Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries - Listen Up: Jason Alexander and Malcolm Jamal Warner

Listen Up aired from September 2004 until May 2005 on CBS.

Tony and Bernie ( Jason Alexander, Malcolm-Jamal Warner) were the mismatched cohosts of the cable sports talk show Listen Up. Short, blustery Tony had never been much of an athlete and was happily married, while dreadlocked single Bernie, a former professional football player, led an active social life. They were good friends, despite their occasional confrontational style on the air. Several real-life professional athletes appeared as themselves on the show-football's Steve Young, Doug Flutie, and Eric Dickerson, basketball's Dennis Rodman and soccer star Brandi Chastain.

Tony may have been a celebrity to his fans, but to his family, he was a goofball dad and they were not particularly excited when he started writing a syndicated newspaper column that included observations on his home life. His wife, Dana ( Wendy Makkena), who paid little attention to sports, was a zoo administrator and whiny Megan and easygoing Mickey ( Daniella Monet, Will Rothhaar) were their two children. Megan was a good student who played on her high school's soccer team while Mickey was a talented amateur golfer. Tony took great pride in Mickey's golf prowess and hoped it would be his ticket to success, since the kid was barely scraping by in school.

Listen Up was adapted from the writings of real-life sports commentator Tony Kornheiser whose ESPN TV show Pardon the Interruption with fellow Washington Post sports columnist Michael Wilbon had been airing since September 2001.

A Review from The New York Times

TV REVIEW | 'LISTEN UP'
A Celebrity on TV, a Schlemiel at Home

By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN

Published: September 20, 2004

Tony Kleinman's name loads the dice. First off, that surname - little man - has the kind of allegorical freight associated with socialist theater. Second, it sounds Jewish, which suggests that the lead character on CBS's "Listen Up," a figure based on Tony Kornheiser, the Washington Post columnist and the co-host of a talk show on ESPN, may be one of the few, if not the first, Jewish heads of a family on a network sitcom since Molly Goldberg dominated "The Goldbergs" in the 1950's.

Does "Listen Up," which starts tonight, really need this kind of responsibility? The show is merely a rickety vehicle for Jason Alexander, whose Tony is a smug jerk with a talk show, a comb-over, a newspaper column and an inexplicably supportive, attractive family. (He is not visibly religious.) The banality of this setup suggests the hundred reasons that people keep saying sitcoms are over. Yes, Tony's sullen 14-year-old daughter, Megan (Daniella Monet, who is great), gamely resists her father's bullying on tonight's episode. But by the end she has been chastened by her mother (Wendy Makkena), who gives a father-knows-best speech. Tony gets the last word, and we are stuck with Tony Kleinman, unopposed.

Having to play a third-rate Larry David shoehorned into a daddy comedy - Tony is almost as contemptible as Larry is in "Curb Your Enthusiasm," but he is not as paranoid, eccentric or ingenious - Mr. Alexander is stranded with nothing but his skills. And those skills are irrepressible. Mr. Alexander is a powerful actor, a natural. He is never controlled by the flush and smirk that used to betray self-consciousness in many of the actors on "Seinfeld." (This affect seizes so many comics as soon as they find themselves near a sitcom couch. Is it the blocking? The light?) Sitcom lines trip off Mr. Alexander's tongue as if he has never talked any other way.

In one scene Tony mounts a chair that is too high for him in an understated act of physical comedy that will make you laugh out loud. A musical sequence is a showcase for Mr. Alexander's song-and-dance talents. And his trailing-off delivery of a line requesting a phone message ("Megan, do you have, uh, anything?") perfectly expresses a father's fearful, defensive and fake-casual overture to a teenage daughter.

But Mr. Alexander is simply carrying far too many burdens on "Listen Up." Forget making a case for the common man or doing justice to "The Goldbergs." On tonight's episode, he has to spit milk into a glass, and then toy with drinking the milk, and then drink the milk, and somehow keep it from being revolting. No one could pull that off. And Mr. Alexander, more cosmically, must break the "Seinfeld'' curse: the bad luck that for years has seemed to keep "Seinfeld" alumni from having hit shows.

That curse stands. With its grubby jokes about training bras and baldness, and its stiff supporting cast - including Ms. Makkena and Malcolm-Jamal Warner as Bernie, Tony's co-host - even Mr. Alexander can't make "Listen Up" funny.

For a Website dedicated to Daniella Monet go to http://monetonline.freeweb7.com/

For a Website dedicated to Daniella Monet go to http://www.daniellamonet.net/