I first saw Bill Maher on HBO’s Not Necessarily the News in the mid-80s and, to be honest, didn’t care for him. (I am pleased now that he made an appearance in my friend Ethan Wiley‘s film, House II).
I warmed up to Bill with Politically Incorrect, but seldom watched the show because it had too many “celebrities” and not enough, you know, smart people. But Bill was always smart, and for the brief time that I had HBO again, I would regularly watch Real Time with Bill Maher. (My HBO is gone, but audio to the show is now available as an iTunes Podcast.)
Now Bill has done something really interesting: he is the debut host of Amazon Fishbowl, a new venture in Internet-only TV series. It is a brilliant marketing idea. In the June 1 episode, for example, Bill’s first guest is Dean Koontz. As he is talking about his new book, a link appears outside the frame to bring you directly to the order page on Amazon. Similarly, when the Dixie Chicks sang, a link to their new CD showed up.
I was concerned that Bill’s comments might be watered down, and they probably were, but he is still funny and smart and does not steer away from controversy.
There are commercials, though they are easy to skip. One commercial worth seeing, however, is for UPS and Amazon. They “randomly” pick an Amazon customer and arrange for a celebrity associated with a product to deliver it in person. The first episode featured Soprano’s co-star Steve Schirripa delivering his new cook book to a New York restaurant (that was pretty lame, especially when we learned that the actor is also already a customer of the restaurant). However, in the pilot episode, Paul Reiser delivers a DVD of his new movie The Thing About My Folks to an unsuspecting customer and her surprise was clearly genuine. (Ironically, he actually delivered an empty DVD case since the film had not yet been released, but he sat on her couch and signed the cover, which was nice.)
The show is an interesting experiment that will run weekly throughout the summer until Bill returns to HBO for the next season of Real Time. I am extremely curious to see where this new venue goes in the future.