Style & Substance aired from January until September 1998 om CBS.
Chelsea Stevens ( Jean Smart) was a dynamo whose knowledge of cooking, decorating, and entertaining had made her rich and famous. She had an estate in Connecticut and ran a media conglomerate that produced videos , books, a magazine, and a TV show. Unfortunately, she had virtually no people skills and alienated almost everyone with her lack of tact, need to be in control, and constant meddling in their personal lives. Chelsea's newly hired producer , Jane ( Nancy McKeon) was determined to make Chelsea more human, while minimizing the extent to which her boss interfered with her own personal life. She was not completely successful. With Jane's help Chelsea did try to change her self-absorbed image, but things didn't always go as planned. When Jane tutored a current-affairs ignorant Chelsea for an appearance on a Politically Incorrect type show, the topic was changed at the last minute. When Chelsea hosted a fund-raiser for a drug rehabilitation center, she accidentally served "magic mushrooms," leaving her social register guests stoned and confused. Others who worked for Chelsea were Mr. John ( Joseph Maher), her gay interior designer; Trudy ( Linda Kash), the cynical food stylist; Terry ( Heath Hyche), her gentile but incompetent secretary; and Earl ( Alan Autry), her muscular handyman.
This was the first of two CBS series parodying Martha Stewart that aired during the 1997-1998 season. When the second, The Simple Life, was canceled, Style & Substance took over the vacated time period.
An Article from The New York Times
TELEVISION REVIEW; Style Empire's Busy Czar, So Nice Underneath It All
By CARYN JAMES
Published: January 5, 1998
As she breezes into her office, Chelsea Stevens greets her staff with a trilling voice and a stream-of-consciousness message Martha Stewart might envy. ''This morning before breakfast, while I was restocking my trout pond and milking my goat, I realized how much I wanted to tell all of you how much I appreciate all the hard work you do,'' she begins. ''But then later, when I was airing out my quilt and making prosciutto jerky, I reminded myself we can always work harder!''
In the new satire ''Style and Substance,'' Chelsea Stevens (Jean Smart) is an unmistakable Martha Stewart type, a style czar whose empire includes a magazine, a television show and books. Ms. Stewart is, of course, an irresistible target. But those who wondered how this CBS sitcom could satirize her, one of the network's own stars, will find the answer all too easily. Chelsea's breathless greeting offers the first and last pointed lines in a comedy so lacking an edge that it is more a valentine than a parody.
The original Martha Stewart seems so serenely above it all that she has halfheartedly mocked that image in credit card commercials. Even if Chelsea Stevens is merely an aspiring Stewart, she needs that wonderwoman hauteur. But Ms. Smart plays her as the emotionally poor little rich girl, as if the actress can't wait to let Chelsea's likable side burst through.
That is the pitfall of so many television satires: the rule is that recurring characters have to become likable sooner or later. But does it have to happen this soon? ''Style and Substance'' takes all of half an hour to show that Chelsea is a softy.
As if that weren't dreary enough, she has softhearted company in her producer and office manager, Jane (Nancy McKeon in an uncommonly whiny performance). Chelsea has just been divorced; Jane has just arrived from Omaha, leaving a fiance behind. The women bond. ''You're nice; you care about people,'' Chelsea tells Jane. ''How do you do that?'' They eat Hostess Snowballs together; that junk-food bonding ritual is the ultimate sign that Chelsea is a nice person too. Maybe nice works in life, but it's a horrible idea in satire, and it leaves this series with nowhere to go.
Of course, there are a minor misunderstandings before the women become friends. Jane flings an insult at Chelsea. ''You are a weirdsmobile,'' she says. Truly, any series that lets ''weirdsmobile'' pass for wit is in such disrepair Martha Stewart herself couldn't fix it.
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