Sherman’s Showcase is like Soul Train meets I Think You Should Leave

There is no laughter more hollow, no handclap or whoop more soulless, than that ignited by a traffic signal. To understand the applause sign is to consider a dated, insulting notion that we, the audience, maybe don’t really know how to watch, consume, appreciate. And yet it remains an integral part of the late-night talk-show rigmarole wherein a man in a suit reads topical jokes from out-of-sight cue cards as America puts on its jammies. Even new takes on the formula abide the old slight to the idea of a present, subjective assembly. Maybe by now, in the late-night game, we’ve all just grown tired. In the wake of the end of the shows of Trevor Noah, James Corden, and Samantha Bee, The New York Times recently asked “Is There a Future for Late-Night Talk Shows?” It seems, with declining interest and the ascendance of streaming, with a growing reluctance to hear tired jokes about gas prices and the vice president from a soundstage in Rockefeller Center, it may be time to lay the old dog to pasture. But how? Sherman’s Showcase seems to ask. Well, skewer it to smithereens, apparently.

At the opening of each episode, yes, a suited man stands, ridiculous phallic Bob Barker microphone in hand, dark shades and immaculate beard immovable, a lounge singer’s smug suavity, preacher’s aloof charm, deep throaty voice assured and practiced, the air of a confident and consummate emcee to lead one toward nighttime delights. But then, for instance, he might go into a quick and breathless tangent: “I can’t wait to start the show, but before we get there allow me to summarize the plot of Mulholland Drive. You see, she shoots herself. Great movie.”

Such is the course and absurd tenor for most of the show, as it evolves or devolves or dissolves or aimlessly winds its way toward some unholy amalgamation of asides, backstage glimpses, interviews, live-music performances, music videos, previews, movie trailers, animation, award shows, game shows, commercials, and even a video game. It is all vaguely, conceptually sketch comedy, sure, in spirit, but strung together with an uncannily and uniquely propulsive bump.

The man at the center of it all, Sherman McDaniels himself, is Bashir Salahuddin. His sidekick, Dutch Shepherd, is played by Diallo Riddle. The real-life duo met at Harvard before embarking on a union of writing and video projects, landing as writers for Jimmy Fallon, creating the cult Comedy Central show South Side, and eventually birthing Sherman, which premiered in 2019. This latest iteration of their creative offspring is pitched as a kind of offbeat parody on Soul Train, American Bandstand, Solid Gold, and some other ’70s show you’ve likely heard Questlove reminisce about. But it actually feels more in common with the work of Christopher Guest, I Think You Should Leave, and some freaky fever dream of a sativa-baked In Living Color writer’s room where the editor has gone on vacation.

Season two is a continuation of the team’s well-honed brand of quick-hitting, time-hopping narration, giving a 360-degree view of a beloved musical variety show. For this go, they’ve brought back John Legend as producer, occasional guest, and, from the sound of it, probable co-songwriter. Guests also include Issa Rae and Chance the Rapper, and everything remains very much in the IFC brand of “Slightly Off,” in the faux-serious vain of Portlandia, and not unlike a completely problematic step-sibling of Documentary Now!. We have straight-faced commitment to musical numbers like “Epulets Fall In Love” and “I Love You, Sike;” an overlong and artful treatment of a Wes Anderson twee fest, in the trailer for Forty Acres And A Blimp (“coming soon to theaters in Cannes, Silver Lake, and most of Brooklyn”); simple silliness (“Cognac, you my only friend” [takes a sip] “…that is not cognac”); and coy zingery like a voice-over welcoming “the face of hope and change in the Democratic Party, John Edwards!”

Like with any assorted sketch show, like a book of poems or a big league slugger where half-the-time success equals greatness, not every effort works. One of the earliest bits here, a trailer for a flick wherein Mary J. Blige attempts a heist to take down P. Diddy, won’t let go of its search for a tag or a throughline, and comes off like clumsy and warmed-over SNL sketch. But even in flatness, there’s a real willingness to gamble, to try, a belief bordering deliciously on recklessness. At times, the writers treat the audience with so much trust it almost feels like indifference, especially in trailers for the likes of Not Passing. The kernel of the idea can almost be seen, framed in late-night smoke and soundtracked by thigh slaps: What if we take Passing and do the opposite? Similarly, consider That’s The Spirit, in which an African soccer phenom’s father is a ghost, who is a soccer ball. As his mother prepares him to have a new sibling, the poor kid can’t stop asking her how his ghost soccer ball father conceived a new child. The tag line promises: “A story of forgiveness.”

On paper, this shouldn’t go with a strangely poetic black-and-white segment on the perspective of the show’s security guard: “In reality nothing is secured, security is a fiction, a pantomime.” Nor should that gel with an old animated Sherman-penned series, Dumpster Buddies, featuring his friend “Obese Maurice,” which we see as he discusses on an expose-style Frost/Nixon-esque interview. But everything moves and flows with such assurance, style, a slinky and soulful rat-a-tat tempo that inevitably leads back to a song and dance routine far better than it has any right or need to be.

Salahuddin, the center of nearly every bit, the eye of the hurricane, is a forceful revelation. Part caricature and part chum, delusional but familiar, it’s hard not to think of Danny McBride in The Righteous Gemstones or anything else, with that always-semi-disbelieving head cocked slightly back, an overcooked swagger turned so high, so ridiculous, it becomes something benignly, lovably goofy. In the digressions, the deviations, wondrous casual remarks, there is such a sense of timing, such laughable machismo, it is easy to almost feel the need to lean forward, to catch the next line, to not be able to look away from the somehow hip awkwardness. In a George Clinton parody, Sherman states, “God wanted a style of music that involved way too many people, so he invented funk.” And so Sherman, the show, moves, with a party atmosphere and large contingent of creators moving and shaking and offering something at once neurotic, silly, feel good, and singularly smart. It is also a line indicative of the writerly attention given to almost everything Sherman says. There is not a moment of dead air, not a second without something like realizing that, to Sherman, five plus six is 12, because he “always rounds up.” Of its time, the end product feels almost like scrollable sketch comedy—if something doesn’t work for you there’s surely something else coming right behind. Something else in a steady, heady funk, set entirely to its own beat. Something delicious because you don’t know quite how to process it, and nobody is giving a clue.