Not Necessarily the News

A special highlighting fifty years in the history of television. Includes tributes to Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, Walter Cronkite, Jackie Gleason, Bob Hope and Ed Sullivan. Clips of classic television moments are presented.

George Carlin celebrates 40 years of comedy and here, he presents 2 new standup bits, comedian Jon Stewart gives an interview with him, and we look at his old comedy work through the last 4 decades.

The third event from Comic Relief USA. Hosted, as with the first two specials, by Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg and Robin Williams. The event debuted the song "Mr. President"—written by Joe Sterling, Ray Reach and Mike Loveless, and sung by Al Jarreau and Natalie Cole. Featured Jim Varney as Ernest P. Worrell; Catherine O'Hara smoking between bites of food and drink; Arsenio Hall on women with plastic surgery; Woody Harrelson talking to an "audience member" (Shelley Long) who, when asked if she watched Cheers, said, "Not that much."

The Hollow Men are an English sketch comedy group consisting of David Armand, Nick Tanner, Rupert Russell, and Sam Spedding. The Hollow Men is also the title of their TV show broadcast in the United States by Comedy Central. The show follows the kind of silliness from sketch comedy shows like Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Kids in the Hall. The first and only season, consisting of six episodes, aired in early 2005. The group's name comes from a grim T.S. Eliot poem. In 2006 they broadcast a BBC Radio 4 sketch show, also of the same name. The radio show was recommissioned and a second series was aired in September 2007. Both series also featured Katy Brand.

On September 14, 1998, a Hollywood Squares revival debuted with Tom Bergeron as its host. In addition to her production duties, Whoopi Goldberg served as the permanent center square, with series head writer Bruce Vilanch, Gilbert Gottfried, Martin Mull, and Caroline Rhea as regular panelists and Brad Garrett, Bobcat Goldthwait, Jeffrey Tambor, George Wallace, Kathy Griffin and various others as semi-regular panelists. Shadoe Stevens returned to announce, although he was not given a square on the panel as he had been when John Davidson was host.

What does it mean to be a successful comedian? How far can the boundaries of taste be pushed to get a laugh? Four top comics, Ricky Gervais, Louis C.K., Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock, discuss and debate their craft.

Jim Jefferies: I Swear to God: The easily offended might do best to avoid Jim Jefferies’ raunchy, rude humor (or at least imbibe the two-drink minimum beforehand), but the Australian-born comedian provides plenty of laughs for everyone else in this HBO special. In I Swear to God, Jefferies continues his patented brand of comedy that once got him punched by an audience member, discussing the idiocy of no-smoking signs, sluts vs. studs, and his father’s Holocaust jokes.

The comic performs at the Chicago Theatre.

At the site of the 1969 rock concert at Woodstock, New York, an electrical charge turns a local farmer into a murderous werewolf.

Richard Pryor wanders around the NBC Studio, encountering various eccentrics. Meanwhile, the Reverend James L. White, the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin Dada and others are taping their own segments.

Penn and Teller play with mirrors, teach 900 people to make a hankie disappear, play with clear acrylic boxes, turn marshmallows into tools of violence, do some erotic fire-eating, become the King of Animal Traps, produce bees without end, make Jane Curtin do a magic trick with a needle, dental floss, and her pierced ear, and drive a truck filled with concrete over Teller.

Roast of Rodney Dangerfield recorded in Aspen on his 75th birthday.

Comedy special commemorating the 10th Anniversary of the famed New York City club. Featuring performances by many of the era's most successful comics, all who began their careers at Catch A Rising Star.

Superstar comedian/writer Bill Maher, one of the most highly credited comic minds today, is back in an all-new solo HBO comedy special performed live. Maher, known for his sharp wit, offers his candid and hilarious opinions on a wide range of social and political issues including sex, drugs, Iraq, immigration, President Bush, and much more in this can't miss special. Live show from Berklee Performance Center, Boston, Massachusetts

Hosted by the chart-topping husband and wife team, this 1976-1977 television variety series features a mix of hit music and comedy.

Maher addresses contemporary political, social and cultural topics -- Iraq, President Bush and the so called Axis of Evil. The opinionated Maher said about Victory Begins at Home: "We've heard everything about the War on Terrorism except what we can actually do to help win it. The government used to do that for us through propaganda (the positive kind) posters, so taking my cue from the great old posters of World War I and World War II ('Loose Lips Sink Ships,' 'Buy War Bonds,' 'Plant a Victory Garden,' etc.) I commissioned artists to paint the posters our government today should be putting out to help us win this war."