At a time when late night talk shows are in a period of transition — what some might call a renaissance — a familiar Latino face is emerging to shake up the genre even more. George Lopez is getting his own late night talk show, which is set to air on TBS and seems to be much more than just a monologue and a guy behind a desk:

Lopez and his producers approached TBS with a pilot episode filmed on an outdoor soundstage, with Eva Longoria, Dane Cook and Samuel L. Jackson as guests. Lopez sat audience members close to the stage, let them ask questions and didn’t sit behind a desk.

“The music was from salsa to Led Zeppelin,” he said. “Look, you can either go to Nieman Marcus or you can go to a flea market. When you go to a swap meet, there’s just a ground-level feel that you can find anything there. At Nieman Marcus, you’re not going to find tube socks and pliers. This will be a flea market feel.”
TBS was sold by the pilot, said Michael Wright, the cable network’s programming chief.

I’m not a huge fan of Lopez’s comedy, but I appreciate what he’s trying to do: represent some diversity in late night, so I’ll be watching. I must admit I’m also attracted by what he said he’s shooting for:

He said he wants to be inclusive, not divisive, in much the same way as Arsenio Hall’s early-1990s talk show.

I loved me some Arsenio!

Via / Yahoo Entertainment News