MUMBAI: Looks like Tony Shalhoub is a hot property on Star World. After the channel re-launched Monk , it is all set to launch Shalhoub's 'new side' in Stark Raving Mad.
The show will launch on Sunday, 30 May on 7 pm on Star's English entertainment arm. The show will be replacing the quirky comedy show Malcolm In The Middle.
Starring the Emmy, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild award winner Shalhoub and Golden Globe nominated Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Howser, M.D.), this new comedy series comes from the house of Emmy Award winner Steven Levitan. He is the creator of the hit comedies such Just Shoot Me and Frasier, which are currently being aired on the channel.
Termed by the critics as crazy, flaky, strange, peculiar yet amazingly frantic show, the story is about Henry McNeely (Harris)- a young, uptight book editor- who is thrust into the dark and chaotic world of best-selling horror writer Ian Stark (Shalhoub). Shalhoub's character in Stark Raving Mad, is poles apart from his obsessive-compulsive San Francisco investigator Adrian Monk act in Monk.. This time on, the tables have been turned and Harris plays the neurotic, compulsively neat character assigned to work with Shalhoub's boozing, slovenly and eccentric Ian Stark.
An 'odd couple' style comedy, the show has sassy Eddie McClintock as Stark's dazed writing assistant Jake Donovan, Heather Paige Kentas bartender/college student Maddie Keller, and Marty as Stark's overly affectionate dog Edgar providing distractions as Henry tries to keep Stark on track.
The first season begun airing on the US airwaves from 23 September 1999 till Mar 2000, Thursday 9:30-10 pm. While the second season, or the concluding episodes aired till July 2000. The last telecast was aired on 13 July 2000.
The show begun its stint during the tenure of then NBC entertainment president Garth Ancier and former West coast president Scott Sassa. Despite receiving a full season pick up, the show was abruptly plugged off.
Apparently Stark Raving Mad never clicked owing to the time slot it was placed in. It followed Frasier and despite coming from the same production house, the sarcy brand of comedy was incompatible with that of Frasier
After the original 13 episodes were broadcast by January 2000, the series bounced off and on -- mostly off -- the schedule. Nearly half of the back nine that the network ordered in November 1999 were never broadcast at all.
Produced by Steven Levitan Productions, in association with Twentieth Century Fox Television, Stark Raving Mad also won the 2000 People's Choice Award for Favorite Television New Comedy series.
In addition to Stark Raving Mad, the channel has also launched Still Standing, a comedy about a blue-collar Chicago couple working to raise their three children responsibly. The show is currently aired on the channel, as a part of its Monday comedy line up, at 8:30 pm.
The show stars Mark Addy and Jami Gertz as couple Bill and Judy Miller as high-school sweethearts, who after 15 years of marriage still make each other laugh, and try to keep their marriage intact, even when their family pulls them in different directions.
Judy's unmarried sister, Linda (Jennifer Irwin), butts heads with Bill, and the Millers' precocious teenage daughter, Lauren (Renee Olstead), thinks her parents are uncool. Meanwhile, their uptight, studious son, Brian (Taylor Ball), is just discovering girls, and their youngest child, Tina (Soleil Borda), would prefer to run around naked. Since Bill has a far more immature approach to marriage and raising children than Judy does, they work at striking a balance and remembering why they love each other, quirks and all.
The series has been produced by Twentieth Century Fox Television, in association with CBS Productions.
