Not-so-live from 'Lateline' it's Satirical Night! 'SNL' vet Al Franken shines in promising sitcom about TV news and politics.

After 15 seasons of sketch comedy and one best-selling book,
writer-performer Al Franken has taken on an even more formidable task
- a TV sitcom - and made it look easy.
"Lateline," which will have its debut at 8:30 tonight on
Channel 41, is the most distinctive and promising new sitcom since
"Frasier" in 1993.
Co-created by Franken and sitcom veteran John Markus ("The Cosby
Show" on NBC), "Lateline" gives us Franken's alter ego, Al
Freundlich, a nebbishy TV newsman with a thirst for politics and an
unquenchable knack for self-abasement.
Freundlich is a do-gooder chief correspondent whose job security
owes not to his exemplary work (as Freundlich believes) but to his
posing no threat to the show's spoiled-rotten anchorman, Pearce
McKenzie (Robert Foxworth). Aside from the hair, McKenzie bears
little resemblance to "Nightline" anchor Ted Koppel, on whose show
"Lateline" is patterned.
One part "Larry Sanders," one part "Mary Tyler Moore Show,"
one part Norman Lear, "Lateline" is the latest sitcom to discover
that Washington, D.C., is an abundant source of real-life comedy.
Like "Larry Sanders," "Lateline" makes liberal use of
celebrity cameos, in this case political celebrities who show up as
talking heads on the fake "Lateline. " In tonight's pilot G. Gordon
Liddy and Candace Gingrich debate gay marriage; in an upcoming
near-classic episode, former Labor secretary Robert Reich hams it up
with - of all people - U.S. Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri, a
notorious TV stiff.
As a sitcom, "Lateline" is more than a "NewsRadio" clone,
thanks to a brilliantly conceived triangle of Freundlich, his patient
producer Gale (Megyn Price) and the show's Machiavellian producer Vic
Karp (Miguel Ferrer).
The story possibilities coming from these three would appear to
be endless.
And then there are the little touches, those knowing nods to the
infotainment trough where so many of us feed.
In one episode, we see Gale and Freundlich editing a story on the
flu epidemic, arguing over a computer graphic of a swirling irritable
bowel.
Later Freundlich is bitten by the same flu bug but stumbles into
work anyway. He has to be carted off against his will on a gurney,
and Karp bribes the paramedics to hit Freundlich with a horse
sedative.
"You guys don't understand who you're dealing with," Karp tells
them. "He's just gonna keep coming back, like those Chevy Chase
'Vacation' movies."
Speaking of persistent, Franken has made a career out of not
going away. Besides his two long shifts at "Saturday Night Live,"
he's become a dogged defender of President Clinton.
In his 15 years at "SNL" he wrote commercial parodies, played
himself in numerous sketches with former partner Tom Davis, and
created Stuart Smalley, a fashion victim of the self-help movement.
He's also responsible for writing some of the show's most memorable
occasions, like Dan Aykroyd's bleeding Julia Child.
"There was actually a little resistance to that, not out of
taste or anything, but because people didn't think it would work,"
Franken said in a recent interview. "Danny did it in a dress
rehearsal but we didn't quite have the bleeding right."
In recent years Franken has branched out his political writing
and has made himself a Beltway eminence, active in the National Press
Club and Congressional Hunger Center.
He had a runaway best seller in his revenge book Rush Limbaugh Is
a Big Fat Idiot. He's probably the only entertainer on TV whose idea
of promotion is to appear on C-SPAN.
Franken's uncle was the late Lionel Kunst, the Kansas City
entrepreneur and crusader for election campaign reform. Clearly he
comes by his passion for politics honestly.
But Franken also has tapped into that policy-wonk side of himself
that invites parody - something that makes the utter humiliation Al
Freundlich suffers each week on "Lateline" even more exquisite.
Freundlich, like Franken, always seems to be the smartest, most
idealistic guy in the room. So seeing him flattened by an air bag (as
you've perhaps seen in an NBC promotional ad) carries with it a
certain guilty thrill, like watching Bill Gates take a cream pie in
the kisser.
"Lateline," according to Franken, "is more a satire on the way
news is done," as opposed to political satire.
"One thing I don't want the show to be is partisan. I'd like to
get as many guests as I can from both parties. " In the early
episodes, that includes conservatives like Liddy and Jerry Falwell
(and, if this counts, Dana Carvey doing a Strom Thurmond knockoff).
Franken credits Markus, who also co-created "A Different World"
and consulted on "Larry Sanders," for helping him make the
transition to sitcoms.
"In a sitcom you see the characters again and again, so it's
important to create dynamics that can grow and continue," Franken
said. "We took our time in trying to figure out different people's
relationships."
Franken and the cast also spent time behind the scenes with
Koppel and his staff at "Nightline."
"Lateline's" six episodes, scheduled to air Tuesdays through
April 21, were shot in Los Angeles. But if NBC renews it, Franken and
Markus plan to move the show to New York, where they both live. After
all, there's more on Franken's plate than TV comedy.
He's starting on a follow-up to the Limbaugh book.
This time he's noodling with the idea of what a Franken
presidency would look like. Whereas President Clinton boasted that
his Cabinet "looked like America," Franken is promising that his
Cabinet would be made up entirely of Jews.
"I've already chosen my vice president, Senator Joe Lieberman,"
Franken said. "He's Orthodox and I'm Reform, so it's a balanced
ticket."