ex-husband/wife team, and the (Latvian?) Johnny Bluejeans who, though not entertaining, was better than Yakov Smirnoff.

Comedy Central pushed this show incredibly hard, to an audience that really didn't care. No offense to the people who worked on the show, but the time, money, and effort spent on the show were wasted. Few found it entertaining; perhaps if the US market were familiar with over-the-top Euro variety shows, then we would have wanted a parody. As it stood, though, the point was lost.

Viva Variety was a unique hybrid program that was both a parody of and a tribute to the programs it represented.

It was most directly a mock up of the classic 1970s favorite, "The Sonny & Cher Show," With Thomas Lennon and Kerri Kenney playing a divorced show biz couple who were somehow forced to host this program together, the female of the pair towering over the male, and the constant barrage of "insult humor" the couple tossed at each other, plus sketch comedy bits and performances from what are most kindly described as "specialty" acts!

The "hybrid" was the mix of fact and fantasy. Of course, there was no "Mr. and Former Mrs. Laupin," and the program's announcer, Johnny Bluejeans, was likewise equally fictional. But all the acts that performed were certainly real, and some were even entertaining! But there were also some acts that would have clearly been better suited for the old Chuck Barris "Gong Show."

The show itself was really more like an extended sketch from "SCTV" (it was borne from the MTV series, "The State," after all), and some would suggest that it would have been better as a five minute bit in the mix of a program like that one, rather than a stand alone series. But "Viva Variety" certainly should get high marks for original concepts, and even though it was often more odd than funny, it was certainly worthwhile, especially when they road tripped to Las Vegas and brought in even glitzier acts to perform. It's unlikely we'll ever see anything like this on television again.

Thomas Lennon, Kerri Kenney and Michael Ian Black of the comedy group "The State" did a real variety show that was both homage to and parody of this near-forgotten (in the U.S., anyway) type of TV show. They had name celebrities mixed in with weird novelty acts of the type you can only find at Circus Circus in Las Vegas. They never made fun of the acts, but created characters at whom they could jab. It was too original and weird to survive, alas. I hope they all put together another original creation this good!