I am watching last night’s “Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.”
Craig Ferguson, in drag, is playing Angela Lansbury playing Jessica Fletcher.
Even more disturbing – by an order of magnitude – Jeffrey Tambor (hey, now!) is playing Batgirl.
Some things you don’t really need to see in high definition.
First, you have to watch this:
You then have to watch Jimmy Fallon’s response:
Which happened about the same time as this …
Fun.
CBS doesn’t have the whole “Late Late Show” episode up yet, but they have finally posted a clip:
Craig Ferguson, who stayed above the fray in the recent late-night wars and who is making more and more of a name for himself, had a hum-dinger of a show Tuesday night. I went to bed early with my cold, of course, but I recorded it on the DVR and watched the first half this morning while getting ready for work.
Craig gave a nod to Tom Snyder, who once occupied that time slot and the “Late Late Show” name, by doing a single-guest show without a monologue or a studio audience. The guest was one of Ferguson’s old friends, actor and writer Stephen Fry. (Why, oh why, won’t someone re-run the old “Jeeves and Wooster” episodes featuring Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster and Stephen Fry as Jeeves?) Judging from the part I’ve seen, it was a great, intelligent conversation, not a five-minute plug for some upcoming movie or TV episode.
This critic at Huffington Post (hat tip to Newscoma) seems to agree, and the program also got a nice mention from Mark Evanier.
I don’t want to see Craig adopt this format full-time — and I don’t think that’s the idea. (I’d hate to see him give up the silly skits and the monologue, neither of which was a part of Tuesday night’s show.) But I hope he does it again, regularly, when he has an appropriate guest.
The clips don’t seem to be up on Craig’s site yet, but I’ll try to embed them once I find them.
Some months back, the programmers at CBS re-jiggered their schedule in such a way that, immediately following David Letterman, Craig Ferguson came out and did a little three-minute teaser, followed by a commercial break, followed by the opening credits and the official monologue.
Sometimes the teaser would be like a little mini-monologue, but sometimes, Craig would do creative or silly things with it, such as lip-synching to a song (accompanied by strangely-costumed characters). Sometimes, the teaser would involve puppets, and those quickly became a popular part of the show, to the extent that when they re-shot the opening credits in HD, they included scenes of Craig with a puppet on each hand. I’m sure Craig would make no claims to being a professional puppeteer, but the various voices and personalities he gives the puppets are quite amusing.
Well, Tuesday night was the 1,000th episode since Craig took over “The Late Late Show,” and Craig (except for those opening credits) was scarcely seen. The entire show was hosted by Wavy the crocodile (Or is he an alligator? Even he isn’t sure), one of the puppet characters. Two of the show’s regular comedy bits — one featuring Craig’s Sean Connery impression, and the advice segment “Dear Aquaman” — were done with puppet stand-ins. Aquaman was “played” by a shark, and I’m not sure what kind of animal the Sean Connery puppet was supposed to be. It was hard to see because he had a beard.
The final scene, with Wavy lip-synching James Taylor’s “You’ve Got A Friend,” featured a number of cast and crew members on stage, and for this segment someone else must have been working the Wavy puppet because Craig was sprawled out on the floor in his hideous-looking Prince Charles makeup and costume.
It was all goofy and brilliant. Here’s a sample:
Peter Sagal, host of my beloved “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me,” was a guest on one of my favorite TV shows on Friday.
(The first embedded video below begins with “Dear Aquaman,” one of Ferguson’s regular comedy bits, but the Sagal interview starts right after that.)
I posted a clip back when Craig Ferguson introduced a slick new credit sequence for “The Late Late Show,” including a new remix of his theme song (which Ferguson sings himself).
Here, with hat tip to Mark Evanier, is a YouTube of the complete song, the length of an actual single (2:51) as opposed to the little snippet you hear on the show each night. For the first 30 seconds or so, the video is illustrated with the same footage you see on the opening credits. Whoever put this together illustrated the rest of the video with some making-of footage from the opening credits shoot, as well as some footage of the puppets who turn up during the show’s cold-open teaser.
Best lyric from the unaired portion? “What’s the point of going to bed? / You look so lovely when your eyes are red”
The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson began airing in HD last night, which meant they had to shoot a new intro. It’s great — and includes a slightly harder-edged re-record of the whimsical theme song. Ferguson himself still sings the theme, of course, and the new intro also shows him drumming — he used to be a drummer in “some of the worst punk bands in the U.K.,” according to his bio at the CBS web site.
Check it out:
Associated Press TV critic Frazier Moore was assigned to do a story about the top 10 TV shows of the year. He actually listed 12, and here’s what he had to say about one of my personal favorites:
“Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson”: Women want to be with him, men want to be him (and maybe vice versa), and everybody has a good time tuning in to him. Thanks to Ferguson, it’s a great day in America every night on CBS when this sublimely unhinged Scotsman ends the day with late night’s best talk show. (Jimmy Fallon, your work is cut out for you.)
Ferguson’s moving tribute to his mother on Monday, a week after her death, was the kind of honesty, transposed with his silly comedy, that makes his show something special.