'Soup' is on ... Get it while it's hot
Not that we doubt the shelf life of the new Versus' "Sports Soup," hosted by comedian Matt Iseman, which lauches tonight (7 and 10 p.m., with various replays) with a new show every Tuesday and Thursday.
We just have concerns it will reach anything past a show to TiVo when there's nothing else on. If it's still around in six months, it'll probably have a different look and feel than what it does now, so, like reviewing a new restaurant, we'll give it some room to find itself before we start to tear it down.
In talking last week with Iseman, a stand-up comedian who didn't want to be a doctor despite all those years in medical school at Princeton and Columbia, we find him to be one of them Dane Cook-kinda loud, funny, pound it home kind of jokesters.
The show's premise is basically what "Talk Soup" eventually did for the E! Channel's cutting-edge clip-driven celebrity skewering, "Sports Soup" is on the runway for Versus' next venture into athletic anarchy.
Iseman says isn't that much different than what you find in your email in-box each morning - links to YouTube clips from your friends of ridiculous sports-related video.
Only Iseman (and many writers) now provides the punch lines.
"There are definitely places on the blogosphere alive with similar concepts, but we're pulling it all into one place in case you're too lazy to search for them," Iseman said from the Wilshire Blvd., studios near the La Brea Tar pits at Museum Square on the Miracle Mile. "We'll be your spam filter. And if the jokes go bad, there's a place right here where they can become fossils."
Do think so much of this as a spin-off of the last Versus sports-comedy show - Dennis Miller's "Unfiltered," which lasted a few weeks in late 2007 before the writer's strike effectively killed it off. Although Iseman's comedic chops developed at the L.A.-based Groundlings could support a stand-up act-driven riff-fest that regularly sucker punches Terrell Owens, Kimbo Slice or the Chicago Cubs, it's the video approach that they want in the "Soup" tradition to elevate it past another version of "Roggin's Heroes."
The stuff, you hope, pretty much writes itself.
"We're just holding up a magnifying glass to sports, because so much of it is already funny," said Iseman. "We have no agenda to tear people down, but if someone wants to hang themselves, we'll give 'em enough rope. Stephen A. Smith can't be mad about everything all the time. Jerome Bettis might want to go back to broadcasting school once we're done with him.
"And as much as we make fun of it all, we'll be there next Sunday, watching again, because we're hooked."
Links:
==To the show's website (linked here)
==To Iseman's website (www.mattiseman.com)
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