Hey everyone! Well it is time for another installation of Bills Blog. I have been asked several times how we decide what storyline we use for a show. Well, I will try to explain this, because to be honest with you, I did not know myself until I started working on this show. See, before The Bill Engvall Show, I was just another actor on a show. So I would show up on Monday, be handed a script and that was the story we were doing that week. When we started production on my new show, we had no storylines. We had to come up with eight shows. So the process began: I would sit in a room with the writers and basically we would just talk. I would convey different ideas that I had come up with over the previous few weeks. Now, in this room there was me, Mike Leeson and four other writers. There is also a person who sits at a laptop and writes down every idea that comes out of our mouths. We would do this for about three hours and then we would break for lunch. When we would come back f...
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Nancy Travis, The Bill Engvall Show
A veteran of the sitcoms Becker and Almost Perfect and a slew of other TV programs and films, Nancy Travis has returned to series television as Susan Pearson, the wife of The Bill Engvall Show's titular family man. In the vein of other famous TV wives/mothers such as Debra Barone and Clair Huxtable, Travis' Susan provides a calming balance to Engvall's reactionary Bill Pearson. The New York native recently chatted with TVGuide.com about her role on the TBS sitcom, which airs Tuesdays at 9 pm/ET — and drew boffo ratings with last week's premiere.
TVGuide.com: Do you feel like Bill Engvall is coming on at a good time, given the number of family-oriented sitcoms that have ended their runs over
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Hey everyone! Hope that you all enjoyed the pilot episode of The Bill Engvall Show (Tuesdays at 9 pm/ET, on TBS). When I am traveling around the country doing my live shows, people are always asking me how long it takes to shoot a show like ours, so I thought that we would dedicate this blog to telling you how a typical sitcom is made.Usually we receive the next week's scripts on Thursday night, after the taping of the previous week's show. Then we all show up Friday morning and do what we call a table read. It is basically exactly what it sounds like: We all sit around a table and read the script out loud. I always enjoy this because it is funny to me to see everyone come dragging in after a late night of taping. Needless to say, the coffee is the first thing to go. After the reading, which usually takes about an hour even though the show is only 30 minutes (I never figured that one out), we meaning me, Nancy and the kids all go home for the weekend. The writers then ...
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Bill Engvall by Art Streiber/TBS
TBS' The Bill Engvall Show debuted on Tuesday to 3.9 million total viewers, making it the No. 3 most-watched basic-cable sitcom telecast ever, trailing only the first two episodes of TBS' House of Payne.... Merv Griffin has been hospitalized for a recurrence of prostate cancer discovered during a routine examination a few weeks ago, says the AP.... The Last Mimzy topped the DVD sales chart last week, while Shooter was the No. 1 rental for a third straight cycle.... Standing still pays. Gisele Bundchen tops Forbes.com's list of the world's richest models, having earned $33 million in the last 12 months. (Money can't buy a new birth date for your beau's illegitimate child, though.) Kate Moss ($9 mil) placed No. 2, followed by Heidi Klum ($8 mil).
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Bill Engvall, The Bill Engvall Show
Blue Collar comedian Bill Engvall will join the ranks of Bob Newhart, Bill Cosby and Ray Romano, each of whom has segued from the ranks of stand-up performer to sitcom star, with the debut of TBS' The Bill Engvall Show, which premieres tonight at 9:30 pm/ET. Paired with veteran sitcom writer/executive producer Mike Leeson (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All in the Family, Rhoda), Engvall's goal is to return the family-friendly sitcom to the airwaves.
Indeed, this type of program has taken a hit in recent years with the loss of such shows as Everybody Loves Raymond and My Wife and Kids. As Engvall tells TVGuide.com, "After we shot the pilot, this 70-year-old
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Not so many summers ago, you'd have been lucky to find five new series to watch during the entire off-season. This summer, you can find at least that many premiering nearly every week. (Shameless plug alert: As part of next week's new wave of shows, I make my debut as a reality-TV judge Wednesday, July 18, on TV Guide Network's America's Next Producer.) For cable networks, it's all about finding new signature shows to redefine the brand. (Think Lifetime's Army Wives.) Here are some first impressions of five new scripted contenders.
Mad MenThursdays, 10 pm/ET, AMCThe pitch: Ad men in 1960, oozing ego and raw sexism.First impression: Wow. The period look is dazzling: the women's tight skirts, the men's slicked hair. If iconic director Douglas Sirk (Writt
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Hello TV Guide fans. Bill Engvall here, and I am thrilled to tell you about my new show on TBS. It premieres July 17th. Some of you may know me from my first album, Heres Your Sign; The Blue Collar Comedy Tour; or my latest DVD, 15° off Cool.I know a lot of you are like me and are family people. And one of the things that I feel has been missing from television is the lack of family viewing. Well worry no more my friends. The Bill Engvall Show is just the medicine that the doctor ordered. Its is about a family that lives in Lewisville, Colorado. I play a family therapist who gives no-nonsense advice to his patients, but then has difficulty in applying the same principles to his own family. In the show, I have three children and a wife, played by the extremely talented and beautiful Nancy Travis. Now you know Nancy from things like So I Married an Axe Murderer, Becker and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. On my show her name is Susan, and she is the one ...
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