The Ben Stiller Show

FOX canceled this sketch-comedy show ignominiously after only half a season in 1992, but in retrospect it’s clear that its chief fault was being too hip for the room. There’s the posthumous Emmy, and the ongoing success of cast members Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, Bob Odenkirk (Mr. Show) and Andy Dick (NewsRadio), repeatedly proving their satiric skills on other projects. Truth be told, the show was so obscure that until Comedy Central picked it up briefly a few years later, we’d only seen clips when Stiller guested on Later With Bob Costas (now there’s another gem of the TV dial gone missing). It wasn’t unfailingly brilliant, but the show was a clear precursor to the smart, razor-sharp absurdity that Odenkirk and David Cross generated on Mr. Show. And, more to the point, it was very funny very often. Years after seeing the sketches, we still laugh when we think of the surly, ALF-like sock puppet called Skank, or Stiller’s wonderfully overearnest parody of U2’s Bono, crooning his heart out over a cereal commercial as if marshmallows were going to singlehandedly save the world. This two-DVD set collects all thirteen episodes of the series, including one never broadcast.