Will Maya & Marty Delight & Entertain You?

What Is This Thing?

In a throwback to the variety shows of yore, Maya Rudolph and Martin Short are your MCs for an hour of comedy sketches and musical numbers.

When Is It On?

Tuesdays at 10 PM ET on NBC.

Why Was It Made Now?

A version of this was actually first attempted two years ago, in the form of The Maya Rudolph Show, a promised weekly variety series that ended up not just a solitary TV special, but one burned off between TV seasons. More than a year after that, NBC tried again to make variety shows happen with Best Time Ever, which was also live (and far weirder than The Maya Rudolph Show had ever dared to be); that one died three months after its premiere. Having watched this, I can tell you it wasn't made because executives were so blown away by the show's content that greenlighting it was imperative. (It probably also isn't that NBC wants a family-friendly hit, since the show airs at 10 PM.)

What's Its Pedigree?

In addition to her former DOA variety show, Maya Rudolph's past associations with NBC include Up All Night and Saturday Night Live. Martin Short is also an SNL alumnus -- and starred on SCTV before that -- with too many credits to name. Head writer Mikey Day (who also appears in one sketch in the series premiere) has been writing on SNL for the past few years. Surprise! SNL impresario Lorne Michaels is an Executive Producer.

...And?

By far the best moment of the episode is this one: a number from the musical Shuffle Along.

It made me wish that NBC had created a series that was...this: a live hour each week filled with numbers from Broadway shows. Maybe someday! I must also give credit to Kenan Thompson's Steve Harvey, whose takes to the camera in the show's Little Big Shots sketch...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIKTERigrAM

...were the only parts of the episode that made me laugh.

One more positive: it could have been longer? But it's only an hour.

...But?

Well, it's not good. The cold open filmed sketch with Tom Hanks is both sexist and slow, and when Short comes in, he doesn't even try to match his co-stars' tone.

This Melania Trump sketch is so lazy and first thought that Rudolph evidently didn't feel the need to learn an actual Slovenian accent and just recycled her Donatella Versace voice instead.

If you can tell me why this Jiminy Glick interview with Larry David needs to be OVER SEVEN MINUTES LONG, I'd love to know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJshb7vM13w

Just as on SNL, the band's song -- in this case, it's a two-song medley by Miley Cyrus -- slows things to a halt and feels pointless (even more so since she's not even promoting her own latest album).

Ultimately, the whole thing smacks of a studio's arranged marriage: Rudolph and Short really have no history together and their chemistry is negligible. Maya & Kenan would have been a better show. (Maya & Virtually Anyone Else would have been a better show.)

...So?

If you like SNL but wish it were cornier and slightly shorter, I suppose this is for you. Otherwise, you don't need to bother, since recent events suggest NBC isn't going to bother for very long either.