Cheeseball Presents

Made for Pay-TV, showing in 1984 (that's a prophetic year) on cable, this scattershot sketch comedy show by Thfe Groundlings was directed by the late Alfred Sole, cult film director who ended up in the mainstream as weekly production designer for the hit "Castle" series. It tries hard, real, real hard, but isn't very amusing (in the trade they call it flop sweat).

Between sketches is a brief bit of animation clearly ripping off the collage style of Terry Gilliam's classic "Monty Python" tv work. Running down some of the sketches (good and bad) begins with a pointless peek at female bodybuilding, starring Tres MacNeille: not funny and not erotic, though the pay-cable medium means nudity is upcoming later. Overall, the show's chief inspiration, for worse, is "Laugh-In".

George McGrath in drag as a nun presenting a tv series called "It's a Miracle" goes nowhere fast, yet it's brought back several times later in the show. An untalented imitation of Michael Winslow sound effect via vocalese including simulating aerial dogfights is horrid.

The access channel tv call-in talk show "Lesbian Lunchbox" sounds like a comical idea, but is a non-starter, with an annoying male substitute host. The next skit "The Plumber" presents scream queen Brinke Stevens taking a shower yet without nudity -just a tease, confronted for softcore filler by the title singing plumber Wazmo Nariz with dumb lyrics. "Tinsel Talk" follows as campy saitre, all of this making one wish for vintage Martin Short Hollywood spoofing (SCTV) instead.

A PSA attacking kiddie porn and what's taught in school is hardly even satire, especially considering how right-wing attacks lately on LGBTQ and other minoriy books are all called porn in a demented extension of the correct condemnation of child exploitation. "Upstairs with the Downstairs Maid" is more filler better left to "Benny Hill Show". "Hungry Man" mocks '50s rock 'n' roll with pompadour hairdos -an unwatchable amateur production number. "L. A. Temp Agency" stars a wannabe Gilda Radner talking fast and trying way too hard.

Cassandra Peterson as Elvira mocks herself, introing "Revenge of the Toys", a black & white horror spoof bereft of comical ideas.

Second half of the show starts with "International Talk", broadcast from a British luxury liner with Phil Hartman (RIP) as a German host making a fool of himself speaking pidgin German. A rhyming spoof of a commercial for Barbie Dolls is so old it's new again, with surprising relevance for 2023. Licassi & Siegel dance pantomime is definitely an acquired taste. "Nervous Breakdown" mocks the Cold War, but its emphasis on nuclear war, coming so fast after that "Barbie" skit makes me wonder if Nostradamus was at work predicting Summer of 2023 preoccupations.

Spoofing exercise videos provides a few seconds of topless-women hopping around, quite a long wait for cable t&a fans. "Shopping with the DeJacks" set in a supermarket is proof they didn't forget to include Benny Hill speeded-up footage slapstick, but it ain't funny without Boots Randolph's saxophone. "Cheeseball's Disease of the Month" is quite embarrassing, with poor Phil Hartman equipped with a huge/ugly marital aid for a slapstick hand-job in an ambulance.

Vintage Pee-wee Herman presents a short film of Reubens running lemonade stand, with David Letterman's sidekick Calvert De Forest (a/k/a Larry (Bud) Melman) as his stooge. I'd call that double-barreled nostalgia.

Just happened to stumble across this while browsing the Internet Archive. It's a bizarre, unpleasant time-capsule of the early video age in sketch comedy form. Viewing it with modern eyes, it immediately screams poor quality, bad effects, weak writing and all around strangeness (similar to watching the animated Coneheads pilot from 1983). While not as bizarre as Mr Mike's Mondo Video (1979, which was also mostly awful), watching it was definitely an unusual experience.

The familiar names here are Phil Hartman (doing the best he can), Tress MacNeille (Simpsons, Futurama etc), Elvira and Pee-wee Herman.

The first half of the show is terrible. You get the feeling that while the cast was enthusiastic about what they were doing, deep telling you that it wasn't really hitting at all. The second half gets a little bit better, with the highlights being Pee-Wee's video and Phil Hartman's German/English International cruise ship talk show. Maybe a point or too for the Barbie skit, which feels quite 2025.

Apparently this was made for pay cable TV. This explains the swearing and glimpses of topless women peppered throughout the show. Despite it's poor quality, it's an interesting watch because it's reflective of the early 1980s and how entertainment was fully shifting to cable TV, music television, video production and Public Access television. The oft-used and quite cheesy video effects speak strongly to this. It almost feels like an experimental college project, a program put together with the faint hope that it will catch on somehow. Clearly, it never did.

You could probably watch worse videos, though not many are as bad. There's at least some nostalgia effect if you were a teen or older during that time period. But basically, it's an oddity that is rightly forgotten.