Who better to revive the golden era of talk shows, the days of Dick Cavett, David Susskind and Stanley Seigel, and rescue it from the product-pushing cue card readers like Jay Leno and James Lipton? And what better way for The Biography Channel to emulate Court TV and boost its hipness quotient by hiring a 76-year old guy with a toup?
And seriously, who better than the storied Shat to lead (just the hiring of Katie Couric did at CBS) the charge of cable television's most pretentious, holier-than-thou networks into tabloid territory?
On the half-hour Shatner's Raw Nerve, the acting joke turned respected award-winning star of Boston Legal will interview actors and politician types. Bio reps say producers will make an effort to book guests who aren't on movie an other junkets.
The press release says Shatner "will explore life's most intriguing questions and unearth his guests' strange and unknown stories."
Tabloid!
Thirteen episodes have been ordered. The series will air sometime next year.
Biography also anounced pilot deals for Small Medium at Large a show about a four-foot-tall psychic medium who uses Chinese meditation to talk to the dead, and I Survived, about people who have survived near-death experiences.
Biography's boss Bob DeBitetto says it's part of the fogey old channel's new mission is to tell "true stories about fascinating people." Sounds like tabloid to us.
Ha ha.