Late at night in NYC, you can watch “The Jack Benny Program” on NJ public television. I’d never seen the show before coming home for the holidays, but it’s really, really good.
It’s not a typical talk show - Jack comes out and does a minute or two of jokes, but then the rest of the episode will be one long sketch comedy style play. In one episode, he and Ed Sullivan play dueling attorneys in a crazy murder trial. In another, he can’t get Phil Silvers to leave his house for seven months. There’s an episode where his violin playing is so bad it causes the Japanese troops to kill themselves.
It’s really nutty and really good, and makes me wish I’d payed more attention to old black and white comedy.
