Maybe the funniest show you never watched
[I rate it 4.5 stars.]
"Sports Night" is about an eponymous fictitious hour sports news show on the fictitious Continental Sports Channel. It's a sit-com targeted at an audience who knows what "eponymous" means without consulting a dictionary. But this comedy isn't really about sports at all. It's about intelligent, articulate people who use humor to relieve the pressures that their demanding jobs entail.
Aaron Sorkin is the creator of "Sports Night". He also created "The West Wing" a year later, and when he realized that it was a lot easier selling viewers a fictitious White House administration than a fictitious sports news crew, he dropped "Sports Night" like a hot potato. Most everyone knows that "The West Wing" isn't really about Washington politics; instead it's about intelligent, articulate people who use humor to relieve the pressures that their demanding jobs entail. But few people have even heard of...
A great nominee for the best TV show you never saw
The proof of the pudding for the value of "Sports Night" is probably the fact that my wife, who usually refrains from attending sporting events with me and invariably walks out of the room if I turn on Sports Center, loved "Sports Night." This Aaron Sorkin creation aired for roughly two seasons worth of episodes between 1998-2000, and it provides the same sort of witty repartee and verbal sparring that we get on "The West Wing," albeit without the political overtones that make it a hit or miss with the ideological sensibilities of the viewer. On this show the outrage comes out of the casual dismissal of Babe Ruth as the athlete of the century, if you are really concerned about such things, but mostly this show is about the glories of frustration.
On one level the frustration comes from the wonderful and wacky world of being the 3rd rated 11 p.m.cable sports news show, where live prize fights do not go as long as planned and a newly signed baseball free agent disses the...
One of the best series ever!
Writer/creator Aaron Sorkin and director Thomas Schlamme went on to develop NBC's "The West Wing" during the second season of this wonderful series.
From the beginning, ABC had no clue of how to handle this show. First, they insisted that the producers ad a laugh track, because you don't know when to laugh. Then, they started to promote it like a soap opera, because it had serious issues to deal with at times.
Ultimately, the quality of the show came through. A fabulous cast provided excellent performances. Josh Charles ("A Few Good Men") and Sabrina Lloyd ("Sliders") are the MVPs here, consistently giving the show it's heart. Peter Krause ("Six Feet Under"), initially stiff in his "on air" role as Casey McCall, settled in well mid-first season.
The real gem here is Robert Guilamme ("Benson"), his Issac Jaffe is an excellent character brought to life with his gentle touch. Guilamme's real-life stroke was written into the series, and when he returned in the second season made for...
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