Ladies and Gentlemen...The Ed South Show

Today marks the official online debut of content from THE ED SOUTH SHOW. Yeah! For those of you unaware of TV's greatest gem, THE ED SOUTH SHOW was a public access cable show that debuted on Howard County Comcast Public Access in the summer of 1998. The show started off as an interview/magazine style show but quickly morphed into a sitcom. It was produced by me, Ed, along with the help of many of my talented friends. Being Public Access that means that there was no money involved in the making of the show. Everything was done on everyone's own time and nobody ever got paid for anything that we ever did. But we had a lot of fun, and we took alot of pride in what we were doing. At the time we started the show, our public access channel was nothing more than public affair programs all shot in the same studio with the same backdrop, same furniture, and same handful of plants that were rearranged for each show. THE ED SOUTH SHOW looked to add some entertainment and comedy to the channel's line-up. For the sake of variety I also vowed never to shoot anything in the studio.

We produced 18 half-hour episodes between October 1997 and November 2001. The show was basically about a guy named Ed (played by me) who had a local TV show. Sometimes we saw Ed at work doing his show, and other times we saw behind the scenes of the show and his private life. The behind the scenes portions of the show were all scripted and performed by a number of friends and co-workers. Some of the characters on the show included the owner of the TV station R. J. Tartersauce (Kevin McCrum); Ed's girlfriend Amy (played over the years by three different actresses: Allisan Pyer, Maggie Sandy, and Ann Metz); Amy's best friend Jessica (Jen Kersey); Jessica's idiot boyfriend Devon (Brian Kaiser) and Ed's producer Producer Brian (also played by Brian Kaiser).

Before we get to the clip, let me also say that THE ED SOUTH SHOW would not have been what it was without the fantastic help of everyone that was involved especially Andrew Heiliger, Matt Maloy, Brendan P. Hines, Chad McCaughey, the one and only Mr. Joey Carwash and Brian Kaiser. We also have to send a shout-out to James Conners for helping me get clips from the show into a digital format for uploading to the internets!

So...on with the first clip....This is the idiotic opening skit from episode #007 "The Return of Devon." This quick skit is a good example of how we liked to do a whole bit based on just one joke. It's also the first time we worked with Jen Kersey, who went on to take the roll of Jessica and appear in several more episodes. The music in this skit was produced for us by Phil Heiliger, who also did the show's theme song. Listen carefully to the music, you may notice that it's just one note off of the original song it's supposed to be...that's for legal reasons since we obviously couldn't afford to use the real song.




If you didn't "get it" you can click here.

We'll have lots more clips from THE ED SOUTH SHOW in the near future!