Fernwood 2 Night

rdf:langString Fernwood 2 Night

rdf:langString United States

rdf:langString Fernwood 2 Night

rdf:langString Fernwood 2 Night (or Fernwood Tonight) is a comedic television program that was broadcast weeknights from July 1977 to September 1977. It was created by Norman Lear and produced by Alan Thicke as a spin-off/summer replacement for Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. It was 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 the Mirth Makers", with Frank De Vol as the dour bandleader and Tommy Tedesco as a guitarist. Fernwood 2 Night was satirical in tone and set in the fictional small town of Fernwood, Ohio, like Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, in which Barth Gimble was a recurring supporting character. The show parodied actual late-night talk shows and the sort of fare one might expect from locally produced small-town midwestern American television programming. After one summer season of Fernwood 2 Night, the producers revamped the show in 1978 as America 2-Night. In this second version, the show relocated to Southern California (specifically, the fictional city of "Alta Coma") and was broadcast nationally on the fictional UBS Network. The change to a Southern California setting made it more plausible for real-life celebrities to appear on the program as themselves. In 2001, Mull and Willard reprised their roles in a stage appearance and retrospective at the US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado. The pair also worked together in other projects, appearing together in the final seasons of Roseanne as a gay couple. Reruns of Fernwood/America 2-Night were broadcast on Nick at Nite from 1990 to 1993 and TV Land in 2002 as part of their "TV Land Kitschen" block, also hosted by Mull and Willard.