TVSquad

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COMEDY CORRESPONDENTS
Arsenio Hall was featured twice this week. His first appearance was in a segment that had potential called "This Is What They Said/This Is What They Meant." I was expecting to see video clips of celebrities, politicians and the like spouting their same bullcrap, and then having Hall tell us what he thinks they really meant. Instead, it was Leno reading quotes, including historically famous ones like Julius Ceasar's "Et tu, Brute!" The gag didn't make sense anymore, and even worse the bits weren't funny.

Luckily, he came back later in the week with an on-site spot at Yankee Stadium, where he interviewed players from both teams and even set up a bet against a Yankees player and Phillies fan Kevin Eubanks involving Snuggies.

When I first saw the commercials for ABC's Eli Stone, I didn't recognize Jonny Lee Miller. Then, after watching the first episode and liking him, I decided to find out who he was. Imagine my surprise when I learned that I had seen him, multiple times, in a variety of roles. And he was British! I was duly impressed and intrigued. Jonny Lee Miller was a helluva an actor, a chameleon who could be as convincing as a junkie named Sick Boy in Trainspotting as he was a San Francisco lawyer named Eli.

Last night I caught an episode of Nature's "The Polar Bears of Churchill with Ewan McGregor." Usually when a documentary-type show sticks a celebrity in the mix it's a ploy to get more people to tune in, but in this case I was actually quite impressed with how "into it" McGregor was. He seemed genuinely delighted to be there and witness firsthand the trek of polar bears as they venture out in search of new ice and new food. McGregor's "naive, but not too naive" approach reminds me of Alan Alda on another PBS series, Scientific American Frontiers. It's not so much like watching a famous actor as it is watching someone who is genuinely intrigued by the subject he's reporting. If this whole "film career" doesn't work out, I think he'd do a fine job as a nature show host.