D: Jeff Krulik
Depending on how you look at it, late-Sixties kid-show primate “Lance Link, Secret Chimp,” the creation of comedy team Stan Burns and Mike Marmer, either elevated the Saturday-morning format or paved the way for TNT’s excremental Chimp Channel. The fact that Burns and Marmer had already cracked wise for golden age television mavericks Ernie Kovacs and Steve Allen is more or less forgotten these days, though Krulik’s short documentary goes a long way — through off-the-cuff interviews with the two men and archival footage — toward correcting that. Equally warped were freshly canceled HBO pranksters Odenkirk and Cross, whose Mr. Show combines surrealist sketch comedy ô la Kids in the Hall with bracingly oddball production. The fact that the show ran for four seasons and remains virtually unknown outside of its core fan base says more about HBO’s scheduling errata than it does Mr. Show, which remains groundbreakingly silly in the same way Monty Python once was.
This article appears in October 15 • 1999.