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NBC takes another stab at the no-laugh-track, single-camera comedy (remember "Everything's Relative"?) with "M.Y.O.B." (9:30 p.m. Tuesday, NBC). Katherine Towne plays a teen runaway who arrives in a small northern California town looking for her birth mother. Instead she finds Lauren Graham, her alleged auntie, who works at the local high school. Soon thereafter the storyline meanders out of sight, leaving us with these not-very-interesting women and their forgettable banter. (Sample line: "Do you watch the Prevue Channel a lot?")

Perhaps that explains why "M.Y.O.B" (Mind Your Own Business) is getting launched in the low-rated summer months. But what's the story behind the final minute of tonight's episode where Towne, in a voice-over, bad-mouths the predictability and stupidity of the preceding half-hour? It as though the creators of "M.Y.O.B." are sending us a message: "We've got a turkey here." Pardon me, but that's my job.


Those were the days: "Daily Show's" on-camera talent poses for this 1997 holiday photo. From left, Beth Littleford, Brian Unger, Craig Kilborn, A. Whitney Brown and Lizz Winstead. They've all since left the show. (Photo courtesy Brian Unger)

Unger for more

Since leaving "The Daily Show" a year and a half ago, Brian Unger has been looking for another venue where he could skewer the overblown TV news pretensions of our time. A versatile parodist, Unger could skillfully imitate the avuncularity of Charles Kuralt, the fatuous self-importance of "Dateline NBC" or the contrived urgency of local TV news. No one did it better — and frankly, since he and A. Whitney Brown split Comedy Central in late 1998, no one at "The Daily Show" has really tried.

After making two pilots for former Fox (and Comedy Central) entertainment chief Doug Herzog, neither of which was picked up, Unger is contributing to a couple of programs you can catch this week. He's in New York where tonight (Monday), he will serve as host for a political comedy event being held at Elaine's. Also on the stage with him: Comedy Central cutup Lewis Black, standup guy Nick DiPaolo, and fellow "Daily Show" alum (and the show's co-creator) Lizz Winstead. The event is being taped by C-SPAN, though as of this posting the telecast hadn't been added to C-SPAN's ever-changing program schedule.

The other project is a new weekly anthology series, "Hollywood Off-Ramp," for the enthusiastically trashy E! channel. In deference to Robert Altman, "Hollywood Off-Ramp" (10 p.m. Mondays on E!) can be described as "The Player" meets "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." Every week, Unger supplies opening and closing remarks, a la Sir Alfred, to these half-hour tales of back-stabbing, duplicity and madness that supposedly swirls around most studio back lots. (For the record, E! classifies "Hollywood Off-Ramp" as "fiction," as opposed to the "non-fiction" it usually airs.)

In tonight's episode, the star of several gruesome teen-appeal slasher flicks finds himself unable to escape his role — either on or off camera — and is haunted by images of his Mommie Dearest, who scornfully reminds him at one point, "You're nothing without me."

I'm not sure "Hollywood Off-Ramp" would win a CableACE Award, even if they were still giving those out, but you can't beat the formula: surreal situations involving familiar Hollywood characters (the slasher-film star, the bloated reclusive formerly-great actor, the gossip columnist everyone would like to strangle, etc.). And near the end of each episode, a macabre twist. Still, the writing on "Hollywood Off-Ramp" is not without its charms, as when the slasher film's director says to a one-line actor: "Dick, look, I know you've been hacked to death with a dull sword, but would it hurt to give us a believeable reaction?"

Unger's role is peripheral but essential, supplying just the right level of mock solemnity while uttering a few short lines from his own pen. Here's a sample closing from another episode:

"For a big-shot Hollywood producer, the only thing more humiliating than publicly losing $1 million on a film is losing your reputation. Okay, losing an erection is always worse — but in the 'Hollywood Off-Ramp' that plays out only half as bad in the press."

"These are pretty simple morality plays about show business: agents, actors, producers and directors and the pitfalls they get themselves into," Unger said by telephone. TV Barn caught up with him at Winstead's apartment in New York, where the two were prepping for Monday's gig at Elaine's.

You know, speaking of E!, aren't they looking for a new host for their daily clip show, "Talk Soup"? Wouldn't Brian Unger be, like, the best "Talk Soup" host ever? Unger demurred when I brought up the point. "Well, I'm already on E! on another show," he said. But under intense follow-up questioning he had to admit he was "interested" in serving as guest host of "Talk Soup" for a week, as many other big-shot celebs are currently doing.

Unger and Winstead also collaborated on "This Week Has 7 Days," a pilot for Fox that combined the topicality of "The Daily Show" and a whole line of comedy programs dating back three decades (to "That Was the Week That Was") with a jaundiced view of TV newsmagazines. The pilot episode also took us "behind the scenes" to "the making of 'This Week Has 7 Days,'" in which producers and reporters argued about which stories would make "good TV." That was probably the show's weakest element, and Unger said that if he had it to do again, he'd tie-in the conference scenes more tightly to the actual stories.

Still, he thinks "This Week" is a fundamentally sound idea that network television just can't handle.

"It's hard to convince TV people that topical comedy is a worthwhile investment, it really is," said Unger. "If you look at this reality programming like 'Survivor' and 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,' you see where their priorities are. Maybe we'll have to get a contest element into ('This Week') ... I don't think network TV is into doing things that are edgy or different. I'm learning that cable is the one most willing to take risks. And the Internet is turning into a forum for new ideas, too."

Unger also served as host of a buzzed-about Fox pilot, "Battle of the Sitcoms," that didn't get picked up either. "Battle" was an attempt to make the TV-show development process, as they say, legit. A studio audience would view a five-minute clip from several potential sitcoms and would vote on which one should be developed into a full-blown pilot.

Unfortunately, the taping of the pilot did not go as well as expected, said Unger: "It was 110 degrees on the floor of the studio, so you can imagine how pleasant it was to be in the audience. And I remember one man walked down to home base, where I was standing. He was so confused from the heat that he couldn't figure out where the exits were. So he walked up to me at home base and he said, 'How the f--- do I get out of here?' I was afraid he was going to strike me in front of the audience because he was so hot and sweaty. The stage manager, fortunately, let him out and, like, half the audience left with him."

And how is Unger's cohort A. Whitney Brown doing these days? "I talked to Whitney about a month ago. He's doing well. A friend of mine says he's kayaking a lot this summer ... He's a student of life, and I think his latest area of exploration is kayaking."

Will "Sports Night" return?

That long-rumored move of Aaron Sorkin's "Sports Night" to another network is apparently just a signature away. On an eGroups discussion list for the cancelled ABC show this weekend, a message was posted, attributed to Sorkin, acknowledging that HBO had made him and co-executive producer Thomas Schlamme an offer to take the series to pay cable.

Sorkin's e-mail message read, "We've gotten a terrific offer from HBO. I'm taking a little time to think about whether I want to continue writing the show or whether I want to call it a day." Naturally, you don't want to believe everything you read on the Internet, but Sarah (the woman who posted the message) is a regular on the eGroups discussion list for "Sports Night" and was the one who posted an earlier message from Sorkin confirming the show's cancellation.

EARLIER: As upfronts begin, "Sports Night" gets the hook

On this date...

in 1964, CBS sends Walter Cronkite to tag along with ex-President Dwight D. Eisenhower for a special edition of "CBS Reports" — "D-Day Plus 20 Years: Eisenhower Returns to Normandy." -- Tom Heald

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