'' (or '''''Fernwood 2Night''''') was a
Comedic Television Program created by
Norman Lear as a spin-off from ''
Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman ''.
'' is a parody
Talk Show hosted by Barth Gimble (
Martin Mull ) and sidekick/announcer Jerry Hubbard (
Fred Willard ), complete with a stage band, Happy Kyne and His Mirthmakers (featuring
Frank De Vol as the dour Happy Kyne, and
Tommy Tedesco as one of the
Guitarist s). Barth, was the twin brother of Garth Gimble from ''Mary Hartman''. The show aired on the fictional Fernwood's Channel 6.
Like ''Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman'', ''Fernwood 2Nite'' was set in the fictional
Town of
Fernwood, Ohio . The show satirized real
Talk Show s as well as the sort of fare one might expect from locally-produced, small-town,
Midwestern American television programming. Well-known actors usually appeared playing characters or a contrivance had to be written for the celebrity to appear as themself. (In one episode,
Tom Waits ' tour bus happened to break down in Fernwood.) After one season of ''Fernwood'', the producers reincarnated the show the following year as ''
America 2-Night ''. In this second version, we find that Barth and Jerry's show has moved to
Los Angeles and is now broadcast nationally on the fictional UBS network, whose slogan was "We put U before the BS". This change allowed the show to now have well-known actors on the show as themselves.
Norman Lear's brainchild about an offbeat talk show is not the only
Sitcom project orchestrated to span multiple, distinct television series in order to tell a story. In
1994 ,
BBC Two aired ''
Knowing Me, Knowing You... With Alan Partridge '', another simulated talk show that, like ''Fernwood'', presented a bumbling host in a talk show-based sitcom that its creators developed from an earlier project. In the case of ''Fernwood'', the humble talk show finds success and a new format which appears in the following season's incarnation, ''America 2-Night''. Contrast with ''
Knowing Me, Knowing You '', in which an ostentatious, multinational
Prime-time series fails miserably after six
Episode s, forcing its host into
Radio in the follow-up series, ''
I'm Alan Partridge ''.
