When John de Mol premiered his own TV channel 'Talpa' (later known as Tien) in late 2005, the biggest thing he had going for him were all the Dutch celebrities he had under contract. Still, original programming on Talpa found it difficult to draw viewers, even with a member of the De Mol family (sister Linda, son Johnny) presenting game shows and starring in drama series every day. Luckily Big John owned the rights to every show the Netherland's most successful comedian, André van Duin ever made and quickly put together an entire season worth of programs (26 episodes) featuring Van Duin, his collaborators and anyone else famous reminiscing over old clips of André's plentiful TV and theater shows.
Clearly the biggest draw to this kind of program is to see beloved material again, most of which had not been broadcast in ages. Unfortunately, none of the classic skits were shown in their entirety, as Dutch celeb's interrupted with their anecdotes all the time. Now, watching people who were actually involved in making these shows sharing their memories (including John de Mol himself) is okay by me. They even persuaded one of Dré's funniest foils, Hans Otjes, to step back in front of the camera after turning his back on show business about ten years earlier. But having to sit through a lot of current celebrities who grew up on André but don't have anything interesting to say about him is just annoying. Witness barely out of his teens 'Idol' winner Jim saying he always refers to André as 'The Dutch Mr. Bean', then patting himself on the back for coming up with such a clever compliment. Cringe as white rappers Lange Frans en Baas B. mention they used to watch the theater shows on TV hoping to glimpse some skin in the Nudist colony sketch (Van Duin used to recycle Benny Hill's material). Also, John de Mol's wife Willeke Alberti embarrassed herself by referring to Corrie van Gorp as 'Connie', then saying what a dear friend she was to her.
Over the course of the series just about every show in André's 40 year career is touched upon. Unfortunately the editors put each installment together in the same predictable way: beginning with a 'Meneer Wijdbeens' sketch from the 1990 André van Duin Show and showing clips from the mid eighties 'Animal Crackers' series after the break . People hoping to see the TV version of Van Duin's long running radio show "De Lach of ik Schiet Show" had to wait a long time (although even that was eventually touched upon). Still, André's star power (and the timelessness of laughter) still proved strong enough to gather good ratings, and the meager amount of original programming on the youngest Dutch Channel insured each episode to be repeated within the week. André himself added some intro's and outro's, usually decked out as familiar characters such as Willempie or the aforementioned Wijdbeens, but was too busy touring the country with his anniversary show to contemplate creating a brand new television show for Talpa...yet.
6 out of 10
