The Bonnie Hunt Show

Hip and wholesome Bonnie Hunt returns from CBS hiatus

By Mike Duffy
Knight-Ridder Newspapers
March 15, 1996
If TV critics ruled the world, Bonnie Hunt would be America's sitcom sweetheart. She'd be lavished with Emmys and gushy Entertainment Weekly cover stories.
But so far, no such luck. Not even close.
After CBS-TV's frustratingly quick foreclosure on ``The Building'' in 1993 and the fast flame-out for ``The Bonnie Hunt Show'' last fall on the same network, Hunt remains one of those talented natural comic resources who has so far failed to plunk the magic TV-ratings twanger.
``It's all about politics, it's all about time slots,'' said Hunt, who is probably best known as Robin Williams' co-star in ``Jumanji'' or as the suburban mom in those ``Beethoven'' movies about a cuddly, overgrown canine.
But on television, Hunt has yet to find a mass audience for her smart, quirky comedy.
The curse of the bad time slot certainly helped wreck ``The Building,'' which went down in flames on Friday nights after only a month. And ``The Bonnie Hunt Show,'' easily the freshest new comedy series in a 1995 fall season dominated by a banality blitz of ``Friends'' clones, survived just six weeks on Fridays before being yanked off the air and kicked into limbo.
Now Hunt is getting a spring reprieve.
``The Bonnie Hunt Show'' - re-titled ``Bonnie'' - returned to the CBS lineup at 8:30 p.m. ET Sundays beginning this week. That's a far better piece of prime-time real estate than Friday nights. And slotted behind the simpatico ``Cybill,'' Hunt may have her best chance yet to find a wider audience.
``We're trying to do something a little different,'' Hunt explained in a recent phone interview. ``There's no `sweetening.' We don't put in any laughs we don't get. Because you begin to depend on it. It's like being an alcoholic.''
With the chucklehead crutch of a sweetened laugh track, it's easy to miss your mistakes. You figure everything is hilarious.
``But there's a lesson when you do something and there's no laugh,'' Hunt said. ``You learn, `This is not funny because the writing's not there yet.' So you work harder to get it right.''
Almost everything about ``Bonnie'' is right.
Hunt plays Bonnie Kelly, a small-town Wisconsin TV reporter who lands a position at a Chicago TV station - her first big city job. Like ``The Building,'' also set in Chicago, ``Bonnie'' sparkles with the fresh, unpredictable rhythms of Hunt's improvisational roots with the famed Second City comedy troupe.
Bonnie Kelly's best friend is Holly Janofsky (Holly Wortell), who also works as the hair and make-up stylist at the TV station. And Tom Vandoozer (Tom Virtue), an affably uptight cameraman paired with Bonnie on her street reports, has a secret crush on his co-worker.
All these folks, including the rest of a talented ``Bonnie'' ensemble cast, are fast, chatty talkers. And in that game of dextrous verbal ping-pong, they share a certain comic kinship with Hollywood's fast-paced screwball comedies of the 1940s, especially films such as ``His Girl Friday,'' a movie that inspired Hunt.
``I brought that movie in, and had everyone watch it to show them what I was looking for,'' said Hunt, whose comic chemistry with Wortell and Virtue is obvious. They all came out of Second City. And they all worked on ``The Building.''
Hunt is also lucky enough to have a comic guardian angel of sorts in David Letterman. Letterman's production company, Worldwide Pants, has been behind both Hunt sitcoms. And because Letterman's ``Late Show'' is a big moneymaker for CBS, that may explain the network's decision to give ``Bonnie'' another chance.
``Dave's probably the reason we're back on the air,'' Hunt agreed. ``The bottom line is you have to be on the air to have any chance of success. I know the reality of wasting away in Hiatusville.''
Certainly, ``Bonnie'' deserves some attention just because it doesn't resemble every other sitcom.
``We're too ugly to be compared to `Friends,''' Hunt joked.
But Hunt is well-versed in the show business hazards of going your own way. It makes formula-obsessed network executives a little uncomfortable.
Two of the key writers for ``Bonnie,'' Bob Fisher and Steve Faber, never worked in TV before. Before ``Bonnie,'' Fisher was a bartender, Faber an attorney. ``They were not programmed yet,'' said Hunt, happily.
One of the most imaginative and unconventional sitcom twists Hunt incorporated into the show: Bonnie Kelly's on-the-street feature reports, which are pure, spontaneous improvisation. Real events, real people, like the hilarious Bonnie Kelly remote that Hunt taped at the Chicago Polish Festival last summer for last Sunday's episode.
``I polkaed for three hours,'' said Hunt, laughing at the memory.
The jittery conversational style of ``Bonnie,'' and those cockeyed encounters with the human condition in Hunt's deft, daft street reports, aren't the only things that set the show apart from the rest of the laugh track pack.
``Bonnie'' is an intelligent show for grown-ups that doesn't have sex and double entendres on the brain. Why not? Because a mentor at Second City once told Hunt, ``Once you depend on that, your brain will never work as a writer.''
Hunt, who writes ``about 70 percent'' of her character's dialogue on ``Bonnie,'' took the lesson to heart. No silly sex, drug or alcohol jokes. And she's also fed up with the mean gene that she feels has infected modern situation comedy.
``In the last five years, there's been this trend that says, `Funny is being mean.' But I didn't want that. I said, `Let's write characters who are funny but kind.' ''
What a concept: believable human beings who have a heart.
``In great shows like `Andy Griffith' or `Dick Van Dyke,' they didn't have to be mean to get laughs,'' Hunt said. ``And they were still incredibly funny.''
Not that she's comparing ``Bonnie'' to those beloved golden oldies, said Hunt, displaying the nervous, down-to-earth modesty that also belongs to Bonnie Kelly. But like the classic comedies of another era, Bonnie Hunt's witty, disarming ``Bonnie'' possesses a gentle human spirit. It's nutty but nice. There are worse things.
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(c) 1996, Knight-Ridder Newspapers. Distributed by Knight-Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
AP-NY-03-14-96 0606EST