[A little too late, Time magazine discovered the Ben Stiller Show near the end of its run, and ranked it among the best shows of the year, above even Seinfeld.] Ken Tucker: 1992 BEST & WORST TELEVISION 7 THE BEN STILLER SHOW (Fox) The year's best sketch-comedy series tackles big, well-known subjects-savaging all of Oliver Stone's movies in five precise minutes, for example-as well as small, obscure ones (this is the only show that assumes grunge-rock pinup Courtney Love is a figure worthy of satiric ridicule). More cutting than Saturday Night Live, the Stiller Show is sneering, mean, supercilious comedy at its best, with a star who's unafraid to make himself look like a vain jerk. No wonder it's sitting at the bottom of the ratings. Copyright 1992 Time Inc. Ken Tucker: 1992 BEST & WORST TELEVISION. , 12-25-1992, pp. 108. TELEVISION: THE BEST OF 1992 6 The Ben Stiller Show (Fox) With In Living Color slumping and Saturday Night Live grappling with the loss of George Bush, Fox's new sketch comedy series is the place to turn for savvy media satire. Ratings are low and the show is uneven, but at its best (a mock documentary on U2's early days playing the bar mitzvah circuit; The Bride of Frankenstein remade as a Woody Allen film) it's hilarious. 8 Seinfeld (NBC) Four New Yorkers sitting around griping: after a couple of seasons, this yuppie sitcom has finally established its idiosyncratic, laid-back tone. Comic Seinfeld has adapted to the sitcom form with surprising ease, and his three co-stars -- Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander and Michael Richards -- are spinning very happily in their own quirky orbits. Copyright 1993 Time Inc. TELEVISION: THE BEST OF 1992. , 01-04-1993, pp 55. Return to the main news page