The show premiered on Monday night and it was an hour long.
Maya Rudolph in flip-up sunglasses. Image via NBC
We’ve seen Maya Rudolph playing Whitney Houston, LaToya Jackson and Donatella Versace in her 7 year career at Saturday Night Live. Then we’ve seen her acting on flicks like Bridesmaids and Grown Ups, as well as the now-defunct TV show Up All Night. But we hadn’t yet seen her doing her own show, and now we can: the 41 year old actress got her own hour-long variety show on NBC. Premiering right after The Voice, the show had very good ratings, despite the critics clear lack of excitement about it.
The show is a nod to 1970s variety shows such as “The Carol Burnett Show”, “The Gong Show” or “Donny & Marie”, and it includes dancing, singing and sketches. “They always show those Carol Burnett specials, and I always really responded to the familial aspect of it and how much fun they were having, which is what I miss more than anything about SNL — my friends and laughing,” Rudolph told Entertainment Weekly.
A snapshot of The Maya Rudolph Show’s premiere. Image via NBC
She told the same magazine how she got to doing a variety show in 2014: ““The variety show that we grew up with, they come from a time where comedy didn’t have a lot of a spark in it, and the audiences wanted to be entertained as opposed to just be as smart as the show, and people didn’t seem interested until recently.” However, the critics said the premiere was not memorable, despite being funny, and they expressed their concern about whether there’s a public for variety.
Did you catch Monday night’s show? What did you think?
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