TVSquad

The single-camera Showtime pilot Insatiable, which revolves around a small town in which everyone has an addiction, has added an impressive roster of actresses to its cast. Currently in negotiation to appear are Andie MacDowell, Laura Flynn Boyle and Andrea Martin.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the ensemble comedy emulates the tone of Twin Peaks. Alright, I have no idea what that means. So, let's move on.

In the 1970s, all the hip kids were watching David Steinberg. You had your mainstays like Merv Griffin and Mike Douglas, but Steinberg was an intelligent talk show host who also used to be one of the newer voices in standup comedy. And now you'll be able to see the best of his 1972 CBS talk show on a special DVD set that's coming out on July 11.

As a bonus, the six episodes include many familiar faces from SCTV (the show was produced in Canada), including Martin Short, Joe Flaherty, Andrea Martin, and John Candy. And the set is only $9.99 if you get it from Amazon. Sweeeeeet!

Sometimes cartoons that are better suited to an older audience find themselves lost in the oblivion of Saturday morning children's fare. The most recent example of this I can think of is Freakazoid! which packed far too many pop cultural references into a single episode for any young person to really comprehend it. Before that, however, there was The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley, based on the spastic, stiff-haired character created by Martin Short.

 

If I may be so bold, the cartoon was in some ways better than the live-action version of Short's character. The surreal world Short created around Grimley was given a more vibrant life when animated, and other touches such as a singing pet mouse gave the show an oddball quality that would portend the absurd humor of Adult Swim and other recent animated fare.

The show featured Short as the voice of Ed, as well as many of his friends from SCTV such as Joe Flaherty (who played children's show host Count Floyd in a live-action segment) and Catherine O'Hara. Jonathan Winters and Andrea Martin also worked on the show. The series began in 1988 and was off the air in 1989. The combination of being shown on Saturday mornings, and an attempt at humor that wouldn't gain wide acceptance until a few years later pretty much spelled doom for the series from the very beginning. Those of us who were lucky enough to catch it, however, got to at least spend a few moments with one of the strangest, most inexplicable animated shows of the late 1980s.