TVSquad

It seems that Santa Claus got my letter after all: American networks are starting to notice the awesome comedic power of British panel shows.

Unfortunately, he didn't it read it very closely: that network is NBC. Hope you like Ex-Lax in your cookies, Santa.

NBC just taped a pilot episode of a remake of the BBC's most famous and classic panel quiz show, Have I Got News For You. It's being hosted by comedian and Air America host Sam Sedar and features Greg Giraldo and Michael Ian Black as the regular team panelists. Buzzerblog doesn't seem to have much confidence in the show being good, but Giraldo and Black and the fact that a network is willing to take a chance on real satire and comedy panel humor makes me want to give it a chance.

A couple of years ago, I interviewed Joan Rivers for the Boston Globe. She was playing a local theatre, and I hadn't yet had a chance to talk to her, and I wanted to talk a bit about her past in Second City and as a pioneering female comic. But since a lot of her shtick is slamming celebrities, and she helped invent what I guess you'd call "red carpet comedy," I thought I'd try to find a couple of people to do a point/counterpoint. Funny thing is, I couldn't find anyone for the counterpoint, anyone who wanted to go on record saying anything uncomplimentary against Rivers.

You can find plenty of people who will make jokes about her plastic surgery, or her failed talk show from the 80s, or her TV marketing, but that all seems a bit superficial. No one seemed to have a terribly valid criticism outside of those clichés. And that's what I think you'll see at the Comedy Central Roast of Joan Rivers Roast Sunday (10PM). From the clips I've seen, some of the sharper comics have found a new approach to those tropes, and you'll see plenty of plastic surgery jokes. And I'm sure you'll hear plenty of them from Rivers herself (a debt, there, I think owed to Phyllis Diller).

The traditional comedy roast has been hijacked by the cable networks and reproduced with more disappointing results than a sperm bank run by General Motors.

Comedy Central has done the best job for the most part while others like A&E's extremely mismanaged Gene Simmons Roast made for lower quality television are as horrific as those painfully dated Dean Martin's Roasts that are sold on infomercials in the wee small hours of the morning.

The secret to doing a good roast isn't really that much of a secret: hire people who are actually paid to be funny. That's why the Roast of Joan Rivers could be the best one yet.

It seems Jeffrey Ross already has the line of the night for Sunday's Roast of Larry the Cable Guy (Comedy Central, 10 PM), which isn't surprising, because he's a longtime Friars Club member. In the trailer, Ross slams, "This is ridiculous, he's not even a real person! Why don't we just roast Dora the Explorer or Popeye the Sailor Man?"

Fictional character he may be, Mr. The Cable Guy has attracted Jeff Foxworthy, Warren Sapp, Toby Keith, Gary Busey, Maureen McCormick, fellow comic Reno Collier, and Roast regulars like Ross, Greg Giraldo, and Nick DiPaolo. "Queen of Mean" Lisa Lampanelli will serve as the first female Roastmaster for the Comedy Central series (the Friars, originators of the roast, have only had a couple of female Roastmasters -- Susie Essman did the Smothers Brothers and Joy Behar did Danny Aiello).

I'm not sure if everyone uses the term "mancrush." Like schadenfreude with the Germans, the term has a particular meaning in my family that doesn't quite translate into normal person English. Essentially, it's a feeling that one man has for another that's a few steps beyond being a fan and a few steps short of being a creepy super-fan. You really like the person a lot and you would love it if the person was your friend, but ultimately a part of you actually wants to be that person (as you can see the line between admiration and "restraining order" is a fine one).

Another way to define it is the way Jerry felt about his friendship with Keith Hernandez on Seinfeld.

My most enduring man-crush has been on Han Solo. Not Harrison Ford, mind you (as Howard Stern's impression of him as a humorless monosyllabic Frankenstein-type creature seems to be pretty dead on), but the character he played in Star Wars. Seeing as this is TV Squad, however, and not Cinematical, Han Solo is out of the running.

My top five heterosexual man-crushes (TV edition) after the jump...