NBC Goes to the Source: Carl Reiner

With indomitable confidence, Carl Reiner says that he is the perfect choice to host NBC’s new hybrid television show “Sunday Best,” a weekly, hourlong look at television past and present.

“If I were an executive at NBC, I would go to me first,” Reiner says during lunch at the NBC commissary a week after being announced as the show’s host. At 68, Reiner says he has earned the distinction of being called “venerable.”

“You know why I’m right for this show? What they don’t know about me at NBC? And why I’m even a bigger force than you think? I’m embarrassed to say this, and I will only say it one time...”

He pauses for dramatic effect. “I’m a real couch potato. But I think I’m a couch yam, because I’m a little classier than a potato.”

Chances are, whether people know it or not, they’ve encountered Reiner’s wit at some point in their lives--whether as an actor on a New York stage in the 1940s, as a TV performer and writer on “Your Show of Shows” in the 1950s, as the creator, producer and sometime actor of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” in the 1960s or the director of a score of comedy films in the 1970s and 1980s, including the cult favorite “Where’s Poppa?” with George Segal, “Oh God!” with George Burns, “Summer School” with Mark Harmon and all the early Steve Martin films.

Last year, Reiner was hired by his son, Rob, another TV performer (Mike Stivic on “All in the Family”) turned film director, to direct the mildly successful “Sibling Rivalry,” starring Kirstie Alley. In between all this, the elder Reiner has been a film actor, a TV and film writer, a sitcom star, a game show host, and a regular on almost a dozen variety, comedy and quiz shows.

“That’s why I’m right for (‘Sunday Best’) by the way,” Reiner says during a discussion of his TV past. “They can’t mention a show that I don’t know. There are few of us around--there’s Steve Allen, there’s Sid Caesar--just a few of us around today who knew what it was like then.”

The producers of “Sunday Best” agree. “It’s been great, because whenever you mention a segment to Carl he gives you more information than you can get from a history book,” executive producer Garth Ancier says. “Since most of our staff is under 35, it’s very helpful. We’re from 22 to 35. We’re born of a TV generation. When I hit about 1963 I start going blank.”

As a writer and regular on “Your Show of Shows” with Caesar and Imogene Coca during the Golden Age of Television, Reiner had to crank out 90 minutes of live, original comedy each week in one of TV’s largest undertakings ever.

Reiner described the most profound change in television since then: “It’s gotten neater and neater and neater. We were slovenly at the beginning. Things would fall off the table. During the live days, neatness didn’t count. It was inspiration that counted. They laughed when you fell over. We’d get embarrassed for the moment, but you took your chances.

“With the advent of videotape, everything got neater. There are no mistakes. Every second on air is used. TV operates like a fine clock. But the clock is ticking out crap. The quality hasn’t gotten much better. There’s always been a small percentage of excellence; on a scale of 100 there’s like 1 1/2 percent of real excellence. There’s a Civil War documentary. There’s a ‘Lonesome Dove.’ There’s one moment of a thing called ‘Twin Peaks,’ and after the first moment you say, ‘Come On!’ ”

Reiner formally pulled out of television in 1976, after producing and starring briefly in the ABC sitcom “Good Heavens,” in which he granted people wishes as an angel in a business suit. “The series took a year to put together and it lasted 13 weeks,” he says. “I was on the project for a year because (ABC Entertainment president) Freddie Silverman said, ‘OK, it’s going Thursday. No wait, Friday.’ They kept me under contract for a year, and that was the end. I said, ‘That’s it.’ ”

Fifteen years later, Reiner has no hesitation diving back into television on “Sunday Best.” He was impressed by the series’ eclectic creative team who will shoulder the burden of putting the show together each week.

“I felt very safe walking out of the first meeting,” Reiner says, “and I hadn’t been excited coming out a television meeting in I can’t tell you how long. I hate going to those. I stopped it because I just didn’t want to speak to people who tell you what they need for their network.”

“Sunday Best” will shoot Sunday mornings, giving Reiner weekdays to continue directing films, finish a fictional novel he has been writing and perhaps get back into acting. And he demanded July and August off to spend at his little house in the south of France. He says, “(NBC) is treating me like a star. That’s a very easy thing to fall prey to, to be seduced by. They came in and took pictures of me, and they’re giving me a lot of money.”

When asked if he misses the early days of television, Reiner takes a bite of salad and says matter-of-factly: “No. You only miss those days if those were the last good days. I get letters from friends who I was in the Army with, who still talk about the Army. I mean, that’s all they talk about. It’s the last important thing that happened to them, that somebody invited them to be in a war.”