It's Only Talk: The Real Story of America's Talk Shows

Although you might reasonably expect this to be a no-holds-barred romp through the wacky world of contemporary sleazy talk shows with a nod to how they got that way, it ain't exactly so. Viewers will, for instance, hear a lot of talk about Arthur Godfrey and his seminal influence on the talk show genre, but see precious little footage of the old master, and, perhaps most disappointing, no footage of Godfrey's on-air firing of Julius La Rosa, a pop cultural apocalypse of its time and an interesting antecedent to Jack Paar's celebrated walking off The Tonight Show set. Nor do viewers see critical footage from the Jenny Jones episode that lead to charges against the bouncy blonde for her show's role in fomenting a murder involving an unrequited--and unsought--homosexual crush. None of the foregoing should be taken to suggest the video is too short--at 100 minutes, it drags horribly at times. Much of the treatment is facile and superficial, and, atypically for A&E, many of the commercial intros and outros from the broadcast version seem to have been left in the videocassette version, which just serves to remind viewers how looooooooong the program is running. Hardly in-depth or comprehensive, this is an average video and an optional purchase, at best. Aud: H, P. (M. Tribby)