The Best Show – [Box Set]

Sharpling and Wurster
The Best of The Best Show box set
(Numero Group)
You know what we’re going to do right now? We’re going to push a collection of sixteen CDs containing radio comedy bits on you. These CDs don’t even have MP3s, but play in real time. For the twenty-first century, this is a truly baffling format. So what exactly is wrong with us? Nothing, dammit. I’m doing this for your own good. The Best of the Best Show is just about the best thing I’ve heard in a very long time, and being the comedy nerds that all of us are here at Ground Control, I’m sure that I don’t stand alone.

Now, I had never heard of the Best Show on WFMU before, so I came into this kind of green after hearing head honchos Tom Scharpling and John Wurster talk about this crazy looking box set on WTF and Seth Meyer’s Late Night. The concept is essentially comedy sketches done over the radio. “How quant, and cute,” I thought. How absolutely hilarious, it turns out. And now that I’ve gone through it all, I’ve sure as hell begun to develop withdrawal symptoms.

The format of these bits or sketches or skits (whatever you want to call them) varies. They vary in length (some are nearly an hour), tone and in rotating cast of characters, but the end result is always the same: an infuriatingly good time. Scharpling is always the straight man to Wurster who plays a plethora of made up characters from the fictional Newbridge, New Jersey who seem to call him up on the radio for the sole purpose of making his life difficult. In the process, Scharpling and Wurster create a rich world of complex comedic characters and situations which serve to knock some sense into the format of radio broadcasting.

Numero Group seems to understand the importance of the Best Show, and put together an amazing box set which compiles the best of the Best show over sixteen CDs, a large booklet with stories and profiles on the characters that are the bane of Scharpling’s existence, and a bonus USB with added bits that didn’t make the CDs. It’s a devil of a holding cell, which just barely contains the monster that is the Best of the Best Show. You need this. We all need this. [Ollie Ottoman]

Artist:
http://thebestshow.net/

http://thebestshow.net/podcast/

https://www.facebook.com/thebestshowdotnet

https://twitter.com/scharpling/

Album:
The Best of The Best Show box set is out now. Buy it here on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Best-Show-16CD-Book/dp/B00T5C3HVS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462291176&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Best+of+The+Best+Show

Comments are closed.