Viva Variety

This was one of my fave shows of all time. It was hilarious and great parody! She was so sexy and he was such a great parody TV host. The variety acts and music and dancing were always so entertaining and the show always made my sister and I laugh our guts out. I can't believe people barely remember this show now, so sad.

This show was incredible, but too esoteric for most people. If you had never truly seen a European variety show in the 70's or 80's (or at least a Mexican one) the entire show would probably be lost on you. If you had, this show was a dead on skewering satire of the phony spectacle and shallowness that these shows dive into at their worst. Helmed by a chain-smoking suave wannabe with a pencil moustache and his ultra-glamorous and immasculating harridan of an EX-wife, "Viva Variety" is a variety show that tries to get off the ground every episode but always descends into in-fighting and acts gone very wrong. The hosts are joined by "Johnny Bluejeans", a dim witted side-kick who seems to have been named because blue jeans are a very popular product in his country and that means the kids will like him, which of course, they don't.

The result was a hilarious spoof of variety shows in general. Imagine the arguing that probably happened BACKSTAGE during the last days of the "Sonny & Cher Show". Now imagine it's happening ONSTAGE in front of you and the stars are trying to keep their composure. Now add cheesy acts and a Euro-riche mentality (tuxedoes, gowns, booze, accents and smokes). NOW you have "Viva Variety".

Have you ever heard a musician whose music was pretty much written for other musicians? Too conceptual? Viva Variety did this for comedians. WAY too esoteric for the standard American audience. It was funny as Hell. And doomed.

I thought that this show was better than average. The whole gimmic with the "#1 show in Europe" thing was cool. I like Johnny Bluejeans the best, especially when he said things like "I got me a bad case of the herpes." Once or twice they even had a cool musical guest. It was O.K, but who cares, we will never see it again.

I came across a film clip from this show at a web site that specializes in strange media. The mustachioed host introduced a pair of pianists who walked on stage, stood behind a piano, dropped their pants, raised their arms over their heads, and played a medley of songs with their units. It was goofy and silly, and vaguely familiar.

I recognized the host, but couldn't recall much of anything else. Some creative searching at Google helped me nail the title of the show, and when I looked up "Viva Variety" on IMDb, it all came flooding back to me. How could I have forgotten Johnny Bluejeans and the Laupins? Shame on me!

This show was funny and original. It's too bad that the variety format seems dead in America. I would have liked to see more of it. If you happen to catch any of these episodes in the great cable wasteland, it's a refreshing change of pace from the banality of current offerings on TV.

This was a strange show. In an era that hasn't seen a successful variety show, we get a parody of one. Many of the guests and performers were real, but the whole show revolved around the fact that VV was supposedly the American version of "Europe's #1 variety show.". The hosts were bad parodies; the bickering ex-husband/wife team, and the (Latvian?) Johnny Bluejeans who, though not entertaining, was better than Yakov Smirnoff.

Comedy Central pushed this show incredibly hard, to an audience that really didn't care. No offense to the people who worked on the show, but the time, money, and effort spent on the show were wasted. Few found it entertaining; perhaps if the US market were familiar with over-the-top Euro variety shows, then we would have wanted a parody. As it stood, though, the point was lost.