The Assault of Standup Comics with Television Shows continues, with NBC’s “The Good Life” kicking off the new year.
Some weeks back, the Tribune’s TV Week magazine ran an extremely well-done (maybe Pulitzer Prize material) cover story on comics following the footsteps of Roseanne Arnold, Jerry Seinfeld and Tim Allen on the TV front this season.
But unlike most other shows of its kind, “The Good Life” has two, two, two comics on one show, with John Caponera and Drew Carey.
Like the stars of “Roseanne,” “Seinfeld” and “Home Improvement,” “The Good Life,” which airs at 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays on WMAQ-Ch. 5, is based on the standup comedy of Caponera, a native of Chicago’s South Side who got his start here in 1979, spending 14 of those years with Zanies.
Caponera, 37, who serves as executive consultant, plays John Bowman, a Chicago-based manager of shipping and receiving at a lock distribution company who is married (to Eve Gordon of NBC’s short-lived “The Powers That Be” comedy) with three children.
John Bowman’s world is divided between home and work, where Drew Carey plays Bowman’s best friend and co-manager, and actor Monty Hoffman, who also has some standup experience, is a goofy worker in the company.
“We’re not in the good life as far as wealthy people,” explains Caponera. “We’re only middle-class Chicagoans . . . (the title) means the good life as far as we’re pretty wealthy in family and love, and we have each other.”
The show, of which 13 episodes have already been shot, will have a strong Chicago feel to it. Caponera says numerous television series have been set here, but most really didn’t have the flavor of the city.
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In fact, the set designer of “The Good Life” also worked on another Chicago-based show, Fox-TV’s “Married . . . With Children,” without ever having visited Chicago. Caponera fixed that, hooking the set designer up with Caponera’s parents, who still live on the South Side, for a day.
“He got to see the neighborhood I grew up in,” as well as Lincoln Park and Beverly, explains Caponera.
Caponera’s father, a firefighter based in a station across the street from the University of Chicago, arranged for the designer to take a ride on one of those ladder trucks so he could get a bird’s eye view of the city.
“He brought that to the set,” says Caponera, who has appeared on several standup television shows, as well as NBC’s “L.A. Law” and “Drug Wars” miniseries opposite Chicago’s Dennis Farina. “The home and the workplace have a real Chicago feel to it.”
Besides, “I think because I grew up in a South Side neighborhood my whole life, I really have the accent and I really have the attitude, as oppose to these shows that claim they’re from Chicago.”
Caponera describes John Bowman as being like, well, like John Caponera.
“I think I’m a little more impatient than my character, and a little less geeky. But we have the same opinions and values and principles. I’m pretty much playing myself on the show. He’s the kind of guy who means well; everything he does he has good intentions.
“That doesn’t mean that it’s the right way,” he adds quickly. “Things just seem to happen to this guy.”
Caponera says Drew Carey also pretty much plays himself. That may explain why Carey’s character is kind of chunky, wears a crewcut hairstyle, dark suits, white shirts and narrow ties.
“Because of the way he looks, you’d think he would not get any women or all that stuff,” explains Carey, a comic for seven years. “But he’s really bright, is real good with women and has a real swinging bachelor pad on the Gold Coast of Chicago.”
In short: Just like Carey, who’s had standup specials on HBO and Showtime. “Actually,” he jokes, “I thought of the women angle because I thought that would be a real good way to meet models and stuff.”
Carey’s Drew Clark character was made to be “untrue to his appearance. You think that, because of his appearance, he would be a boring, bland guy. But . . . you never know what he’s going to come up with, because you never know what he might know. He’s real well-read, wordly.”
The fact that standups are working with each other make “The Good Life” pretty good to work on, according to Carey, who’s in his 30s.
“With me and John working together, rehearsals go real smooth,” says the Cleveland-born Carey, who, unlike Caponera, doesn’t use any of his comedy bits in the show (“Let ’em write their own ——– jokes”).
“We both tell jokes, we’re both trying to make the scene funny, we don’t question character motivation or anything, as long as it’s funny.”
Both comics see “The Good Life” as more than the usual sitcom. For example, the opening credits show cast members getting ready for scenes, and Carey’s character has done bizarre scenes and some of the end credits of the show that only loosely relate to that particular episode.
“What’s funny about this show is, it seems like an ordinary sitcom with the family and the three kids and the work, but the workplace is so wacky sometimes,” says Caponera.
“What’s funny is that it’s an ordinary, mundane, unglamorous job, and yet so much fodder comes at the workplace. Some of the wackiest stuff happens, and it almost gets surreal sometimes.”
“It’s like a blank canvas,” adds Carey. “There’s work and home . . . and that makes it easier to do stuff with the characters, and make it more of a character show. That seems to me to be the key.”
“The Good Life” is a show with “no setup like, `Here’s a story about a lovely lady,’ ” Carey continues. “We don’t have to set up the situation for the comedy. We just admit we’re just an half-hour of entertainment. We don’t try to be anything more.”
The standup lineup
Here’s who’s working at the comedy clubs. Current sets are scheduled to run through Sunday; new acts begin on Tuesday unless noted. Lineups subject to change.
Funny Bone-Naperville (1504 Naper Blvd.-Tower Crossing Shopping Center; 708-955-0500): A.J. Jamal, host of Comedy Central’s “Comic Justice,” makes special appearances Friday and Saturday. Coming in on Tuesday is musical comedy duo Pinkard & Bowden.
Funny Firm (318 W. Grand Ave.; 312-321-9500): Appearing this weekend is Steve Shafer, who’s appeared on A&E’s “An Evening at the Improv.” Former Chicagoan Mark Roberts comes home beginning on Thursday.
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K.J. Riddle’s Comedy Stop (15750 S. Harlem Ave.-Continental Shopping Center, Orland Park; 708-614-6336): Local comics star in the next few weeks, with Bill Leff taking the stage through Sunday, and Ken Sevara on deck starting on Tuesday.