The Ben Stiller Show

For its brief and shining moment--12 episodes, to be exact--The Ben Stiller Show, which aired on Fox in 1992, recaptured the anarchic spirit and subversively funny voice of first-season Saturday Night Live and SCTV. More too-hip-for-the-room than ahead of its time, the show suffered dismal ratings and was unceremoniously cancelled…before going on to win a posthumous Emmy for best writing and attracting a fervent following (enhanced by the fact that the series has seldom been syndicated). This long-awaited DVD release fills not a void, but an abyss. At the dawn of their mostly unconventional careers, Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, Andy Dick, and a pre-Mr. Show Bob Odenkirk savage and skewer movie, television, and show business convention, as witness "Woody Allen's Bride of Frankenstein" (you'll never watch another Allen film with a straight face again), "Cape Munster," with Stiller as a psychopathic and vengeful Eddie Munster, and "Skank," a potent comment on the crass programming that was initially Fox's stock in trade. In addition to the cast's uncanny impersonations (Stiller's Bono, Tom Cruise, Bruce Springsteen, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Bruce Willis, and Garofalo's Juliette Lewis), The Ben Stiller Show was home to a gallery of recurring characters, who, thankfully, did not have SNL producer Lorne Michaels around to parlay them into godawful films. The topical humor can't help but date some of the material (the show is a veritable Trivial Pursuit of pop culture references, from The Partridge Family to Beverly Hills, 90210, but the brilliance of the writing and sheer abandon of the performances are exhilarating. Highly recommended. (D. Liebenson)